MAKING SPACE FOR GOD

Ten players from the basketball team that I coach went with me to a seminar on Saturday called “Making Space for God.” It was hosted by Renewed Living Ministries and I didn’t know how they would react but they made it through with a high degree of engagement. The lady who ran the seminar knew they were coming and made it a point to provide 3-4 sandwiches per glutton. She also pointed questions at them showing that she valued their opinions and their staying awake. It was cool to see high school boys demonstrating maturity. It’s Monday now though and that was on Saturday so today I’ll get the real low down on how they felt.

As for the seminar itself, I loved the honesty in the exercise. It’s funny to realize that you’re so conflicted, both wanting to find your way back to your spiritual home and being anxious about the demands you think will be levied upon you when you arrive. There was more reflection at this event than I’ve ever done, a truthful introspection like I’ve never witnessed en mass. At one point we were asked to write our fears and concerns along with our desires and longings on a post-it note. We had all been given a composition book with an envelope inside labeled “TRUST GOD?”. We were instructed to put the post-it note in the envelope and realize that the “TRUST GOD?” question was a loaded one that had more to do with making space for God than making a decision to have faith in Him. After all, how can one believe in one whom they do not know? It made perfect sense to take this day to reconvene the heart and its beat maker.

One of the initial discoveries revealed during Saturday’s event was that there is in me a severe unwillingness to make space for the God upon whom my whole livelihood hinges. You gotta start somewhere even if that starting place is grim. And yet in the gray there was hope because of how refreshing it is to sit outside on a California Saturday knowing that God is sitting above, inside, with and for you. When distance is placed between the tangible life and the spiritual life for the purpose of connecting to God, something happens. And as surreal or preposterous as it sounds, that’s also why it’s not worth selling. It sells itself and yet come Monday it is once again a labor to slow down and make space for God. But I think before we start practice this afternoon, we’ll take 10 minutes and let the team make some space.

“In this question of truthfulness, what matters first and last is that a man’s whole being should be exposed, his whole evil laid bare in the sight of God. But sinful men do not like this sort of truthfulness, and they resist it with all their might. That is why they persecute it and crucify it…There is no truth towards Jesus without truth towards man…We cannot follow Christ unless we live in revealed truth before God and man.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, Chapter 11 on Truthfulness