On a Saturday morning I’m sitting across the table from my longtime friend, sipping coffee at our usual Panera-Bread haunt. We have to leave soon, so I ask how he’s doing with his wife, and in his relationship with Jesus. He pauses to collect himself, then skips over my first question to answer the second. “You know me, Rick, I’m always up and down with Jesus… Yeah, more down than up.” And then he squirms in his chair before confiding a secret I’ve always suspected—“Others experience God’s love, but I never have—not once.”
Jacob’s eyes contort, his head drops, and a silent grief hangs between us. I know my friend has loved God and his wife and his kids and his friends so well, for so long, so it’s whiplash to hear his confession. He feels like an outsider, not an insider, in God’s inner circle. He loves Jesus and yet can’t feel His love in return. And he has the look of a man condemned…
I stare at his face, two feet from mine, and see only his tortured eyes. And then I feel a prompting welling up inside… But if I say what Jesus is poking at me to say, will it violate the sacred space of his confessional? Is this courageous obedience or just hubris? I teeter on the edge…
Me: Jacob, I’d like to throw a rock in your pond… How old were you when your father died?
Jacob: I was 17, but he was sick for so long that I don’t remember having a normal relationship with him from 12 on.
Me: So, your dad was emotionally absent from your life at 12, and then physically absent at 17?
Jacob: Yes… Yes, I didn’t really have a dad growing up.
Me: You know, when young kids experience a trauma, they have to figure out how to survive. So a lot of kids shut down their soul—they sort of clench their fists and refuse to open them again to life. Because life is dangerous and predatory and unpredictable. You know my story, and this is exactly what I did. I got stuck in the place of my trauma. Is that what it felt like for you, too?
Jacob: (Silent, nodding his head, tears welling in his eyes.)
Me: (Pausing) I think the way we experience God’s love is through our vulnerability—it’s the hands and arms of a child extended in trust. I believe this is why Jesus says, “You must become like little children,” over and over. But what happens if a trauma makes it almost impossible for us to extend our hands to Him? What happens if we just can’t expose our vulnerability to a God who failed to protect our heart when it needed protecting?
Jacob: (Slowly) Well, I guess I’ve never really opened myself to Him—I can’t. I don’t know how…
Me: (Leaning forward) Jacob, I feel a prompting inside… I think Jesus wants you to know that He has seen your great courage over and over—you have cracked open your door to Him so many times. Yes, you close it again once you realize what you’ve done. But you can’t help yourself—you keep cracking that door open. And Jesus is there, waiting, and He walks through that door every time you crack it. I’m taking a shot here, but I think He wants you to know that He will always be on the other side of that door, and He’s not at all upset that you so quickly close it. He doesn’t care about that. He cares that, despite the fears that grip you, you continue to crack open your door, over and over. He’s well-pleased with your giant heart…
And then my friend Jacob starts to shake with emotion. He pushes back his chair and steps into the space between tables, opening his arms toward me… like a child. And we man-hug each other while he quietly sobs. And then he has to go—a friend is expecting him at his house to help him move. I have a class at the gym that’s about to start. We smile in the parking lot and go our separate ways…
The next day he sends me a text: “Rick, your words are rattling around in my head… Thank You.”
Life In the Desert
In my car shuttling between weekend errands, I’m listening to theologian Curtis Chang interview Jared Patrick Boyd on his Good Faith podcast—Boyd is a Vineyard pastor who lost his faith, then recovered it again after he decided to explore ancient monastic practices. You know, your typical evangelical story… Boyd is describing the new monastic order he and others have nurtured from a seedling—it’s called the OCL, or the Order of Common Life. It’s the road less-traveled for Jesus-followers who are hungering for a deeper way to live their life. Boyd shepherds the curious and the desperate as they explore this ordered way of life. In his role as their spiritual director, he always asks these postulants a favorite question: “When is the last time you felt the love of God?”
Of course, right away, I think of Jacob and our Panera confessional. I lean forward and grip the wheel. And Boyd explains that, very often, people have a hard time answering his question: “When I ask them [the question] they’re reaching for something that was months ago, or sometime last fall I remember having this sort of encounter of feeling loved by God,” he says. Months ago? What about those, like my friend, who simply can’t answer that question at all? I blurt out my response as if Boyd is sitting next to me: More people than we suspect have never, ever felt loved by God…
Social scientists have taken a crack at Boyd’s question—researchers at Arizona Christian University created a stir when they released the results of their American Worldview Inventory in early 2025. The study found that almost two-thirds of Americans (60%) either “don’t believe in God or that He affects their lives.” Of the 40 percent who do, only one out of five say they have “an intimate and interactive spiritual relationship with Him.” This means that roughly 8 percent of all Americans say they have a loving, experiential relationship with God.
So, we show up at church, read our Bible, sing our worship songs, and go to Panera Bread for coffee with our Christian friends. And we assume the people who are singing and reading and sipping coffee next to us have all experienced what we wish could sense, but can’t. We don’t feel an intimacy with God, and rarely sense any back-and-forth in our relationship with Jesus. But, surely, other people must…
If we must recover the child inside us to truly, finally, viscerally feel the love of God—then what is the path to recovery? We become like children, Jesus says, when we are re-born into a trusting relationship with Him. And our trust must be recovered the old-fashioned way, by experiencing and embracing the trustworthiness of the One who is intent on pursuing us. We must “taste and see” that He is good, because His goodness will romance us into greater intimacy. Our trust-healing begins, simply, by focusing (over and over) on the beauty and goodness of Jesus—lived out with conniving Pharisees, broken sinners, and confused disciples. Here is something a friend calls The Progression—I’ve posted it before, but it bears repeating here…
“Get to know Jesus well, because the more you know him, the more you’ll love him, and the more you love him, the more you’ll want to follow him, and the more you follow him, the more you’ll become like him, and the more you become like him, the more you become yourself.”
Rick Lawrence is Executive Director of Vibrant Faith—he created the new curriculum Following Jesus. He’s editor of the Jesus-Centered Bible and author of 40 books, including his new release Editing Jesus: Confronting the Distorted Faith of the American Church, The Suicide Solution, The Jesus-Centered Life and Jesus-Centered Daily. He hosts the podcast Paying Ridiculous Attention to Jesus.
