Chapter 1 — Loving God
Gary Thomas tells of a doctor who prescribed penicillin for an ailment that, as another physician put it, no doctor trained in the past thirty years would treat that way. That doctor apparently knew one or two medicines and gave the same one for almost everything. The church makes the same mistake. Over and over, it hands every Christian the same prescription: “You want to grow as a Christian? All you have to do is develop a quiet time and come to church every weekend.”
The quiet time became a staple of discipleship in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It usually meant thirty to sixty minutes of worship, prayer, Bible study, and a closing prayer. It helps a lot of people. But others have kept at it for years and admit it feels more like an obligation than a delight. Even good routines go stale. You might love a certain food, but you wouldn’t want to eat it every day. You might love a certain running route, but you wouldn’t want to run it at the same speed every time.
Just getting out of a routine can bring new life. Some years ago, Thomas broke his wrist badly enough to need surgery, and it knocked him and his wife, Lisa, out of their routine. They took walks almost every day. They shopped together. They answered email together, because at first he couldn’t type. For a while, Lisa even helped him get dressed. Out of their routine, they found a deeper and newer love. The romance had always been there. It had just been buried under always doing the same thing.
Faith works the same way. Quiet times help, but for many people they aren’t enough. Other parts of the spiritual life lie dormant. So why should everybody be expected to love God the same way? God wants to know the real you, not a caricature of what somebody else wants you to be. He made you with a certain spiritual temperament, and he wants your worship according to the way he made you. Jesus accepted the worship of Peter’s mother-in-law as she served him. But he didn’t force Mary, the sister of Martha, to worship that way. Mary was allowed to worship in silence at his feet.
There is a limit, though. It’s neither wise nor scriptural to pursue God apart from the community of faith. Our personal ways of loving God have to be joined to worship with the whole church.
People in the Bible worshiped the same God in many ways. Abraham built altars everywhere he went. Moses and Elijah confronted evil head-on. David celebrated God with enthusiastic worship. Mordecai loved God by caring for the orphaned Esther. And Mary of Bethany sat at Jesus’ feet. Church history shows the same range. Roman Catholic worship centered on the altar. Luther raised up the pulpit and the preaching of Scripture. Calvinists loved God by changing society. Anabaptists sat quietly, waiting for the Spirit to speak through his people. And the Orthodox filled worship with bells, incense, and color. All of them were trying to love God. Some of their differences came from theology, but some came from how they liked to worship.
That’s what a sacred pathway is. Put simply, it’s the way we relate to God and draw near to him. Most of us naturally lean toward one, and that’s our main spiritual temperament. There are nine of them. Naturalists would rather pray beside a river than in any building. Sensates want worship full of sights, sounds, and smells. Traditionalists are fed by rituals, symbols, and sacrifice. Ascetics want to be left alone to pray in silence and simplicity. Activists see worship as standing against evil. Caregivers serve God by serving others. Enthusiasts come alive with celebration. Let them clap, shout “Amen!” and dance, and that’s all they ask. Contemplatives want to love God with the deepest love they can. And intellectuals feel closest to God when they first understand something new about him. Maybe you already see yourself in one or two of these. Before looking at each one, it helps to ask what finding yours is really for.
Chapter 2 — Where Is Your Gethsemane?
Knowing your pathway doesn’t lock you into it. Mature Christians often show many of the nine temperaments, and Jesus is an example of every one. Whatever your main temperament, you can learn a lot from how other people meet God. And the goal isn’t to become absorbed in yourself. It’s to feed your soul so you can know God in a new way, love him with every cell of your being, and then reach out to others.
Jesus had gone to the garden of Gethsemane many times to meet with his Father, gain strength, and get his marching orders. Long before the week of his death, it was his place of refuge. That’s why he went there to prepare for what was coming. No one else will ever face a moment like that. But he left an example. When you need to hear from God, where do you go? For some, it’s a garden or a nearby forest. Others prefer a sanctuary, or a musical instrument in their hands. Where is your Gethsemane?
Picture a father with two daughters, one outgoing and one quiet. Few things would hurt him more than hearing that either one thought she had to do the same things with him that her sister does. Each relationship is its own joy. What makes us think God is any different?
If you’re in a spiritual slump, you may need a change in your spiritual diet. If you can’t seem to leave one particular sin, the answer may be simple. You don’t know how to be fed by God the way he made you, so you go looking for spiritual junk food somewhere else. Finding fulfillment in God is the most powerful antidote to any sin.
Still, a pathway doesn’t excuse anyone from the whole of faith. Jesus said to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. The intellectual isn’t excused from adoring God, and the contemplative isn’t excused from wrong beliefs about him. So how do we keep our love for God fresh through every season of life? We spend time with him. And once we see the many ways Christians have done that, we’ll have more ideas than we need. The first of those ways leads outdoors.
Chapter 3 — Naturalists: Loving God Outdoors
Where we worship shapes how we worship. Naturalists want to leave the padded pews for a cathedral God himself built: the outdoors. Any place with a few trees, a stream, or just an open sky will do. The Bible was meant to be read outside, since so many of its pictures come from nature. When we lock ourselves inside, we leave part of God’s creation, and part of our understanding, outside.
Many of God’s appearances in the Old Testament happened in the wild. He met Hagar in the desert, Abraham on a mountain, Jacob at a river crossing, and Moses at a burning bush. Jesus moved to a town by the lake and often taught in the countryside. And when God made a paradise for Adam and Eve, he didn’t build them a palace. He walked with them in a garden. Today, we’ve moved baptism from the river to a tub behind the pulpit.
Nature helps us see God more clearly. In 1998, seventy-seven-year-old John Glenn went back to space and was almost at once overwhelmed by God’s presence. “To look out at this kind of creation,” he said in a news conference from space, “to not believe in God is to me impossible.” That shouldn’t surprise us. “The heavens declare the glory of God,” says Psalm 19.
Sometimes we don’t need a change. We just need rest, and there’s no better place for it than outside. In the middle of a busy ministry, Jesus often went off to lonely places to pray. To meet God outdoors, first make room: time, quiet, and some distance from people. Then look closely at the shape of a rock, a single tree, a whole forest. God’s beauty is too big for one form. It fills an entire world with wonder.
Naturalists face two temptations. The first is treating anything “received” on a walk as a message from God instead of advice to test against the Bible. The second is pantheism, the belief that nature itself is God. Picture the difference this way. A mother misses her daughter, who just left for college. She walks into her daughter’s room, breathes in her scent, and lets her eyes linger on the posters and the few clothes left behind. Her daughter isn’t in the room, but the room reminds her that her daughter is.
Nature isn’t God, but every time we’re surrounded by it, it tells us that God is. Naturalists meet God through the world he made. The next pathway meets him through the senses he made.
Chapter 4 — Sensates: Loving God with the Senses
Some Christians are moved most by worship that fills the five senses. When we reduce worship to agreeing with ideas, they’re left with a stunted, muted faith. But God made our senses. Enjoying them was his idea, not Satan’s. Many of us grew up thinking that silence and plainness meant reverence. Yet in Scripture, God often shows up loud and full of color.
Ezekiel sees flashing lightning and a throne of sapphire. He hears wings like rushing waters, and he eats a scroll that tastes sweet. Afterward, he sits stunned for seven days. When Jesus appears to John in Revelation, his eyes are like blazing fire and his face is like the sun, and John falls at his feet as though dead. Truth matters. But we’re told to love God with our heart as well as our mind.
Each sense can open a way to God. Luther believed Scripture was meant to be heard more than read, and science has backed him up: our minds are more active when we hear it read aloud. God told Aaron to burn sweet incense every morning, and in Revelation, incense still rises to God with the prayers of the saints. Incense won’t wipe out a single sin. It isn’t a way to win God’s favor. It’s a way to help us pray.
Touch speaks too. One Lent, Thomas carried a nail in his pocket. Every time he felt it press into his leg, it reminded him of Jesus’ suffering and called him to pray. As a college student, he once offered his whole body to God, touching each part as he prayed. He touched his hands and feet: “Whenever I reach out, I want to reach out in love.” He touched his lips: “Whatever I speak, let it be the truth.”
Sight may move us most of all. Henri Nouwen had surely read the story of the prodigal son countless times. But once Rembrandt’s painting of it captured him, the parable pierced his heart with new passion. When God set up Israel’s worship, he gifted craftsmen to work in gold, silver, and fine linen. To God, beauty mattered. Even taste has a place. Jesus called himself the bread of life, so an ordinary meal can become a way to love him.
Sensates have their own dangers. Our emotions can soar with the music, and we can mistake a stirring feeling for a real commitment. Beautiful things can steal our hearts from the only One worthy of worship. Sensates draw near to God through what they see, hear, and touch. Traditionalists draw near through practices the church has kept for centuries.
Chapter 5 — Traditionalists: Loving God through Ritual and Symbol
Traditionalists are fed by the historic side of faith: rituals, symbols, sacraments, and sacrifice. They tend to live a disciplined faith, with regular church attendance, tithing, and keeping the Sabbath. Some people see them as legalists. But for all our suspicion of religious practices, God invented many of them, and at times he commanded them.
Abram built an altar everywhere God met him. When God later set up Israel’s worship, he didn’t reject ritual. He redirected it. And when two of Aaron’s sons offered “unauthorized fire,” God took their lives. He knows that how we treat symbols often shows how we treat him. If we’re flippant toward symbols, we’re often flippant toward what they stand for. Jesus went to the synagogue every Sabbath, as was his custom. Even Paul, the champion of grace, prayed by the river on the Sabbath.
Ritual makes order out of chaos. What’s too vast and shapeless, we handle in smaller pieces. The church calendar does this with the year. Advent says there’s a time to wait, Lent a time to repent, Easter a time to celebrate, and Pentecost a time to go out and serve. A prayer rule does it with the day. New Christians need more guidance than “just tell God what’s on your heart.” Could you set aside five minutes in the morning, five at noon, and five around dinner to meet God in prayer?
Symbols help with one of the biggest problems in the Christian life: a poor memory. How many times have you been moved by a sermon, only to forget it days later? God told the Israelites to sew tassels with a blue cord on their clothes, so every time they saw them, they’d remember his commands. Some traditions keep a person’s baptism cloth and use it to cover the body at death. It’s a beautiful picture: to be buried in clothes that proclaim the hope of baptism.
Sacrifice is the third piece. Sadly, we’re a culture that celebrates Mardi Gras but rarely gets around to Lent. God doesn’t need our chocolate or our roast beef. But sometimes we need to deny ourselves something to appreciate what really matters. Fasting doesn’t earn favor with God, but he can use it to discipline our demanding hearts.
The danger is religion without a relationship. The boy Samuel served in the temple, yet Scripture says he “did not yet know the Lord.” Jesus warned that empty religion makes us like whitewashed tombs, beautiful outside but full of dead men’s bones. And people tend to treat a practice as sacred just because it’s always been done, even when no one remembers why. Traditionalists find God in shared, structured practice. Ascetics find him by stripping everything away.
Chapter 6 — Ascetics: Loving God in Solitude and Simplicity
Ascetics want nothing more than to be left alone in prayer. Take away the liturgy, the pictures, and the noise of the world, and let them pray in silence and simplicity. They’re uncomfortable anywhere that keeps them from “listening to the quiet.” Jesus had this side too. Before his public ministry, he spent forty days alone, fasting. And he went back to solitude at hard moments.
This pathway has three parts: solitude, austerity, and strictness. Solitude comes first. An ascetic will sneak in a few moments alone even at a party. In those moments, colors get brighter, truth gets clearer, and reality loses its fog. Without time alone, ascetics feel like they’ve lost their anchor. A busy parent may not be able to get away, but what matters is a sense of apartness. One mother feels closest to God when the kids are in bed and the house is dark. If the kids won’t settle down, she goes into the bathroom, turns on the faucet to cover the noise, and prays there.
Strictness is easy to misread. Picture a man who starts giving part of his income to his church, goes to services a few times a week, and tells strangers about God. The world might call him a religious fanatic. Now picture a man making payments on a diamond ring, spending his weekends on dates, and reading a woman’s letters over and over. The world would just say he’s in love. Ascetics are strict only because they want to save a big part of their lives for their passionate pursuit of God. G. K. Chesterton wrote that Francis of Assisi “devoured fasting as a man devours food” and “plunged after poverty as men have dug madly for gold.” And true ascetics are strict with themselves but gentle with others.
Ascetics can practice being still. Try staying silent for just a few hours, and you’ll see how distracted you’ve become. At first you may hate the quiet, but most of us grow fond of it. Fasting shows the same thing, and it can go beyond food to TV, desserts, or anything that’s become a habit. Even work counts. Jesus was a common laborer for 90 percent of his life, so hard work done in the right spirit can be worship.
The danger is making faith all about ourselves. Through the prophet Zechariah, God asked a people who had fasted for years, “Was it really for me that you fasted?” Jesus’ times alone were followed by public ministry. Our need for renewal has to be balanced with our call to reach others. That call to reach out, and to push back against evil, is where activists live.
Chapter 7 — Activists: Loving God through Confrontation
Activists see worship as standing against evil and calling sinners to repentance. They often treat church as a place to recharge their batteries so they can go back out and fight injustice. Some take up social causes and some take up evangelism, but both feel at home in confrontation. Think of Moses, Elijah, and Peter, men whose courage challenges us and whose weaknesses encourage us.
No one needs to be offensive or obnoxious. But some people have chosen to hate God, and anyone who stands with God will be hated too. We can’t serve God faithfully and expect his enemies to like us.
What matters most is the motive. True activists “live for God and for his love alone.” Activism that grows out of love for God pleases him as much as a contemplative’s prayer. Confrontation for its own sake feeds a divisive spirit. Many activists find walking prayer helpful. An evangelist might walk around a city block, praying silently for the people who live there.
Activists face real temptations. One is thinking that the holier they get, the less they should put up with sinners. Another is ambition, which is often a fight for control and makes fertile ground for lust. A third is elitism. Once, David and his men chased down raiders who had carried off their families. Some of his men were too exhausted to go on and stayed behind. After the victory, the fighters refused to share the plunder with them. David stepped in. God, not their own strength, had given them the victory, so everyone would share. Activists love God by taking on the evil in the world. Caregivers love him by meeting the needs of the people around them.
Chapter 8 — Caregivers: Loving God by Loving Others
Caregivers serve God by serving others. They often say they see Christ in the poor and needy, and their faith grows as they spend time with people. What would wear most of us down actually recharges them.
Mordecai is a good example. He raised his orphaned cousin Esther and uncovered a plot against the king. But he was no people-pleaser. He refused to bow to the powerful Haman. When serving people and serving God came into conflict, he chose God. After Israel was saved, he didn’t build a monument to himself. He set up a yearly festival where people gave gifts to each other and to the poor. First an orphan, then a king, then a nation, then the poor: Mordecai was always looking after others.
Jesus had a more important mission than anyone who has ever lived, and he still stopped to care for a sick, hungry, unruly crowd. Nobody is so important that they can excuse themselves from practical help. John asks how the love of God can be in anyone who sees a brother in need and has no pity on him. And Ezekiel says Sodom’s gravest sin was that she was “arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.”
There’s no limit to the ways to care. You could “adopt” a prisoner, work in a soup kitchen, fix someone’s car, or watch the kids of some tired parents. Steve Sjogren suggests handing out cold drinks in rush-hour traffic or shoveling a neighbor’s driveway. Caring for others is a powerful picture of the gospel in action. It costs something. We pass through the pain of sacrifice before we feel the joy of obedience.
Caregivers face two temptations. One is judging Christians who serve God in other ways. The other is neglecting home. Paul told Timothy that anyone who doesn’t provide for their own family “has denied the faith.” If we truly love God, we’ll be content to care for those at home first. Caregivers find God in the hard work of serving. Enthusiasts find him in celebration.
Chapter 9 — Enthusiasts: Loving God with Mystery and Celebration
Excitement and mystery are the lifeblood of enthusiasts. They’re cheerleaders for God and the Christian life. They don’t just want to know truths. They want to feel them and be moved by them. If their hearts aren’t stirred, if they don’t experience God’s power, something is missing.
Mystery is part of it. Many Christians have heard from God in a dream. It gave them direction, encouragement, or a rebuke, and their faith grew stronger. God spoke through dreams to Jacob, Joseph, and Daniel. He’s always pursuing us, even while we sleep. But the moment we seek dreams for their own sake, we’ve slipped into circus spirituality. Still, it makes little sense to throw out something useful just because it can be abused.
Celebration runs all through Scripture. Israel’s Feast of Tabernacles lasted seven days, and the people were commanded to rejoice. David danced before the ark of the covenant. But celebration still needs reverence. When the ark was being brought back to Israel, the air was full of harps, cymbals, and trumpets. Then the ark rocked, and a man named Uzzah, forgetting what he was carrying, reached out and touched it. He died on the spot. In the middle of a celebration, it’s easy to forget how awesome God is. Without reverence, celebration turns into shallow triviality.
Enthusiasts also celebrate God by making things with the life he’s given them. Building a business, writing a poem, or planting a garden can be far more than a hobby. It can be real worship.
Feelings come and go. Enthusiasts shouldn’t apologize for enjoying them, but they shouldn’t depend on them either. Most of us don’t celebrate God one-tenth as much as he deserves. We tend to believe in God without expecting him to move. Enthusiasts have a precious gift. May they never stop celebrating and never stop believing, even in the darkest night. Enthusiasts meet God in noise and joy. Contemplatives meet him in quiet love.
Chapter 10 — Contemplatives: Loving God through Adoration
Contemplatives call God their lover, and their favorite passages may come from the Song of Songs. Their focus isn’t mainly on serving God or doing great things for him. They want to love him with the purest, deepest love they can imagine. Almost every Christian knows Mary of Bethany, who sat at Jesus’ feet and was praised by him for it. If you love that story and feel a kinship with Mary, you may be a contemplative.
Contemplatives remind us that God doesn’t want obedient but passionless servants. He wants a love so strong it burns through every other tie. To get there, clear out whatever chokes your desire for God. It doesn’t have to be sin. Busyness alone will kill real contemplation.
One old practice is praying through the stations of the cross. You walk in your mind through Jesus’ last hours, from his sentence of death to his burial in the tomb. At each point, you pause and picture the truth of Scripture.
Contemplatives should watch out for “spiritual gluttony,” seeking the feelings instead of God. But they also remind us of a startling fact. There’s one thing each Christian can do that nobody else can: give God our own personal love. God can raise up plenty of evangelists and teachers. But no spouse, pastor, or coworker can love God for you. Only you can give him that love, and he wants it very much.
One marriage counselor describes a situation that comes up again and again. The wife is unhappy, and the husband can’t see why. He lists everything he does for her. He’s holding down two or three jobs, building a new house, and buying her everything. But she quietly replies, “If only he would stop for a few minutes and give me himself!” Sometimes it seems God watches us rushing around doing good and says the same thing: if only they would stop for a few minutes and give me themselves. Contemplatives give God their hearts. Intellectuals give him their minds.
Chapter 11 — Intellectuals: Loving God with the Mind
Intellectuals need their minds stirred before their hearts come alive. They may be studying, or arguing about, topics like predestination or infant baptism. For them, faith is something to understand as much as to experience. They often feel closest to God when they first grasp something new about him.
Proverbs tells us to search for understanding “as for hidden treasure.” At twelve, Jesus was found in the temple discussing the law. He knew the mind had to be changed along with the heart. And what we believe about God affects how we serve him, just as what we believe about a person affects how we treat them. Yet Dorothy Sayers gave a blunt verdict: not one person in a hundred has the faintest notion what the church teaches about God or about Jesus Christ.
Think how much stronger you’d be if you picked one topic a year to study in depth. The church would be far stronger if we worked a little harder at developing the minds God gave us. A good place to start is church history, biblical studies, theology, ethics, and apologetics, along with the great creeds. The goal is for our actions, thoughts, and beliefs to match Christ by the time we die. That won’t happen by accident. But we have a great teacher in the Holy Spirit and a reliable guide in the Bible.
The main danger for intellectuals is pride. Paul told Timothy to stay away from “foolish and stupid arguments” and to gently teach those who disagree. The mark of a Christian is love and grace, not showing off what you know. Someone with a beautiful voice can still be obnoxious if they sing at the wrong times. And someone with a brilliant mind can still offend if they don’t learn the right time and place to engage others. With all nine pathways laid out, the last step is to put what you’ve learned to work.
Chapter 12 — Tending the Garden of the Soul
Knowing your strongest tendencies and your main temperament gives you what you need to build a real plan for spiritual growth. It’s like tending a garden. If you tend it well, you’ll have plenty of food to feed others. If you give it only a passing glance, you may have just enough to feed yourself. And if you neglect it completely, you’ll get so hungry you’ll become a “consumer” Christian, feeding off of others.
We were made to love God. Each of us stands before an open plot of land. God will scour heaven and earth to give us what we need to plant and keep a beautiful garden of love, closeness, and fellowship with him. Not a second of our lives passes without God thinking about how to turn our hearts toward him. Not one single second. The almost unbelievable joy is that you can enjoy a relationship with God that he will have with no one else. And God eagerly, passionately longs for that relationship to begin.