52. Learning to Receive | Why is it so Hard to let God Love Me?

BUZZSPROUT EPISODE DESCRIPTION

I'm really good at giving. I'm really bad at receiving. And I've started to think those two things are more connected than I ever wanted to admit.

If you're the person who shows up for everyone and won't let anyone show up for you, this one's for us.

For a long time I called that humility. Look how low-maintenance I am, look how I don't burden anyone. But I've had to get honest: it isn't humility. It's control. When I'm the giver, I'm the strong one, the safe one, the one with something to offer. To receive, I have to be weak. In need. Empty-handed. And I'll do almost anything to avoid that, including, I think, with God.

This is part three of the "What God Doesn't Count" arc, and it's about the thing that might be harder than believing: receiving. We go slow through John 13, where Jesus kneels to wash Peter's feet and Peter recoils, "you shall never wash my feet." It looks like humility. Jesus treats it as a problem, and says something severe: unless I wash you, you have no part with me. Because Peter, like a lot of us, would rather serve Jesus than be served by Him.

With Gustavo Gutiérrez on spiritual poverty as the precondition for receiving, Henri Nouwen, the Harvard professor who had to let a man who couldn't speak minister to him, and Brennan Manning on becoming a pauper at the door of God's mercy, this episode teaches the text and lets it do what commentary can't. I can't fix this in you. I can't fully fix it in me. But God changes hearts.

You already know how to give. Let Him teach you the harder, holier thing.

Scripture: John 13:1-8, Matthew 5:3.

Share it with a giver who can't receive, leave a review, and follow the show for the finale of the arc.

This episode touches on self-worth and vulnerability with honesty and care.

Connect with us via our Instagram: @faithformed_pod

Email us any questions or comments to yourpursuitpodcast@gmail.com

Order your copy of my latest book, "The Purpose in the Pause", here

Learn more about me at www.justindbelt.com

Transcript

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I'm really good at giving. I'm really bad at receiving. And I started to think that those two things are more connected than I ever want to admit. Because let me show you what I mean. Because I bet some of y'all are about to feel completely seen. Okay? If you're hurting, I'll show up. I'll bring the meal, I'll make the call, I'll sit with you in the hospital, I'll pray over you, I'll carry what you're carrying if you'll let me. I am, and I say this without any pride at all, okay? I'm a giver. I understand that it's one of the truest things about me. But turn it around. Let me be the one who's hurting, right? Let me be the one who needs the meal or the call or the help. And watch what I do. I deflect, I minimize, I say I'm fine when I'm not, or the road answer, yeah, I'm okay, right? Uh somebody offers to help me, and I feel this instant discomfort, this itch to hand it back, to reverse the flow, to get myself as fast as humanly possible back into the position of the one giving instead of the one getting. And for a long time I told myself that that was humility, right? Like, look at how low maintenance Justin is. Look how I don't burden anybody. I never want to be a burden. But as I've gotten older, I've had to get honest. And here's what I think is actually going on underneath all of that humility bluster. It's control. Because when I'm the giver, I'm the strong one. When I have, but when I have to receive, then I have to be vulnerable and weak. I have to be in need. I have to let somebody else be strong for me. And I have to be seen in a position I can't manage or perform my way out of. And I don't like that. I don't I don't like it at all. I'm Justin Belt. This is Faith Formed. This is the podcast for the people who don't have it all together. We're trying to build a faith for the middle. And here's the confession that started this whole episode. I think I've been doing the same thing that I described above with God. I think I would rather serve Him than be served by Him. And I'm starting to see that a faith where I only ever give and never receive isn't actually the relationship that I think that it is. Today, part three of our arc, we're gonna we're gonna talk about the thing that might be harder than believing, receiving. And I want to warn you up front. I never promise in any of my podcasts to fix you, right? This isn't the, you know, I will try to fix you. No, we're not, I can't fix you. I can't even fully fix it in me, but I do believe that God can change a heart. So what we're gonna do is get this in front of him, and we're gonna let the text do what I can't. But before we get there, if you've been enjoying Faith Formed, if it has been speaking to something in you that has helped you find words that you can take to God and feel comfortable with it or uncomfortable with it. Either way, do me a favor and leave us a five-star review and rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, wherever you listen, uh, these serve as social proof for people who are looking for places that are having these kinds of conversations, these kinds of talks. It helps them to see that what was good for you might be good for them. So do that for me, and here we go. So I want to take you into a room, and I want you to just notice with me exactly what happens because I think it's one of the most quietly devastating scenes in the gospel, and I hadn't always thought of it this way, mainly because I've breezed through it because we do it like we do with all the scripture, right? We think that we already know it, so we don't need to closely read it, but I need you to closely regard it with me, and I want you to pay attention to what you notice, to what stands out to you as you're listening to what stands out to me. So here we are, John 13. It's the night before Jesus dies. He knows it. And John sets it up with this uh in verse one. He says, Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. So everything that's about to happen is love. Okay, notice that first. Everything that's about to happen is love, and that matters for what comes next. In verse 4, Jesus gets up from supper, he takes off his outer robe, he ties a towel around his waist, pours water into a basin, and begins to wash the disciples' feet. My first reaction is yuck. Because them jokers walk everywhere, so their toes are broken, busted, and disgusted. They they have to, you know, they had they don't have on their Air Jesus sandals, right? So it's just the dirty, stinking feet there, and Jesus begins to wash his feet. My again, my first inclination is yuck. But I need you to understand what's happening here. See, washing the feet is normally, traditionally, the job of the lowest servant in the house. Feet in that world were filthy, y'all, sandals and dust and animals and roads. Washing them was the task that no one wanted. That's why it was reserved for the least among them. And the Lord, Jesus, the teacher, the one they'd confessed as Messiah, gets down on the floor and starts doing it. Moving down the line, taking those dirty feet into his hands, one by one, washing them. And then he gets to Peter. And Peter, in truest Peter fashion, just can't take it. In verse 6, Peter says to him, Lord, are you going to wash my feet? And you can hear it in the question. There's there's this discomfort, there is this recoil, this uh this is so backwards, God. Like, what are you doing? And Jesus answers him in verse seven, you don't now understand what I am doing, but later you will understand. And Peter in verse eight says it flat out. He says, You shall never, never wash my feet. That's a strong word, never. And Peter's not being casual right here, he is outright refusing. And on the surface, I think we read that as you know, it looks so pious, right? It looks like reverence. Oh, the Lord God, you will never wash my feet because you were so holy, you were so high and lifted up, you will never wash my feet. I'm not worthy. You shouldn't be down there at my feet. On the surface, it looks like humility, but I want you to watch what Jesus says back. Because Jesus does not treat it as humility, Jesus treats it as a problem. Verse 8, Jesus answered him, If I do not wash you, then you will have no share with me, no part with me, no relationship with me. See, Jesus takes something basic that Peter says, thinking it's humility, and then he raises the stakes to the absolute maximum. He tells Peter that this, this right here, right? Letting me wash your feet, letting me, Jesus, your Messiah, serve you, letting me get down to the floor and do for you what you cannot do for yourself is not optional. If you won't let me do this for you, you will have no part with me at all, Peter. Now, my first thought here is that Jesus, why did why why did you feel the need to take it there? Like we're just talking about washing feet. Why did you have to escalate it so far? Because Jesus saw what was actually underneath what Peter was saying. Here's what was underneath it. Peter would rather serve than be served. See, Peter, like a lot of us, could handle a messiah who was high and lifted up, someone he could follow, someone he could fight for, someone who could he could work for, even die for. But what he could not handle was a messiah who would kneel down and wash his dirty feet. Because to be washed, Peter has to do nothing. He has to just sit there and allow it to happen. He has to be the one who receives. He has to be the one in need, the one who can't reciprocate in the moment, the one who has to let Jesus be low so that he, Peter, can be served. And everything in Peter rebels against that because it strips him of the one position he's comfortable in. The giver, the doer, the strong one. See, you shall never wash my feet is not humility. It's Peter needing to stay in a position of control in the relationship. It's Peter saying, Listen, I'll follow you, I'll serve you, I'll do anything for you, but do not, Jesus, do not put me in a position of needing something from you that I cannot earn or return. Don't you dare make me the empty-handed one in this dynamic. And Jesus says, if you won't be the empty-handed one, you can't be with me at all. Because being with me starts, get this, with receiving what you cannot earn or return. So let me bring in a voice here who understands this all the way down. Gustavo Gutierrez. He is a theologian from Peru. He spent his life among the poor, and he he wrote about what the Beatitude means. Blessed are the poor in spirit. And he says something that I think we all need to hear. He said that spiritual poverty is the precondition for being able to receive the word of God. It's the daily recognition of our humble dependence on God. The precondition, not the add-on at the end, not the upgrade package. It is the doorway that we have to enter into. What Gutierrez is saying is that you cannot receive from God with full hands. You cannot receive anything with full hands. Receiving requires an open, empty, upturned hand. And that is the exact posture that Peter and I, and maybe even you, cannot stand to be caught in. Because being poor in spirit means admitting you're a pauper at the door. It means you come to God with nothing to offer, with nothing to trade, nothing to barter, nothing that puts him in your debt, nothing that puts you in a controlling, uh, in a controlling uh position in the relationship. And for those of us who have built our whole identity on being the one with something to offer that feels like death, which now clues us in as to why Jesus was so serious about it. See, he wasn't trying to humiliate Peter, he's trying to get him to assume the posture, the only posture, in which grace can actually be received. Empty-handed, on the receiving end, poor in spirit, because a full hand can serve God all day long and still never receive one thing from Him. And a relationship where you only ever give is not a relationship, it's a transaction that keeps you safely in control. There is a voice that we use on this podcast a lot who really lived this exact struggle out loud, which is why I use him so much. Um and I find it one of the most helpful stories in the world for people like us who like to give but don't necessarily like to be the one receiving. Henry Nowen. He's appeared throughout this arc and throughout this podcast. And I'm bringing him back because I think when I was looking to try to find someone who could speak to this, I couldn't find anyone whose words spoke to this probably more, more aptly. Uh because he he had it himself. He had this particular wound. Now he hein was a brilliant man. He he taught at Notre Dame, at Yale, at Harvard. He was the giver, right? The teacher, the one at the front of the room with something to offer. He had success, intellect, output, the whole thing. In every visible way, he was the strong one. And late in his life, he left all of it and went to live at a community called Larch. I probably butchered that, I'm sorry. But it was a place for people with severe intellectual and physical disabilities. And there he was assigned to care for a young man named Adam. Now, Adam couldn't speak, he couldn't move on his own, he couldn't dress or feed himself. He could do, by the world's measure, he couldn't do anything. And Newen's job was to serve him, to bathe him, to feed him, to care for his body. And here's what wrecked Newen in the best way. He went in to care for Adam as the giver, the caregiver, the strong one serving the weak one, right? And he slowly realized that Adam was instead ministering to him. That this man who could do nothing, who could only receive, was teaching Newen the thing his whole brilliant career never could. That your worth and my worth is not in what you produce. That you are the beloved, not because of what you give, but simply because of who you are. Oh, that's good. Newen had to let a man who could do nothing for him minister to him, and it undid his whole identity as the giver and rebuilt it as the beloved. Newen said that the thing that distinguishes us as a human is not the mind, it's the heart. It's the ability to give and receive love, to give and receive, both in tandem. He had spent a lifetime perfecting the giving. But it was Adam, this young man who could do nothing, who taught him the receiving. And Newman came out of it saying that letting go of control and learning to receive care was one of the most important spiritual transformations of his life. The Harvard professor had to be served by the man who couldn't speak before he could understand what he'd been preaching for decades. And quite simply, I think that's the work. That's what God is after in us as the givers. Now, I want to be honest about why this is so hard and why understanding it like we're doing right now is not going to be enough to fix it. Because I promise you, I'm not trying to fix you. That's not my job. And I meant that. I'm not, it is not within my capacity as a human to fix you, another human. That gift is reserved for God, however he chooses to do it. But what I'm doing is trying to call attention to an area in your life, to an area in my life where God might be saying it's time for you to submit this to me so that I can do the fixing and the healing. Now, here's the gist of all of this. You can hear everything I just said, agree with it, and still walk out and deflect the next kind word somebody offers you. I do it all the time. Oh Justin, uh, you you sang so well, oh glory to God. Thank you for listening. Oh, there are podcast episodes. Great, oh, thank you for listening. Oh, Justin, you just preached so well, oh, glory to God. Huh? See, it's because the inability to receive doesn't live in your head. It lives somewhere deeper. In fact, it lives in a wound. And in the place that learned a long time ago, that you're only safe when you're the one giving, that you're only worthy when uh you're the one producing and only okay when you're not a burden. I catch my wife catches me all the time when she's asking me how she can serve me. And I find myself saying sometimes, even out loud, but not even realizing it, I don't want to be a burden to you all. So, whatever you need to do, do it, and I'll find a way to accommodate that. That's not even what she's asking. And you don't you don't dismantle that with a good argument. That kind of thinking, that kind of subconscious building took years to build, and it comes down just as slowly. Brennan Manning, who knew Grace better than almost anyone because he needed it more than almost anyone, said it like this. He said, When we acknowledge that we are paupers at the door of God's mercy, then God can make something beautiful of us. Paupers at the door is the image, right? Not the benefactor who shows up to God's house with a trunk full of things to offer, but the pauper. And I, that is an image of ourselves that most of us will outright, outright reject. God, I have a job, I have a good job, God, I have a car, I have a house to live in. I am not, by any means, by any definition, God, I am not a pauper, and it is that thinking that handicaps us. It is that feeling that handicaps us, it is that privilege that handicaps us. What when God is asking us to be the pauper at the door, He is asking us to be the one at the door with empty hands and nothing to give and nothing to trade, who can do nothing but receive what's handed to them. So when God looks at us, we say, God, I have a car. God is like, what is your car to me? We say, God, I have a job, I have a good job. He's like, what is your good job to me? When you say, God, my bank account is flush, he said, What is your flush bank account to me who has all of this? And everything in us fights that image because we've spent our lives trying to be anything but the pauper. Because we look at the pauper and we think of the person on the side of the road with the cardboard sign saying, Can you help me? But here's what Manning understood it's only at the door, empty handed, that you receive. The mercy. The benefactor with something to give never gets it because the benefactor never stops long enough to receive. But you have to put your hands down. You have to stop offering God your service for one second and let him serve you. You have to let him wash your feet. And I think for some of us, God has been standing there for a long time on the floor with the basin and the towel waiting. And we keep saying what Peter said. You'll never wash my feet. I'll serve you. I'll work for you. I'll give you everything. I'll sing worship. I'll preach. I'll work in the children's ministry. I'll go on every missions trip. I'll serve on the church board. I'll serve on the church council. I'll be the minister in the marketplace. I'll read all the books. I'll say all the prayers. I'll fast all the fasts. I'll worship all the worship God. I'll give you everything. Just don't make me be the one who needs. And God keeps saying back gently, if you won't let me wash you, you will have no part with me. And it's not because he's threatening you. And it's not because he doesn't love you, but it's because he knows that the entire relationship lives on the other side of your open hands. And he loves you. Get me, hear me, family. He loves you too much to let you miss it while you stay busy serving him from a safe distance. So if I can't fix this in you and you can't think your way out of it, then what do you actually do? You practice. You don't grasp receiving. Right? You you rehearse it in small, ordinary, humbling reps, and you let God do the deep work in you while you do the small work in front of you. Let me show you what that actually looks like because this is the part that you can start tomorrow. It looks like letting someone help you and not deflecting it. The next time somebody offers to do something for you and everything in you goes to reach for it. Oh no, no, I'm fine. Don't worry about it. Don't. This week, this week at work, I was trying to learn how to do a VLOOKUP. It is spreadsheet witchcraft. And I'm not an Excel person and I'm in this new job. I'm trying to learn everything about it. And I'm at my desk. I spent the whole day using Chat GPT and Jim and I trying to learn VLOOKUP, and I couldn't get it right, and I was frustrated. And our media specialist came in and I asked her, and she did it so quick. And then she said, You want me to do the other one for you? I said, No, no, no, I want to figure out how to do it. But what I'm telling you, what I should have done is let her. Let them do it for you. Sit in the comfort, the discomfort of being served, and don't reverse it. That's a rep. That's a route going down that is helping you to open your empty hands. And let me add, as they're doing it for you, don't you dare put yourself down and say, I'm a failure because I couldn't figure it out for myself. I'm a failure because I couldn't do it for myself. And how do I know that you'll do it because I do it? As the specialist was doing it and I saw how easy she did it, I said, man, you should have been able to do that yourself, bro. How are you gonna do this job, bro? You can't, you couldn't even figure this out for yourself. How you gonna do it? Don't do that. But what else does it look like? It looks like receiving a compliment without batting it away. Somebody says something kind about you and your reflexes to deflect, to minimize, to immediately hand it back with one about them. I have an example for that one too. As I'm recording this earlier in the day, I was doing a photo shoot and a parent said, you know, you were a gift to your old school. Your positivity, your encouragement was missing. And I said, No, they they didn't need me. I wasn't visible last year. They they didn't miss me. Don't do that. Just take it. Say thank you and let the compliment land. You'd be amazed how physically hard that is for a person who can't receive, and how much it trains the muscle. Just receive the compliment. It looks like letting God love you in prayer without immediately turning it into a to-do list. And this one, I really, yeah. In the mornings when I wake up, I uh grab a cup of water and I open up my Bible. And what I try to do before I start reading is just be quiet for a little bit and just invite God into my day. Um say a little prayer. I don't, I and I ask him for understanding and reading his word. Um, but as I'm recording this, I'm realizing something. I'll get quiet with God and I'll feel him drawing near, and my instant reflex is to convert it into a task. Okay, so what do you want me to understand about this text? What's the assignment? Do you want me to turn this into content or is this just for me? Should I grab my journal or or or this or that or this or that? How do I repay this? And I think that God is often saying, nothing, man. No, I don't want you to do anything. In this moment, I just want to love you. Can you just receive that love for one minute without turning it into work? Can you let me wash your feet, Justin? Without immediately grabbing the basin to wash mine back. Ugh. Man, this is landing with me. In real time. It's landing. Sometimes God will want you to do something. Sometimes God just wants to love you. Sometimes God just wants to love you in the moment. Can you just let him? Can you can you just let him love you? In that moment. Without being in such a hurry to declare your love for him and your devotion to him and how deeply you want to read his word and the revelation that you want to get out of it and all the things and all the things and all the things and all the things. Can you just be quiet? And let him love you. Yeah, that's that is hitting me in a different way right now. And I pray that it hits you too. But it also looks like telling God the truth about your empty hands. It means coming to him as the pauper at the door on purpose in prayer. Not with your resume of service, but with your need. God, I have nothing to offer you today. I'm not bringing you my productivity. I'm just coming with empty hands to receive whatever you have for me. And that prayer is agony for a giver. But it's also the doorway that God is asking us to enter through. And none of these will feel natural. All of them are going to feel like giving something up because, in truth, they they are. You're giving up control. You're giving up a safe position. You're giving up, uh, yeah, you're you're you're giving up your hierarchical status. You're letting yourself go from being the one with the power to the one in need. But every time you do it, you're practicing the posture where grace actually gets received. And you're letting the God who loves you get past the wall of your service and into the real place where the real love happens, where the real encounter happens, where we are actually changed instead of pretending like we are. So here's your charge. And it's a strange one, and this episode's a little shorter than normal. But I think it's important because for once, I'm not going to tell you to go do something. I'm going to tell you to go receive something. Put your hands down. Stop offering God your service for long enough to let him serve you. When he kneels in front of you with the basin, don't do what Peter did. Don't recoil and call it humility. Because Jesus already told us what it really is. It's staying in control and it costs you your part with him. So let him wash you. Let yourself be the empty-handed one, the pauper at the door, the poor in spirit who has nothing to offer and everything to receive. Practice it in small things this week. The help you won't deflect, the kind word you won't bat away, the prayer where you bring your need instead of your resume. And when it feels like death to be exposed in that dependent, remember it's the exact death that opens into the relationship you've been missing while you served him from a distance. You already know how to give. For the one who deflects every kind word, every offer of help. For the one who won't call when they're in need because they don't want to appear to be the one in need. So they suffer in silence because they they they just they don't want to be the one that has to make that phone call or send that text or send that email. So they want to figure it out on them by themselves. God, would you gently show them, show them, Father? It isn't humility, it's a wall. It's a need to be in control, and it is crippling them. And would you help them this week to just once let it in? For the one who would rather serve you than be served by you. The Peter in all of us who keeps saying, You'll never wash my feet, kneel in front of them anyway, God. Be patient with the recoil. Be patient with the look of utter shock on our faces and bring them to the place where they can finally let you do for them what they cannot do for themselves. Let them see the full measure of your grace. For the one whose hands are so full of everything they're offering you that they have no room to receive anything from you, would you give them the courage to just lay it all down? To come to your door as the pauper, to be, maybe for the first time, poor in spirit, and to find out that's exactly where the kingdom was the whole time. And for all of us, God, teach us to receive. We know how to give. Churches taught us how to give, sermons have taught us how to give, songs have taught us how to give. We've made an identity out of it, we've made a theology out of it, we've built churches and platforms and ministries and thrones out of giving. And we've hidden from you inside of it. God teach us to open our hands. Teach us to let you love us before we do a single thing to earn it. Teach us to be washed. In Jesus' name. Amen. Alright. So if you're a giver who can't receive, this one was me and you in the same boat. So let's let's actually do the work. Yeah. Send this episode to another giver you know, the person who shows up for everyone and won't let anyone show up for them. They need to hear that their inability to receive isn't a virtue, it's a wall. And there's something better on the other side of it for them. And if this show keeps meeting you in an honest place, help someone else find it, like I said at the beginning. Leave a rating and a review, um, because it helps the next person. I I would love, I would love your five-star rating and review. Then follow or subscribe because we have one more episode in this arc, and it's the payoff. Because once you learn to receive God's love for yourself, something finally breaks open, and you become free to love other people in a way you could never when you were running on empty. That's next week. Two words as yourself. So do me a favor this week, put your hands down. Let Jesus wash your feet. I'll see you next time. Be blessed.