Encounter With Divine Love & The Headwaters of Soul Care

A Seed is Planted

In a humble upstairs apartment in Minneapolis, Minnesota something wonderful and unexpected happened to me. In a sense I was looking for it and in a sense I wasn’t. I was reading my Bible so I was searching for something but what I found, or what found me, was something I didn’t know I was searching for. 

It was 2008. My family, which at the time included my wife and our first of three sons, had just moved for a new ministry assignment. I was in my makeshift office on a four-season porch on the second floor of a charming green stucco home near the University of Minnesota. My Bible was open to Psalm 90:14: 

Satisfy us in the morning with your 

steadfast love,

that we may rejoice and be glad all

of our days.

It was a verse I was familiar with. I had meditated on it and prayed through it in the past. But on this night when my eyes scanned the words something happened in me. A film of familiarity was removed and the Spirit made the truth of that text come alive and touch something deep inside me. What struck like a gentle yet bright flash of light was the connection between being happy and the sense of being loved by God.

It’s hard to believe one can be loved the way God loves. Our desire to be known with abiding affection and deep commitment is at the core of who we are but we experience it so rarely, if at all. So we construct a thick layer of defenses and coping mechanisms to survive failures of love, our own and that of others. 

But there is a rich, steady, full, surging divine love that gently penetrates our defenses and coping strategies, satisfying our deepest longings. When we experience it, and the God from whom it radiates, we can face the brokenness in our lives and surrender to the One that comes near to forgives our sin (Acts 10:43), heal our wounds (1 Peter 2:24) and create beauty in us and with us we may not have thought possible (Isaiah 62).

That evening something happened that was as outwardly unimpressive as a little seed pressed into soft rich soil. It was simple and subtle. It did not come with fanfare or make any headlines. It came quietly, as wisdom that is taught in the secret heart (Psalm 51:6). But I experienced something profound that felt good yet could not be controlled. What happened in that moment would begin to mark my life but seeds don’t sprout immediately. This particular seed would take a long time to poke through the soil.

A Seed Sprouts

The pace of growth can be frustrating. The organic nature of spiritual formation and the mysterious untameable nature of God makes renewal more gut wrenching than I’d choose. Though the process can be slow and agonizing, it’s never on pause. The Spirit is always present and at work, even when His work is invisible and hidden beneath the soil. As Christian psychologist Curt Thompson has said, the Spirit was hovering over chaos and creating order in creation and He is still doing that kind of work in our lives today.

Around ten years later I felt uncomfortable about how I was showing up in the world. I had felt this before but there was a new strength to it. I had dreams and desires for a flourishing life, marriage, household and ministry but anxiety, doubt and fear were consistent obstacles. I felt stuck. I considered pursuing counseling but a mix of innocent naivety and sinful pride made me wonder if what I was carrying really warranted therapeutic intervention. I hesitated. For a long time.

Then I read Pete Sczarro’s book The Emotionally Healthy Leader. In it he recommended all pastors and leaders have a season of counseling, noting that unprocessed stuff in their lives has a trickle down effect that uniquely impacts others. This made sense to me. I had a sabbatical coming up and decided to make counseling a feature of this time. I rank this as one of the better decisions in my life. 

Weeks before my first session I was meditating on Scripture and again something deep inside me was opened up in a unique way to the love of God. This time it was Ephesians 3:14-19.

“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through is Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith - that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Chris that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

This seemed like a New Testament deepening of what I read in Psalm 90:14. I was struck again by the transformational impact of not just studying and understanding the love of God but having an encounter with it, an encounter with him, in the deepest parts of who we are. In the core of our soul. This was something I wanted and sensed I desperately needed. This “desperate desire” is what I carried in my heart when I first entered the counselor’s office in the summer of 2019. I didn’t expect and wasn’t entirely prepared for what would happen to me there.

In all but one or two of the dozen or so sessions that summer I didn’t just cry, I wept. Shoulder shrugging, I can’t talk, why is this happening and what is wrong with me kind of sobbing. The therapist was putting his finger on something I didn’t know was there. I was seen, known and understood in ways I realized I had been craving for all my life. I was undone, exposed, accepted and consoled. I was gently guided into a truer understanding of myself, my story and God. I realize now that in those moments I was having regular encounters with divine love.  

Here’s how David Benner puts it in his book, Surrender to Love (p 81-83):

“...although human beings can never offer perfect love, human love always carries enough of its source within it that it retains something of the healing and growth-inducing potential of divine love…Where love is, God is - for God is love and love is of God (1 John 4:7-8)...While human love can never bear the weight of our need for divine love, it can support transformation and teach us about divine love….Experiences of human love bring us therefore into an indirect encounter with divine love….Hints of unconditional love from humans make the possibility of absolutely unconditional divine love imaginable.”

That is what I experienced in the counselor's office. That is what I experienced in a second round of counseling four years later; when life overwhelmed me and brought me to the end of coping strategies and false self living so I could begin to find my true self. That is what I experienced when receiving spiritual direction a year later, learning to pay attention in fuller ways to God’s Spirit testifying in the inner workings of my spirit that I am his beloved child (Romans 8:16). 

Life is about learning to receive love from God as the beloved children that we are. These Scriptures, experiences and relationships have made this clear to me. Helping others encounter this love is at the core of what I hope happens to people through the work of Deeply Formed.