WITH - General Questions

[Admin]

1. Which of the four popular postures (Life OVER, UNDER, FROM and FOR God) best describe how you relate to God?

  Has this always been the case?

  Can you think of seasons in your life when you related to God differently?

2. Which posture do you think best describes the way the Wesley community relates to God?

[Becca Johnstone]

1. I think I am a little bit of all of them. I definitely notice patterns of thinking of habits of the life under God posture that just comes from bad habits and lack of understanding of God's character. They have definitely changed throughout different seasons of my life. High school was definitely a life from God posture. I just went to him to ask for material needs. Sometimes i find myself falling into that now too. Especially when i am not constantly in the word.

2. I think the posture that best describes the Wesley body would be life FOR God. I don't think this is purposeful but i think especially in the last year we have become so focused on what God is asking us to do and how to do it best that we lost the relational part of it. I think i felt that especially on the staff this past year. But i don't know if that's true for the general Wesley body.

[Billie Anne]

1. Which of the four popular postures (Life OVER, UNDER, FROM and FOR God) best describe how you relate to God?
I think my thought processes would most fall into the life over God pattern. I find myself asking questions like "what is the right way_____ to read the Bible, or spend time with God, or just live life in general" - which ends up leading me to look for general principles to follow and using the Bible as a manual instead of as a revelation of who God is. I can 100% see myself as Moses in the story where God told him to command the rock to give water and instead he struck it with his staff because that is how God had told Him to do it before and had proven results. I think the environment I grew up is sort of like the congregation living from God with the pastor trying to convince them to live for God. So at some point I recognized that and started looking for something different. I've definitely been on the for God train before and probably still am a bit now.

2. I think Wesley does a better job teaching people to live with God than any other community I've been a part of. I think there is sort of a combination of living life for and from God. There is a lot of focus on God's goodness, which does a great job of getting people out of the under God posture, but I think sometimes that leads to people living from God, because our definition of good is sometimes distorted by the world. And I think in any ministry leadership or vocational position, there will be some living for God posture to overcome. At Wesley I more so see this in the interns and students rather than directors, but that's just because we're still figuring things out amirite?

[mckenna denman]

1. I think I have lived my life at times in all of these relations to God. Growing up, I most likely had the mindset of "what do I need to pray to get what I want?" I think it's very common for people raised in the church, especially in the south, to live a life FROM God. We see Him as a means to an end and in a privileged childhood, it makes sense that we would try to use God to get whatever it is we want: success, popularity, good grades etc.
Moving into college life (and even late high school), after seeing how real God is and wanting a personal relationship with Him, I adopted a life FOR God attitude. I kept thinking I had to earn good favor and God's love by doing the best I could and never messing up. This performance-based mindset enables striving and a false sense of security that is based solely on my ability (or lack thereof) to "have it all together". As we all know, this just doesn't cut it and we soon end up feeling miserable, sitting in our failures, knowing that we truly need God to come and help us out of our mess.
For the last few years, especially since interning, I have been living in more of a life WITH God mentality. I still feel the temptation to sneak back into a life FOR or even UNDER God perspective, but I am much more rooted and established than I ever have been in God's goodness and the intimacy that comes with relationship with Him.

2. I think this progression is very common for students involved with Wesley. Many of our students have grown up in some form of church, and come to college to find out that God is more real than they ever realized. As it is when almost anyone comes to know God, I would imagine he or she would fall into one of the four postures of relating to Him on their way to fully living a life WITH God. If I had to choose just one that describes the Wesley community from my perspective, I would say a life FOR God posture. But like Billie Anne said, I do believe Wesley does a great job teaching and leading by example how to life a life WITH God. We are all definitely still figuring things out.

[Megan McGahee]

1. Which of the four popular postures (Life OVER, UNDER, FROM and FOR God) best describe how you relate to God?
I think I can look back to different parts of my life and see how each of these postures manifested in some way here and there. However, I think that with the way my brain works, it has been easiest for me to fall into the "Life over God" posture. Really over the past 3 years, the Lord has been teaching me a lot about doing life alongside him and showing me how I don't have to fully understand everything through my logic at first. Since I've started being more involved with different forms of ministry, I think it can be easy to slip into the "Life for God" mentality at times. One of my favorite quotes comes from the section of a book where Shawn Bolz is describing how God is a father first. He says, "As his sons and daughters, he is more interested in communicating so that we do things with him rather than for him." I think this is so true, because the more intimate I am with him and the more I'm in tune with his voice, the more natural it is to walk in the posture of "Life with God."


2. Which posture do you think best describes the way the Wesley community relates to God?
I would say that the "Life for God" would probably be the biggest one when it comes to the southern church in general. However, I would agree with what's been said before about how Wesley is very intentional with explaining and exemplifying "Life with God."

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