137 What If God Actually Likes You?

Cyd and Geoff continue their Lent/wilderness theme by challenging common images of God as stern, aloof, or judgmental and emphasizing instead that God’s face is turned toward us with joy. 

Using the Aaronic blessing (Numbers 6:22–27), they describe two dynamics: “amplification of joy” (God’s face shining upon us) and “returning to joy” (God turning toward us to bring peace), illustrated through parent-infant eye contact and attunement that builds resilience. Join them to remember that God actually likes you!

Dive deeper in our new book, Landscapes of the Soul: How the Science and Spirituality of Attachment Can Move You into Confident Faith, Courage, and Connection, and learn about our trainings and other resources at embodiedfaith.life.

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Transcript

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What If God Actually Likes You?

Cyd Holsclaw: Welcome back to the Attaching to God podcast, and for this season, Geoff and I are looking at the key concepts and practices around becoming more deeply attached to God, so that whatever landscape our souls might be in, we can follow the Good Shepherd back to pastures of joy and peace. In this episode today, we are focusing on God's face turning toward us with joy.

Rather than with judgment. So as you listen to this today, we hope that you'll be encouraged, that God is truly glad to be with you and that his face actually does shine upon you.

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah, last time we talked about what do our souls really desire, and we talked about the joy set before Jesus, being, the reason he endured [00:01:00] the cross and being this motivation. And today, we'll. We're gonna continue looking at this, theme of, of wilderness and Lent, but we really wanna remember that God's face has turned toward us in joy rather than in judgment.

Too often during Lent, maybe we try to focus really hard on like following Jesus and getting really serious about discipleship. Or maybe we just have this regular. Difficult times in life. and we often have this image of God as being like stern, or maybe being aloof or being judgey judgmental. But is God really like that tortoise?

And the short answer is no. No, that is not the case. God's face is full of joy. Toward us. But many times because of our past family lives or maybe our faith formation and faith journeys, we have this idea that is not the case. That God's face has not turned toward joy. So we are gonna focus on that and talk about returning to joy and amplifying joy in God's [00:02:00] presence.

Cyd Holsclaw: And as always, we want to start with a few minutes to turn on our relational circuitry, warm up our brains, get us into connection mode, and we're gonna. Start doing that by just taking a few minutes to think of some things that we are especially grateful for today or things that we're receiving as a gift from God.

So Geoff , go for it.

Geoff Holsclaw: All right, I recently had a birthday. I got a little birthday money, and all of those books are arriving today, so I got four poetry books. Two books of Greek Epic poetry. One book of, TS Elliot in the Wasteland. I know I'm so nerdy. And then the last one is, a book of poetry by Rilke. So I'm really excited they're gonna show up at any point.

And then, uh, I will disappear from you and all the lives of the people I love. So I could be in my book world.

Cyd Holsclaw: Okay, but what I

Geoff Holsclaw: that [00:03:00] last part not so much,

Cyd Holsclaw: what I especially enjoy about your, reading epics lately and your poetry hobby is that I can always tell when you've been reading epics because you will take whatever is going on in our lives and you will turn it into this very dramatic, poetic language. I can't think of an example right now, but I can always tell it's you'll walk out and be like.

The young man emerged from the cavern with this, desire. I don't, whatever, I can't imitate it. But then

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah, she'll, she'll be like,

Cyd Holsclaw: reading the Iliad, haven't you?

Geoff Holsclaw: yeah. like our son will, finish cooking dinner and he is dinner's ready. And I'll come in and then I'll have some long statement about my journey from the office all the way to the kitchen and how arduous it was. And they just rolled their eyes at me.

Cyd Holsclaw: we don't roll our eyes at you. We just. Find a particular kind of delight in who you are.

Geoff Holsclaw: so is that [00:04:00] your gratitude moment? Is me being waxing poetic in

Cyd Holsclaw: It could be, I mean, out of all the hobbies you could have in your life, reading epic poetry and turning on these sort of dramatic moments is not a bad one, not a bad one at all.

Geoff Holsclaw: All right.

Cyd Holsclaw: today I think I'm feeling especially grateful. We have actually had an extraordinary amount of sun these last couple days, and in my corner office here, which is supposed to be a dining room, I have two windows, one on two different walls, and one of them happens to be facing, East. direction right east. And so I get morning sun over here and then that one is south. And so I get all day sun. And if you've ever lived in a gray place for any length of time, you understand what happens when the sun comes out. And so I just feel like I'm really grateful for the sunshine and because it especially connects to what we are talking about today.

'cause we're talking about shining today.

Geoff Holsclaw: All [00:05:00] right.

Cyd Holsclaw: So that's just a little hint for what's coming. But for all of you who are listening, Geoff and I have both shared something that we are feeling grateful for today. So I'd like to give you a moment to consider your last couple of days or your last week, and to think what is something that you are noticing is bringing you some gratitude, some appreciation.

What are you feeling grateful for? I would encourage you even just to, if you're in a place where you could speak that out loud, you could say it out loud or just offer it, as a thank you and appreciation to the God who created all things. Amen. Let's move forward. Yeah.

Geoff Holsclaw: All right, [00:06:00] We started off with this idea that many of us have a stern face of God. Uh, when we think of God, when we imagine God, or just when we think of God in some fashion, that God is, is judging us, or has a stern voice or is fault finding is watching us. And that this idea that God is always watching us is like terrifying, rather than comforting.

And so we wanted to start off just by talking a little bit like, well, where does that kind of. Come from. Why do people have that? I know we could tell kind of a story about, well, you know, there's kind of family environments that kind of teach and train people into that. Uh, so certainly how our parents reacted to us when we did good and bad things, when we, uh, acted accordingly or did not.

we kind of get all these different kind of experiences and

Cyd Holsclaw: and not just parents, but it's people, neighbors, people in the community, people at church, like people at school. there's, I just, I have a really distinct memory of being in a [00:07:00] library and talking too loud and like being shushed very vigorously by a very mean looking old man, right?

So it doesn't always have to be your parents, it could just be the world around you. You have responses to adults who are looking at you without, joy in who you are, right?

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah. Which, as we are in this, I, World, In the West at least, where we have cities and suburbs, most of these people are total strangers to us, right? So we don't have this backlog of positive relationships, that then, the stranger in the library who shushes us sternly, we could be like, oh, but he loves me.

Right? You know, you're just like, oh, he hates me. So we live in this kind of anonymous world where we're running into strangers all the time. I forget, I read this one, of course, I read this one poem, and it was like. In the past, we'd meet a stranger in the forest [00:08:00] and be terrified. And now we meet someone we know in the cities and we're delighted, right?

Because we're, we're not used to running into people we know. So anyhow, okay, that was a little off topic,

Cyd Holsclaw: I'm not quite sure I fully understood that. Say that again.

Geoff Holsclaw: you know, before there were zillions of people everywhere, you wouldn't run into people out in the forest. Like, you wouldn't run into people. So ru Yeah. It's so unusual to run into somebody and then, you know, and then they'd be a stranger or something like that. But in the, in, in the cities you're running into strangers all the time.

it's like everybody's a stranger. And so our kind

Cyd Holsclaw: it's such a surprise when you run into someone you know in the city. Is that the contrast? Okay, now I get it.

Geoff Holsclaw: Whereas before you knew everybody, you lived in a small village, you were related to half the people in your village and they all hopefully in a sense, delighted in you on some level. okay, so this is all family formation, but we also have a long kind of like faith formation story too, for those who are raised in and [00:09:00] around the church.

So what are some of the factors, and I'll throw this to you, Sid, that kind of lead to this idea that God is grumpy, mad, or angry with us.

Cyd Holsclaw: we can have a lot of ideas. I can talk about what I grew up with was even, maybe even less that God was actually grumpy. It's just I don't even know that I thought of God having a fear. Face honestly, because it was like, you know, I was so steeped in the stories of the Old Testament of God showing up in a pillar of cloud and showing up in flames on a mountain and, you know, showing up in, in these ways that felt very impersonal.

and then when he was showing up, it was usually with this huge demonstration of power. know, swallowing people up with the earth or, whole groups of people being yeah, just being disappeared right by God. And so I think it was very much of this scary, God is scary, um, and I'm not sure God is personal.

So like God doesn't [00:10:00] really necessarily have a mean face, but he doesn't really care at all about. People is what I grew up with of God cares about his reputation and he cares about his glory and he cares about people worshiping him properly, but he doesn't really care about people in general, is what I felt growing up

Geoff Holsclaw: well, in the way I was raised in a fundamentalist bible, Baptist, you know, is a real strong commitment to like doing your devotions and it's interesting that, that's the word is. Doing your devotions? Well, it's the devotions because like your quiet time or your Bible reading or your prayers are called devotions.

'cause you're devoting your life to God, right? So this, as it's just like so heavy and so weighty. So, uh, I know in some traditions it kinda gets softened too. Well, did you have a quiet time with God? But really it was more the heavy handed performance. understanding of your spirituality being the things you have to do for God.

So I have to serve God with my [00:11:00] life. I have to give to God with my money. and then I have to offer my time in the morning as a devotion, as like a sacrifice. and in one sense, all those things are really good and we should be pursuing those, but the way that it was given to me was, in a very performance kind of way, such that if I didn't perform in the way I was supposed to, then it's like, well, God.

Is at best, kind of like our frustrated coach who's like, you can do better and you need to practice harder. Or it's like some really angry, judge who's like, wow, maybe I should throw him into hell. So that, I think that kind of lends itself toward, some of these things, at least for me.

Cyd Holsclaw: Yeah, for sure. all those stories that you hear, and I always think about that a lot when I'm, when I am volunteering in this little toddler classroom at church, thinking about how do we frame Bible stories in such a way that like without meaning to, we. Tell stories too soon that kids aren't really ready to hear or they don't really have like this overarching understanding of who God is.

And so this isolated little [00:12:00] story just makes God sound really scary and terrifying. And so I think we do a, we try really hard at our church to do this in a way that like the, constant message is that God loves you. and that's everything is in that context. But I just remember some stories that I heard as a kid that I don't think that was framed in God loves you context.

It was more like. We're just telling these stories because that's the next story in the Bible curriculum and we're not really talking about what this means or who God is in light of this. and so I think those kinds of things can be really confusing too. If you don't have an understanding of the whole story of scripture, it can be really confusing to hear just these isolated stories in the middle of it.

Geoff Holsclaw: So true, so as a news flash though, that's why we wrote our book, does God really like me? Because we're trying to tell the entire story of scripture from this idea that God is offering his presence. God is offering his joyful presence and delight to us. So you can pick that up wherever you get books, but if you're [00:13:00] curious about that whole story of joy and how these individual stories fit into it.

Please check that out. But let's move to this concept and we didn't, we have a little, you know, show notes, a little outline, but, uh, we didn't divide up who was talking about what on this part. So do you want to talk about the amplifying joy or the returning to joy?

Cyd Holsclaw: I can talk about Ampl. you talk about amplifying joy because you are the joy amplifier in our household. No, I'm serious. Your role as a dad was always more of the joy, amplifier, and I think my role as a mom was more of the returning to joy. So you do the amplifying? No, you do both. I think we both did

Geoff Holsclaw: no, We both do both, but that does make a lot of sense. you set up the, blessing though. This comes from Aaron's, prayer, the blessing that

Cyd Holsclaw: about the blessing in the last episode. I didn't talk about it in this one yet. Oh, you want me to set up the blessing?

Okay. This is how it happens, folks. Live on the

Geoff Holsclaw: You're getting the sausage, how it's made.

Cyd Holsclaw: [00:14:00] Yeah, so the onic blessing, which means the blessing that Aaron was speaking over the god's people. And this is, the nation of Israel has just been set free from captivity.

They've been given the covenant and God is you can almost think of Israel like an infant nation, and God is. Developing them as a people who are living in relationship with him. And he says to Aaron, this is the blessing that I want you to speak over the people. And so regularly, these are the words that the people are hearing spoken over them.

And so there's two big parts of it that we wanna focus on. One is the joy amplifying part, and one is the returning to joy part. So the amplifying part is the, the Lord. Bless you and keep you, the Lord. Make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. That's the amplification part. So you want me to just stop there or you want me to do the whole thing? And then the returning to joy part that if you're not watching on YouTube, Geoff just gave me a little circle with his finger. Like, you do it, That's like our, anyway, the [00:15:00] Joy Amp, the returning to joy part is the, The Lord turn his face toward you and be gracious to you and give you peace.

And so that, that's the, did I quote that right? I

Geoff Holsclaw: No, you did. I just pulled up. So that is, uh, sorry we didn't give everybody the reference before. That is number 6 22 through 27. and Cyd is mostly kind of reading from the new international version there. but we're kind of taking, the neuroscience. And kind of using it to understand scripture, but really it's scripture that has kind of always known these truths and these realities.

And so what's this idea of joy amplification? when children, when you have a little baby. We have, uh, neighbors with a newborn, a three month old, uh, baby. And so really they start almost at that time, but certainly at about like seven to nine months, children [00:16:00] get really good at finding other people's eyes, especially their parents' eyes.

And then they start playing games with their parents. and that game really is just locking eyes. And, what happens is neurologically is when you lock eye, when a little child locks eyes with their parent, and then it's also accompanied by a big smile from the parent is then the child begins to smile and the child's like heart rate will go up.

This infant will get really energized. It's really this shining face of the parent is energizing the child until they almost become so overwhelmed. They get overstimulated, we could say, and then the children look away and then it kind of breaks the spell. It breaks the enchantment of the child and the parent and the joy kind of dissipates and they kind of.

Fade back into a, a place of peace, but it happens really quick. And then all of a sudden when they're like, oh, I feel better, then they like, where'd that eye go? I want that back. And then they, they do that again. So they're, [00:17:00] they're really, uh, and the parents usually delight in this too. And then that grows into things like peekaboo, tug of war.

It just develops into different games. But it's this idea that a parent and a child have these joy. Amplifying interactions that is actually expanding the nervous system and the integrative nervous system within the child. To have more capacity for these joyful interactions and that this is a hugely important aspect of development for children and la In the last episode, we talked about shifting from an understanding of deficit to abundance, and this really is, part of that is, is being a good enough.

Parent to children isn't just about caring for the deficits, it's making sure they're fed enough and they have, they're warm enough or they're clothed properly, or that they have enough sleep or something like that. But actually inputting these joy amplifying moments, expands their nervous system, helps 'em integrate, create interpersonal kind of connections that they wouldn't have if you just cared for their bodily needs without [00:18:00] interacting with them in these different kind of ways.

Okay. So that was the kind of. The concepts. Is there a question or something that, uh, you want to ask before we link

Cyd Holsclaw: No, I'm

Geoff Holsclaw: the blessing

Cyd Holsclaw: like that, when we talk about the amplifying of joy, it's like you're turning up the volume and this is what's so great about babies is that like they don't have to politely contain them or their joy. And so I just love when you

Geoff Holsclaw: giggle and laugh and

Cyd Holsclaw: body wiggles and squeals and giggles and, that's just, it's like this absolutely unchecked.

Joy, whereas adults I think we always have to try to contain it or tamp it down 'cause we don't wanna make a scene or make a fool out of ourselves. But babies, they are like, they're just amplifying it all over the place. And I just think it's such a, yeah,

Geoff Holsclaw: It's two way. It's that the parents received a delight in the delight that they're giving to their children and it keeps going. And we could talk about that a lot more. But when we look at, uh, numbers, uh, six, and this one is from. [00:19:00] Verse 25, but verse 24 is, uh, the Lord bless you and keep you.

Uh, verse 25 is the Lord make his face shine upon you and to be gracious to you. So this idea that God is making his face shine upon you really should be thought of as that beaming face of joy that just creates in us all this grace. And love and delight that's in us and that we're receiving, all of that delight from God.

And so the beginning of kind of the whole relationship with God and his people, Israel, is this idea that God is making his face to shine upon them. And then you get verses, like in Psalm. Uh, 67 that talks about God's shining face. You also get Psalm 1611, which I just love. Uh, we should all probably memorize this Psalm, uh, 1611 is you.

You show me the path of life in your presence is fullness of joy. That's how, um, most translations [00:20:00] translate it. But that word for presence usually means is actually literally the before your face. so the verse could be, read this, way. You show me the paths of life before your face is the fullness of joy.

And I just love that. and that's really what God wants to offer us. So this is the joy amplifying aspect of God's face before us.

Cyd Holsclaw: It's so cool to even like, think of God like looking for us and wanting to make joyful eye contact with us like a parent does with a newborn of like that, that wanting to delight in us, always having his face shining upon us and amplifying the joy. So cool. Yeah. So then we also need to talk about the returning to joy, right?

Turning his face toward us. And so that second half of the blessing is after it's the Lord. You know, may the Lord's face shine upon you. There's also this, the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace. And that has to do with like when we're [00:21:00] upset or when we're. Dysregulated, right? Or when a baby has a wet diaper or they're hungry or something like that, it's like the parent might be doing something else at the moment, but then when they hear the child or they notice the child is in distress, they'll turn back to the child with a smile.

And I'm like, go, oh, is your diaper dirty? Let's get, let's take care of that. And so it's this. The child is in distress and the parent turns toward them and offers them, reconnection, offers them attunement, offers them with again, right? There's joy again. And so God does that for us too. Not only does he amplify joy, but he also turns toward us when we are in distress.

To help us return to that relationship of joy. And that's where we've talked, we talked last time too about that sort of building capacity or building resilience of going between connection and protection. And that's what this does for us too, is that when we return to joy with God, that builds and increases our capacity to be able to [00:22:00] handle distress and to be able to tolerate it because we know that God is going to turn his face toward us in the midst of it and return to joy with us.

Geoff Holsclaw: And so often in the Psalms, when you're reading the Psalms, uh, it'll, the psalmist will cry out, like, remember me Lord, or Turn to me God. And it's really that, it's that, that idea of. Like children, as adults, we're asking for God, hey, like, I need help. I need you to be here with me. I need you to take care of the situation.

I need you to heal me. I need you to deliver me from those who are oppressing me. And so there's this, you know, this call for comfort, this call for God to come and do something. And that's really built into this blessing, is that the Lord promises that he will turn his face toward us in our time of distress.

And then what's the result of that is it brings us. Peace is that peace. Now we can return to the joy, which is kind of experienced as that peace when we kind of come out of that distress.

Cyd Holsclaw: [00:23:00] So I'm just thinking if you grew up in such a place where you didn't have this understanding of God, all of this sounds pretty farfetched and hard to believe. And so there one more time. I'll just say, Geoff , that's why Geoff and I cared enough to write a book. Does God really like me? really showing you all through scripture that God has two priorities.

He wants to be with you, and he wants you to partner with him in his, uh, in his desire to, to. To recreate or to repair the whole world. Um, so just a thought there, but as a way of closing, I just wanna, offer again a moment, um, as a practice. You know, we've been doing sort of an examine, uh, as part of this sort of linten season.

So here's another way to do an examine, and that is just to reflect back on your day today. And just think of any time where you saw a face that was smiling, even if it was. Like if you live alone and if you didn't see a lot of people today, even if it was just [00:24:00] on a screen even. Um, but just seeing a smile anywhere and seeing the face of delight.

And if you don't see a face of delight during the day, how might you actually, Give yourself the opportunity to see a face of delight tomorrow. Even looking at pictures of people smiling can be really good for your brain. and then looking and thinking about when God sees me, that's what his face looks like.

Um, so just giving a moment yourself, a moment for that and just again, sort of savoring that joy and building into the joy. And then as we close, uh, Geoff , you wanna talk about what we're gonna do on the next episode.

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah, we're gonna try to make a little bit more practical turn and kind of contrast this idea that God wants to amplify our joy in a doom scrolling world. And so how can we connect God's joy when we're getting all these dopamine hits through all these other less. Joyful, less [00:25:00] fulfilling, less transformative, or rather they are forming us in a certain way.

please check that out. don't miss it. Like subscribe and review, our episode, so you're sure to get that. You can also find us on Substack. If you go into the show notes, you can find links to all that stuff.

Cyd Holsclaw: And in the meantime, the Lord make his face. The Lord bless you and keep you. And the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace. And remember, he's always glad to be with you. Amen.