“Why am I a perfectionist?” my seven year old son cried. He had been doing some drawing, and like many kids he was well aware that the lines on the page in front of him were not as brilliant as what he could see with his mind’s eye.
We explained to our son that we are all made with an imprint of God in us. We taught him that all of us have a deep place in us that is like God and made to know God as He is. It is a place that recognizes God’s perfection, the “resolvedness” of the One who is our Maker.
Understanding, (and yes even seven year olds “get” this) gives us an opportunity to grow our connection to God from these moments of frustration or pain. We are formed from His “DNA”. We all have desires and longings that grow out of a place in our spirit that is made in His likeness. That place in our spirit yearns for Him, longs to be in connection to him. Longs to be doing what we can do with Him, and longs to do things with perfect redemptive ability – the way God does things.
For the seven year old in my home, this recognition of perfection, of greatness, of God’s excellence is a moment on his journey where he gets to share what was in Him with the One who leads us into the fulfillment of all things. Understanding that we are made in God’s image, and setting aside assumption and expectation of how our longings “should” be enacted, can take us instead, to the place of childlike connection.
Two weeks ago we released our book, The Operating System of Jesus. It is primarily a book of understanding: understanding the invitation for us to live connected to God, understanding what He empowers us to do, and most importantly understanding what He does NOT require of us.
It has been so good to receive feedback from around the world as people read the book. Some feedback is from friends who have gone the journey with us. Other feedback comes from people we have never met and places we have never been. And there have been a couple of cute photos of beautiful newborn kids photographed next to the book.
What does it look like for children to be raised in understanding? How would it be for children if they were raised into close friendship with God and not into familiarity with theology? What if their deepest longings led them to a connection with Him rather than having to try to find fulfillment when those longings are displaced onto other stories or ideas? When we allow ourselves to understand that the deepest longings and desires inside of us come from the fact that we are made like Him, we do not leave much room to judge ourselves. We can connect with Him as we are. He can be as He is to us and through our lives. We can journey into a deep and all fulfilling union with Him as we get to be who we really are, made in His image. And as we do that our lives become a demonstration of that thing that satisfies the deepest longing in Him, a sacred union between God and His people.
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