June 2024

Being on the Respond Step with God

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Being on the Respond Step with God

By Sharon Khoo

Looking at the Respond step, we see that there are many elements there for the purpose of our growth in Christ, for the influence of the Gospel. The Cross & Combi-Shape are 2 shapes that stand out, along with the key words ‘to grow’, ‘Influence for the gospel’, ‘C.H.A.N.G.E.’, Therapeutic Map, and tools like Trialogue & Tennis.

I remember a time when all the above items were real and present for me, as I was responding to God, in my worst pain and suffering. I was suffering from Clinical Depression, beneath underwater in the square, and needed some help and deliverance to say the least! I was a self-Centred victim (right side, bottom, square), not yet a God-Centred Victor (left side). 

That was the space and time in my life that I felt like I had no choice but to turn to the Cross – my first response to God. I called out to God in my psychological overwhelm of pain and despair, and found myself met by the Presence, Person and Provision of Jesus Himself (some wonderful ‘Ps’ or gifts that we find at the Cross), during my inner healing and deliverance sessions with my pastoral counselor whom I saw for many years in my healing journey. 

This Holy space of meeting Jesus in the underbelly of my suffering, can be likened to being at the Home position for our heart, right beside the cross in the Combi-shape. Through this experiential knowledge of God, I found that He comes down to our lowest levels of suffering, doesn’t just meet us there as Immanuel, but responds to us at our deepest, darkest pain here as we respond to Him too. Just like Jesus talks about rescuing the one lost (or broken & vulnerable) sheep in Luke 15:4-7. Or in Psalm 23:4, where though we walk through the darkest valley, our Good Shepherd is with us, comforting us with His rod & staff.

Here, in this home position, I played tennis & Trialogue regularly with God and Jesus. Wrestling with Them over tough inevitable questions I needed answers to (albeit with much blind rage and ignorance) like, “Why did you do this to me (& my F.O.O.) God?”, “How could you be good and still allow such bad and harm, evil and violence come my way against my will, as a child who is vulnerable no less?”, and, “What were you thinking, letting your own son die when you could slay the devil & end all this madness & evil Yourself instead? Are you mad?”

Well, God always has His own wisdom & response to ours, especially when we are throwing them unkindly, wrongly or blindly at Him, to say the least. And I thank HIM that He was able to more than graciously forgive me for my serious shortcomings, love me in my severely broken state & naïveté as a child who not only needed to heal but to be properly educated in my faith about God & grow up in Christlike maturity (as is a purpose of the Respond step).

In my or any of our initial poor response to Him, I Thank God, for His better one. For not condemning me but responding back in great kindness, understanding, wisdom, undeserved grace and unconditional love as a Father who is Bigger, Better, Wiser & Kinder. He gave me the answers I needed, convicted me that He understood where I was coming from and that He was really ok. And more than ok, He was going to help me be ok too. He is and always will be good, to all of us as humanity, despite our broken, sinful nature & the evil nature of the enemy.

I thank Jesus too, for being the Wounded Healer & Best Friend I needed, identifying with all of my flaws, pain, brokenness and iniquities, saving me too, from my own kind of painful insanity. Needless to say, our God who is more than able, responded back in love to me at this R step, with all the answers He knew I needed, with time playing more trialogue and tennis with Him over some years. That included His answers to my earlier questions. It was finally not just a one-way conversation I previously had as a child & teen with God, but a 2-way, even three-way connection, with the presence of my counselor too, helping the responding, healing and growth process – much like the nature of the triangle. 

At the end of traveling this therapeutic map of having quality pastoral & professional counseling, inner healing, deliverance and more (I chose to receive clinical counseling and therapy such as seeing a Psychologist and Psychiatrist too, which God worked for my eventual good of wholistic healing. And is one wholistic therapeutic map I thoroughly recommend and encourage my own clients who desire to overcome mental illness to take in my pastoral counseling practice), I found myself transformed. God delivered me out of deep waters. 

I moved from the left self-Centred side to the right God-Centred side of the square, to be above water level with & in Christ. ‘C.H.A.N.G.E.’ happened. I was … 

Challenged to be more like Christ daily, Heightened in my knowledge & understanding of why God allows suffering and sickness in the world, 

Affirmed in many countless ways by other healthy people & God in the area of overcoming evil with good (Romans 12:21), New Ways of being more healthy & whole, not just happier, such as having healthy boundaries & imitating Christ, 

Growth in character was a definite in this process of responding to God, and I was Empowered to forgive, love again, and walk out of the dark fog of depression & bitterness, after 22 years of bearing with & healing from this unwanted dis-ease. 

Fast forward 10 years later & only by His great grace, I thank God that I am more than an Overcomer & Victor in Christ (Romans 8:37). My humbled response to God out of an overwhelmingly grateful & transformed heart, is that I choose to love & live for Him daily. To put God first and foremost in my life, and to obey His commandments, especially His greatest one (Mark 13:30-31); with full devotion & commitment to be more like His son. To love and serve others too, with a desire to make Him known, by sharing the good that He is and offers to us all, while we still live life on earth, this other side of Heaven. As His Missionary, Pastoral Counselor, guest speaker and the author of the book, ‘Hope in Despair’ – God’s story of how He got me out of Clinical Depression, Complex Trauma and Abuse – I am responding to God by using these roles to be an influence for the Gospel by sharing with others the good news & hope of Christ, in the midst of mental illness & suffering. All because He responded to me, and I too, was desperate enough to respond to God. Truly, God is worthy of our response to love, honor and worship Him, even in deepest pain and darkest suffering. (Job’s response to God & Jesus’ submission to His Father before, during & at the cross, comes to mind here too as further greater examples.) 

So, the ‘Respond to God’ step? It is definitely a broken but beautiful place to be in. And though everyone’s state of being at this step might be similar or different depending on how you are responding to God and what you are coming to Him for, so much powerful and positive C.H.A.N.G.E. can happen here, with Jesus. God responds to us when we turn to Him, no matter what state we’re in. But we too, need to make our choice if we want to respond to Him or not. 

In closing, perhaps one question we can take away from this is – What might you find relevant, to Grow or Respond in today, in your response to God towards greater healing or wholeness, at this time of your life? 

God, the wonderfully good author & perfecter of your faith and life bless you as you ponder, wonder, wrestle & respond, with Jesus. He loves & cares for you.

To God be the Glory.

Responding to God

Devotion / By /

Responding to God

Gill Vriend

I appreciate the shapes that sit on the respond step of the Christian Wholeness Framework: the circles, the cross, the combined cross and square, the triangle. They illustrate the diversity of ways by which our Creator, His Son and the Holy Spirit reach down into our world and touch us where we are. Demonstrating Immanuel.

Looking at the shapes, I imagined them jumping off the page, dynamic and multi dimensional, just as He is multi dimensional and His world is without end. The ways He responds to humankind, and we to Him, are numerous. Looking at the inner circles of the mind and the heart, I wondered what they would look like when fully inhabited by the Spirit of God. What would it be like to have the ‘mind of Christ’, always thinking His thoughts from a Kingdom perspective? We are instructed to ‘take every thought captive’ and “demolish strongholds which set themselves up against the knowledge of God’ (2 Corinthians 10:5), yet in itself this is only a precurser to receiving and living out of a Kingdom mindset.

I then thought how it would look if this also applied to our mood, that we feel His mood and emotions about situations we are in.  In reading John 11:1-44, the raising of Lazarus from the dead, I am struck by two things. First, it is clear in the early verses that Jesus knew ahead of time what He, in obedience to what His Father had told Him, would raise Lazarus from death to life. He appears almost impatient with his disciples for not understanding this! Why then, I wondered, was he so overcome by emotion on approaching the tomb that He wept? What was He responding to? Was it, perhaps, grief at identifying with the pain of separation which death means for human beings, something which was never part of God’s original design? And why, in verse 38, was he ‘deeply moved’, ‘deeply troubled’, or in one translation ‘angry in His spirit’? I do not know, but postulate that His spirit could have been troubled, stirred, angry over satan’s seeming ‘victory’ that death was now firmly established in the God’s world, the very opposite of the life that ran through Jesus’ veins.

Yesterday I spent part of the day running errands, preparing a wodge of documents for a visit to Thai immigration. I was consciously ‘practicing the presence of Jesus’, imagining Him being with me as I collected documents from here and there in the city. We were chatting and joking, passing the time like two old friends in a relaxed unhurried way. When I got home I realized I had left my cell phone somewhere, probably in the bank in a big shopping mall. Sharp intake of breath. Oh no! What if…? ‘Stay with me. Breathe’, His whisper came. Back to the shopping mall, Jesus and me. I had an inner calm, because I sensed from Jesus it would be OK, and ,to be fair, also because my phone was old (and  undesirable) and people in North Thailand are usually very honest. And sure enough, all was well. Afterwards I sensed Him laughing with me, not at me, at the relief of retrieving my phone. No condemnation, no reprimand. That was His response, and it silenced my inner critic.

With situations that are more serious and more threatening, I find it harder to ground myself in Christ centred responses as a default setting. Fear is a powerful force to be reckoned with, the polar opposite of love, with both human and spiritual dimensions. ( 2 Tim 1:7) At times like this I often ‘engage other help’, and have a trusted person to pray with me to break the oppression of fear, and be freed to receive both His peace and His thoughts, the ‘mind of Christ’, in order to know to pray and to act from a God centred perspective once more. Recently I have discovered that taking communion, the physical act of symbolically taking His body and blood into my body, and all that it represents, to be extremely powerful in evicting fear and negativity and bringing peace and love.

So, me in Him, and Him in me. These are some of the ways I have found myself responding to God recently. How about you?