I (Jamin) was doing all the right things. I was reading my Bible regularly. I was enrolled in several Bible classes. I was living a life of service. In fact, I was leading a ministry caring for the homeless in the city. Yet something was amiss. I had lived this way for several years, and all the feedback I received was positive. This must be what it means to be a faithful follower of Christ. This is what the

Christian life is all about. Yet something about it didn’t feel right. In truth, I was flat bored. I didn’t feel inclined to rebel or “fall away” from the faith; I simply felt a dissonance in my walk with God. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I was tired of the “to-dos,” but I wasn’t sure why. My faith life felt hollow and tedious. What was going on?

During that season of spiritual malaise, I was invited on a retreat where I was “forced” to spend extended time in prayer. Not prayer for others. Not prayer with others. Silent, solitary, unscripted, deprogrammed prayer. I felt like a kid forced to play a sport he knew nothing about. I was fumbling in the dark, trying to remember the rules, all the while forgetting to play and have fun. It felt awkward, shallow, and forced. I felt lost. After about an hour of silence, alone in the mountains, God and me, I realized that the dissonance I felt was a surface marker of a deeper reality. I discovered within my heart a profound disconnect in my relationship with God. As I prayed, I realized I wasn’t really sure who God was, and for that matter I wasn’t sure who I was. I tried to lean into all of the theological truths I knew, but they offered no help in the deafening silence of lonely prayer. In that moment of naked honesty, God provided a turning point.

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01.  Non-Prayer Camouflaged as Prayer

Before that point I had certainly prayed. I prayed for friends in need. I prayed God would take away my sin and guard me from future temptation. I prayed God would give me the desires

of my heart. All of these prayers were conducted, unfortunately, with little relational attachment and functioned more like a phone transaction with a somewhat friendly but unknown customer service representative. What I realized on that retreat was that, in a very real sense, I had rarely truly prayed. As Eugene Peterson states, “We discover early on that we can pretend to pray, use the words of prayer, practice the forms of prayer, assume postures of prayer, acquire a reputation for prayer, and never pray. Our ‘prayers,’ so-called, are a camouflage to cover up a life of non-prayer.”Eugene Peterson, Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 161.

I had been living a Christian life of “non-prayer,” and now I knew it. Prayer had become another thing to do. It was another bullet point on the list of “shoulds” and “oughts” for good Christian behavior. At its best, it had been dressed up as a spiritual discipline: as one practice on the list of many that mature believers are supposed to engage in. As a result, prayer became a place to be good. Prayer became a place to perform. Prayer became a place to get things done.

If I was honest, even those “non-prayer prayers” were few and far between compared to reading my Bible or engaging in other Christian activities. That was for one simple reason: prayer did not offer an obvious return on investment. I didn’t feel smarter as a result of prayer. I didn’t feel better about myself as I prayed. I didn’t feel like I was getting much done. So I turned to things like service and church attendance to gain a sense of accomplishment.

All of this betrayed a deeper and more insidious reality in my life. My desire for a felt experience of self-fulfillment was the driving force of my spiritual activity. The Christian life had become more about looking and feeling like a Christian than abiding in relationship with God. I was operating in the realm of seeming, not being. However, if the Christian life is most fundamentally about being with God, then prayer cannot be merely another activity on the list of good Christian behavior. Prayer must be a way of life. But this is not what I had signed up for. I thought I believed Christianity was about having a relationship with God, but in that moment, alone before him, I came to realize that deep down I didn’t truly desire God’s presence.

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02.  Created to Be with God

Claiming that Christianity is about a relationship with God taps into the provocative truth that God gives himself. The solution to the pain, suffering, evil, and vice that plagues

our world is nothing other than the presence of the Creator. God’s presence brings healing. This is such a big idea, and its implications are so far-reaching, that we often accept something less instead. Rather than embracing the wildly provocative truth that God has given himself to us, we come to believe he functions primarily to give us other gifts.

That was my issue. I had clearly focused more on the other gifts than the gift of God himself. Rather than his presence, I wanted a felt experience, a sense of personal growth. I made the mistake of sin, which always seeks to turn God’s presence into a mechanism or resource to make my life better. Rather than worshipping God, I worshipped myself. I wanted life on my terms, so I did what I thought God would want, thus cleverly obliging him to make life work for me.

Perhaps nothing is as subtle and deceptive as the ease with which our forms of worshipping God (reading the Bible, singing, partaking in the Lord’s Supper, serving the poor, etc.) can be used for our own self-worship. This is so subtle and deceptive that we don’t even know it is there. We can become aware of this self-worship when we pay attention to our desires. Our desires hint at subconscious beliefs we hold about life, God, and ourselves. These beliefs often surface when we enter God’s presence. In his presence we come to realize how often we relate to him as a tool or resource in our quest for happiness, fulfillment, and meaning, rather than as the Lord who calls us to worship.

To be with the God who is always with you, you must pay attention to how you respond to unwelcome feelings concerning your life with God. For instance, when you see sin in your heart, do you beat yourself up before God in penance, as if your self-inflicted wounds will ensure God looks on you favorably? Maybe you find yourself bored in church, disinterested with Scripture, or joyless in your giving, and you respond by acting like you are content and happy. If we can’t have the real thing, maybe pretending will work?

This is the fork in the road of our life with God. To the left is a choice to use God to achieve the kind of life you want. It feels faithful because of how much cultural Christianity is sprinkled in, how much we can accomplish, and how important we are perceived to be in our church. To the right is a choice to receive the truth of yourself. This fork leads to the foot of the cross, where the only proper response is to bow a knee to God.

Whichever direction we take at the fork in the road is identified with a posture before God. The path on the left is a posture of control. There, we are the center, and our life dreams are sovereign. To the right, God is central, and we find ourselves called into his presence to know the freedom of being beloved. We take a knee before our Lord and trust that he receives us in the whole messy truth of ourselves because we rest on his self-giving….

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03.  It Was Very Good

Something different happened . . . at the end of the creation story. The rhythm of the poem was jolted just a bit. Man and woman were created in the very image of God himself and were given special authority over all he had created. From the beginning, man and woman were given a unique identity.

We read in Genesis 1:26 that humanity was not simply declared like the rest of creation, but also discussed by the triune God: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’”Gregory of Nyssa, “On the Origin of Man,” in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Genesis 1– 11, Andrew Louth, ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 28. Gregory of Nyssa states, “This same language was not used for (the creation) of other things. The command was simple when light was created; God said, ‘Let there be light.’ Heaven was also made without deliberation. . . . These, though, were before (the creation of) humans. For humans, there was deliberation. He did not say, as he did when creating other things, ‘Let there be a human.’ See how worthy you are! Your origins are not in an imperative. Instead, God deliberated about the best way to bring to life a creation worthy of honor.” The conclusion of the act of creation sounded slightly different as well: “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Gen. 1:31, emphasis added, ESVScripture quotations marked (ESV) are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version^® (ESV^®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.).

Scripture already confronts us with a question of human identity, and we are not even beyond the first chapter. Who are Adam and Eve? Creatures, created in the image of God, created “very good.” These identity markers probably generate more questions than answers. What does it mean to be a creature? What is it to be an image bearer? What does it mean to be “very good”?

In Genesis 1, we sit in the theater watching the drama unfold, but in Genesis 2, we are taken backstage. We are inside the action, and as a result we get a slightly different angle of the story. In parallel with the first scene, Genesis 2 offers new details about the creation of these image bearers. We read, “Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature” (Gen. 2:7, ESV). Narrated with untamable tension, the text reveals two key concepts that shape human identity. First, “the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground.” We are dust—earthy and humble, finite and temporal. Second, he “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” We live on borrowed breath, and yet we are alive in the most profound sense of the word—filled with the very breath that spoke creation into being. Within this tension is a status that is regal but lowly, significant but insignificant, unique but ordinary.John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries, Genesis, Rev. John King, trans. (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2003), 1:111. Calvin states, “He now explains what he had before omitted in the creation of man, that his body was taken out of the earth. He had said that he was formed after the image of God. This is incomparably the highest nobility; and, lest men should use it as an occasion of pride, their first origin is placed immediately before them; whence they may learn that this advantage was adventitious; for Moses relates that man had been, in the beginning, dust of the earth. Let foolish men now go and boast of the excellency of their nature!” God looks on humanity’s frame of dust and says, “I formed you, I love you, and I delight in you.” We are beloved dust.

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04.  Am Apocalypse of Dust

Jesus used images of soil to talk about the nature of the heart—some hard soil, some full of thorns, some shallow, and other soil soft and able to receive the seed of God’s Word.See Mark 4:13–20. But the truth is that all of our hearts are a mixture of these things. None of us is purely the soft in heart. When we come into contact with the greatness of God, we often subconsciously turn to things to protect ourselves from his presence. Maybe we focus our entire lives on service and ministry to avoid the vague and uncharted waters of prayer. Maybe we turn our Bible reading into a purely intellectual endeavor, not hearing God’s Word proclaimed to us, calling us to himself—we’re simply trying to be “in the know.” In some way, we all mimic Adam’s and Eve’s response to the call of God—running behind bushes, looking for a place to hide.

In 1931, America’s fertile plains were hit with what seemed at the time to be nothing short of the apocalypse. Clouds of dust, so thick you could not see five feet in front of you, covered the skies over what had been bountiful land decorated with golden wheat as far as the eye could see. Those who lived in Texas, Kansas, and Oklahoma called the clouds of dust “black blizzards.” When a journalist visited and saw the drought-stricken and wind-depressed land, the phenomenon received its historical name, the “Dust Bowl.” Many people died during the decade-long tragedy. Many more lost their livelihood and were forced to escape to the west coast where, due to the Great Depression, conditions were no better than the land they had left. The clouds of dust reached all the way to the eastern seaboard, making their presence felt throughout the entire country. What caused the Dust Bowl? How could farmers go from record crops, promising abundant hope, to utter hopelessness at the reality of land completely worthless? The answer was a mixture of urgency, greed, technology, and technique.

The wide-eyed settlers had found land that was rich and buyers of their wheat who were willing to pay. Making money on their crop was a matter of speed and strategy. The faster they could plow the fields and plant the seed, the quicker they could turn around and sell. This urgency caused them to turn toward new means to get the job done faster and with greater results. So they turned to the tractor, the newest technology on the farming market. They also turned to techniques that kept the soil free of the grass that had naturally grown in the land for years, which allowed them to plant immediately when the time came. However, when the drought arrived and was followed by wind, they realized their plans had backfired. It turned out that the natural indigenous grass they destroyed by the deep plowing of the tractors was the only thing that could keep the soil in place when the harsh winds came. If only they had paid attention to the history of the land, the cycles of weather, and the unique dynamics of the soil, the Dust Bowl would have never happened. Technology and technique—the very things that brought immediate payoff—became their undoing. As John Steinbeck articulates in The Grapes of Wrath,

 

Is a tractor bad? Is the power that turns the long furrows wrong? If this tractor were ours it would be good—not mine, but ours. If our tractor turned the long furrows of our land, it would be good. Not my land, but ours. We could love that tractor then as we have loved this land when it was ours. But this tractor does two things—it turns the land and turns us off the land. There is little difference between this tractor and a tank. The people are driven, intimidated, hurt by both. We must think about this.John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (New York: Penguin Classics, 2006), 151.

 

You have been called to participate in the reality of God’s work and to faithfully discern the soil of your heart. It is tempting to think we know what is needed. It is tempting to see the open plains of our hearts before us and think all we need is effort and strategy, technique and tools. However, the truth is, your heart is more complex than that. Our homespun theories on spirituality and growth are often nothing more than techniques that will untether our hearts from their foundation in Christ, being tossed to and fro by the winds of deceit. Instead, you must prayerfully ponder the conditions, get to know the soil, and learn how fruit is grown. . . .

What do we do when we grasp that our hearts are full of rocks, or that we have become untethered from Christ and are blown around like dust? What do we do when all of our techniques have failed, even those promising a more exciting and fruitful Christian life? What do we do when we experience, more often than not, the hardness of our hearts rather than the softness? Life with God is from the ground up. It begins with a willing posture for God to till the soil of our hearts, embracing that only by grace, the gift of God, is the hard soil of our hearts penetrated. We must be open to the work of the Spirit within—illuminating the complexities of our hearts and calling us to be with God. We must embrace the truth that his Word is “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give an account” (Heb. 4:12–13, ESV). We need to trust the tools of God for his own tilling of our hearts, receiving the piercing blow of his Word as the hard soil receives a spade. If we put our trust elsewhere—in techniques and self-help—our tilling will throw dust in the air and in our eyes, blinding us to the truth of God and of ourselves.

This vulnerable posture is, paradoxically, where life is found. Life is not found in hiding from God, in showing God that you are good or convincing him or others that you are valuable. Life is found in real, honest, and vulnerable relationship with the God who calls you his beloved. As we embrace this posture of openness before God, the soil of our heart will indeed be pierced by the living Word and searched by his Spirit. They will till the hard ground of your heart so that the living water can penetrate to the root system of your soul. Embracing a posture of exposure before God is diving deeply into the joy of communion with God, even when, like Adam and Eve, you feel naked and ashamed. This is a call to embrace God in times of abundance and in times of drought. It is a call to always be with the God who is ever present with you.

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05.  Continuing the Conversation

Conversation Journal: Kyle and Jamin, in your view are there ways that spiritual formation with millennials needs to have new or different theological perspectives or emphases from the current expressions?

 

Jamin: I believe so. Two thoughts come to mind as I think about my experience with millennials pastorally. First, millennials are fatigued by the latest and greatest. They are looking for a vision of the spiritual life that is connected to the history of the church. Over the last several years, I have watched countless evangelical millennials who grew up in the church ultimately landing in more traditional ecclesial settings in their adult years. I believe this speaks to a desire for something sturdy and rooted. Spiritual formation is in a unique position to offer a rich vision of the Christian life that is informed by church history. This means that spiritual formation must avoid the temptation of packaging itself as another movement or fad in the church. Second, millennials are in need of an account of the Christian life that speaks to the truth of their experience with the Lord. They are hungry for honest conversations about the challenges in prayer. They are tired of quick fixes and easy solutions to the Christian life. Spiritual formation can explore the challenging realities of the spiritual life in ways that speak to the heart of millennials. Honestly exploring the reality of desolation in prayer or the seasons of the soul can be incredibly helpful for millennials who feel alone and confused in their journey. They are hungry for an account of the Christian life that is seated in reality and is connected to the day-to-day. What does it mean to abide in Christ amidst school, work, relationships, etc.?

 

Kyle: I think so as well. Three interrelated issues come to mind immediately when I think about millennials.

First, spiritual formation needs to be integrated. What I mean by that is that it cannot be another thing we tack on to the side of everything else. If spiritual formation is really as foundational as we claim it is, then how does it help us rethink church, relationships, prayer, praise, etc., and how does it integrate theologically into everything else we believe? I think this latter point is really important but often ignored. Sometimes you hear people ask if spiritual formation is biblical. I think what they are getting at is something deeper than that actually. I think they want to know if spiritual formation can really link together the broad scope of Christian belief. I think it does, and Beloved Dust attempted, in part, to do this.

Second, spiritual formation needs to be holistic. This builds on the first point. Spiritual formation can’t simply be ideas, but has to connect the body, mind, heart, and soul within our vocations in the world and as members of the church. There is a real sense of frustration with big ideas that don’t seem to really engage the entirety of who I am as a person.

Third, once again building on what was just said, spiritual formation needs to speak the heart and experience back to the millennial, helping them understand their relation to the world. Millennials want to be understood, and see this as something of a right. Millennials have grown up in a world that baptizes whatever their existential selves want to use to self-construct. But they know what superficial answers are, and they can smell them from a mile away. Spiritual formation needs to not only point a way forward, but it needs to speak their own experience back to them. One of our goals with Beloved Dust was to do just that. We wanted the reader to think, “How do they know that I do that in prayer?” In my spiritual theology classes I often have students come up to me and say, “I had to look around because I thought everyone knew you were talking about me.”

What they don’t yet understand is that I can talk about their hearts because I have explored my own with God. In my experience, it has been this texture of teaching on the spiritual life that grabs hearts of millennials most.