Towards the end of 2019 we had the privilege of spending three months as students on the Inheriting the Nations School on Great Barrier Island in New Zealand. The school’s location is idyllic, an island paradise that combines relative isolation with natural beauty; crystal clear seawater, wild dolphins, sea lions, orcas, penguins, other rare birdlife and of course New Zealand’s unique subtropical flora and fauna. The school itself was well executed with rich content, a wonderfully diverse student body, gifted speakers and mature leadership. Whilst the ingredients and facets of the school are basically the same for each person attending, Father meets and works in person’s heart in an utterly unique tailor-made fashion. It’s as though each of the 60+ students is attending a different school with unique experiences and outcomes. So how was it for us?

Nia

The past couple of years Father has been helping me to know and experience Him as my real Father. Only He is able to do that as growing up without a father I have no idea what was like to be fathered. During the Inheriting the Nations School, He helped me to see how independent I had been since a young age. I would see my widowed mother struggling to provide for me and my three siblings and I was determined not to become a burden or even to ask for anything unnecessary if I could look after it myself.

During the first month of the school on Great Barrier Island, Father asked me if I would let Him look after me. As you can guess I said ‘Of course!’ but then in my heart I had no idea what He really meant or what that would look like. Just a few days ago I started to journal and reflect on what happened during the school and suddenly His request made sense. I could see as I was reflecting that Father wanted to work through the school family to help me experience Him looking after me. There were so many different expressions of His love and care; someone making me coffee during most of the morning breaks, yummy lunches cooked with others during the weekends, company for swimming, walking and the list will goes on. Even on the ferry back to Auckland, someone said to me with a big smile ‘well Nia, it looks like things are coming easily to you’ and with that she handed me a magnum ice cream and a bottle of ginger beer!

At one point I ‘felt bad’ and began to think that perhaps I should buy and make my own coffee, fearing that once again I would be a burden and shouldn’t be dependent on others. Then I felt Father saying, ‘Nia, a little girl does not think that way, does she?’ I am touched and humbled by the love and kindness of His heart through those around me during our time in New Zealand. I have started to believe that I have a place in my Father’s heart – how special and loved we all are!!

Richard

Had I known in advance what these three months would entail then there’s at least a chance that I would never have wanted to go in the first place!

Over the last month I have reflected upon our time at the school and still don’t fully understand all the whys and wherefores of my personal struggles. Father has revealed to me how uncomfortable I continue to be in my own skin and with my own heart. Often, we have become so familiar with our coping mechanisms that we are practically blind to them – the abnormal and unhealthy has been normalised and justified. In my own life these defence mechanisms separate neatly into three categories; 1. Self-medication by means of an armoury of false comforts, 2. Distraction through the noise of social media, entertainment and general busyness, 3. Wallpapering over the holes and cracks in my self-worth, concealing unpalatable brokenness behind the camouflage of productivity, success and general got-it-togetherness. Each one of these three stand in apparent harmony with the other two. They function in twisted interdependence, passing among themselves the baton of responsibility for coping, surviving or building the ego. They defer to one another according to what is most needed at any particular moment in time.

Great Barrier Island’s geographical isolation means that it leans naturally towards silence, contemplation and reflection, it’s a place where a person cannot help but be confronted with themselves. Prior to this season I had never realized how addicted I was to noise and busyness; anything to avoid the silence, anything to avoid having to be stilled and quieted, anything to silence the nagging realisation of my own discomfort with myself. Overall, when I reflect on the three months my predominant feeling is still one of it having been a negative experience, albeit with many amazing highlights, but it has been sobering to recognise that what I thought was distaste for the school is actually distaste for my own company!

How did this all come about? Well you know those prayers that you pray when everything is sunshine and roses: “Father whatever it takes, however painful, whatever the cost…”? Well it turns out that He’s listening, carefully storing that request in his back pocket until the right time and place. For me Great Barrier Island was that time and place, and the process that began there continues to unfold. Perhaps what I’m describing sounds overly dramatic, depressingly negative or unhealthily self-absorbed? Allow me to allay those fears. Father has, and continues to be, simultaneously outstandingly gracious, beautifully wise and uncompromisingly firm. He continually draws me towards His embrace. It might be raw, painful and vulnerable but it’s real and in due course I know that it will also be liberating.

What I am realising is that the world in which I have functioned has been narcissistically miniscule. When our focus has been on building our own ego in a vain search for self-worth and identity, we live in a microscopic world that is only a speck when compared with true reality. There is an infinitely greater and supremely transcendent reality when we begin to explore our existence in God. Then our world, and indeed our hearts expand to be as big as He is.

Recently I heard the following: “We can spend our whole lives climbing the ladder of perceived success only to arrive at the top and discover that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall and that there’s nothing there.” When we find ourselves in these circumstances there is only one choice, to abandon our cause, embrace our bankruptcy and fall limply into the arms of the One who can carry us into a completely different expression of perceiving and living.

As Father gently exposes the extent and distastefulness of my ministerial, positional and relational ladder-climbing, its unpleasantness serves to highlight how intolerable it would be to remain forever deluded in such a hungry wilderness. Experiencing the loss of shallow illusion is the doorway into the real. In Luke 15 there are three parables of loss; the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost sons. In each case something which is possessed needs to be lost and then regained before it’s true value is realised and owned. The joy of the shepherd over finding the one sheep that was lost is exponentially greater than the sum of his joy for the ninety-nine that have been continually in his possession. It’s the mysterious paradox of loss precipitating gain, of death being the only avenue to true life. There is no doubt in my mind that this is a significant season of spiritual death, a valley of loss, a valley of letting go of the illusion of significance, of the false self, of the ego.

The false self does not draw breath in the space between me and God (who knows truth and lie completely), but in the space between me and other people. I nurture and establish my ego there, I put my faith in him there and then I project him onto my relationship with God. For surely if people love me in this realm, if people admire me here, then I can accept that God loves and admires me also. But God does not love me because I am good. Indeed even if a man hates his brother he’s a murderer in his heart, and likewise lust precipitates adultery. God doesn’t love me because I’m good, He loves me because He is good!

It’s time for all of my success and failure to lie down in the grave together. For Richard the Fatherheart Speaker and Revelator to meet Richard the Murderous Adulterer. It’s time for the Pharisee to meet the Tax Collector, for Dr Jackel to meet Mr Hyde, for the Older Brother to be introduced to the younger. It’s time for them to be embraced by divine death, for them to be buried together in a grave marked: ‘Here lies Richard who tried to be Everybody and was ultimately Nobody.’ It’s time to allow Father to lay me gently in the tomb of my illusionary existence, so that in due time He might call forth Richard His authentic child. In his book Abba’s Child, Brennan Manning notes that only our genuine inner self is the place of our experiential love relationship with our Abba, that our authentic inner child ‘is the doorway into the depths of union with God.’ My heart’s desire is to live here in the large open spaces of His reality… but only He can carry me to this place.

And finally…

As the sun sets on the 2019 Inheriting the Nations School the new dawn heralds the beginning of a new era. As we adventure on in 2020, for us all His promise is; “Fear no evil for I am with you. My rod and staff comfort you.”