Approaching God with All of Yourself
A chat with Kathryn Maack
Kathryn Maack is one of my lifelong best friends. We’ve known each other since 7th grade and have done life together consistently since. She has helped with everything I’ve written over the years because I’ve always relied on her spiritual insight, wisdom, and creativity. Kathryn has released a book that is a beautiful reflection of her heart.
Co-written with our friend Aaron Williams, ‘Whole: The Life-Changing Power of Relating to God with All of Yourself’ is a great reminder of the greatness that happens when we completely trust God. I got to chat with Kathryn about the book, and this is the edited interview:
What excites you the most about releasing this book?
Kathryn: This book is based on ministry over many years, and I think it's fun. When you see things work on a small level in ministry, and you keep working that out over years, it's fun to see that go to a wider audience. We've been able to test these ideas and work them out in real time. We're at the point where some of these concepts, like entirely relating to God, are really important.
We've been in a shifting season in the church, and it's time for us all to evaluate where we are with God after the season. It’s a season to come to Him completely. And so, it's fun to bring out these topics and to bring up tangible ways in which we can all grow this season.
We've taken a very dichotomous or compartmentalized approach to relating with God, only giving Him some parts of ourselves. But He's given us different parts of ourselves to come together. Talk about what we're missing when we jump into those sides of our faith.
Kathryn: So many people feel distant from God. They feel apathy or dryness and assume that God has turned a blind eye to us.
Sometimes God feels distant because we're holding back parts of ourselves.
We discuss four dichotomies in the book – head and heart, truth and spirit, being and doing, as well as sinner and saint.
If you have a particular personality or grew up in a particular denomination, it’s easy to have an intellectual understanding of God but not relate to Him with your heart. That was the story of my husband. He studied the Bible his whole life. It wasn't until his growth in the last three years that he realized that God wants to hear his actual emotions. He would come out of his room in tears carrying his Bible after every prayer.
The opportunity to identify any gaps we have in these dichotomies can bridge the gap between us and God. You might be more of a head person and have some gaps in relating to God with your heart or vice versa. You might have the same gap in the truth and spirit spectrum.
Our personalities lend to leanings. And so, it's good for us to continue finding the vast ways in which we can relate to God. Even within the broader church, we can learn from people who have strengths where we have weaknesses. And we can grow in how we come to God with all of ourselves.
Why do we do this? Why do we jump off one side or the other?
Kathryn: There are several reasons, but the driving force is fear. We become very comfortable with our traditions and with what we're used to. So, we can view the other side with a lot of skepticism. Even in the truth and spirit spectrum, we can worry that if we grow in Spirit, we'll end up some kooky person and lose all our friends. The people on the spirit side may worry that they’ll lose the fire for God if they always study the Word.
God said that true worshipers come to Him in truth and spirit, and we all want to be true worshipers.
But in our earthly limitations, we start viewing the other side with some skepticism. We’re fearful of growing in ways we are not used to. And so, the challenge is moving beyond our history and comfort zones to grow in our faith.
I love that you’ve lived the spiritual pursuit you speak of and write about in really tangible ways. Talk a little bit about your house church and about what you’ve seen God doing in your midst recently.
Kathryn: I am leading the discipleship arm of the ministry that Aaron Williams and I started together. The part I'm focusing on now with Dwellings is discipleship in small spaces. So, we have small groups and house churches. We have moved from being very involved with a mega church to this tiny church expression in our house. That has been a huge growth curve for us.
We all need to be challenged to be personally renewed in our faith. But also, we're feeling convicted that one of the most effective ways for the church to move forward is to find a lot of strength in small community. So, we're working through what it means to be a house church. We've done that over the last couple of years, and now we're equipping other people to do it.
Some people won't enter the front door of a traditional church and need some sort of side door. We want to be part of offering that as a possibility because it's a possibility in Scripture. You see the early church operating that way, and it's a possibility in many people's minds all over the world. But for some reason, that has become something we're unfamiliar with in the West.
As someone who maybe had different compartments and is now in more congruence, what's the fruit of it? What have you experienced in your own heart and life?
Kathryn: That's a good question. I have experienced a personal revival. It has also led me to have greater challenges in my life with God. When you offer all yourself up to Him, He will sometimes ask you to do things that you can dismiss if you're not fully engaged and living by the Spirit.
The Trinity is available to come and make His home in us, but we have to open all of ourselves up.
I feel oneness with Him when I'm not protecting parts of myself or only pursuing God in ways that are more natural to me.
There are things that I have held back. And I feel more empowered by God as I'm recognizing that and relating to Him more fully. Growing in the spirit and learning to hear God’s voice has been huge for me.
One of the stories I write about in the book happened a couple of years ago. I was just starting to open up more to God, and I was asking Him to speak to me. While I was leaving a restaurant, I felt a nudge from God to call a guy who was 20 feet away into my car. He turned out to be a teenage boy who had been living on the street for eight weeks.
We ended up getting lunch, and he told me he was thrown out of his house. He said he walked 14 miles to the nicest part of town because he knew there would probably be people that could help him. I immediately recognized that he was incredible and that God had His hand on him. I didn't know what to do, but the Spirit kept directing me every step in the car. The kid has now become a part of our lives.
He started to have questions about Jesus and the Spirit after we invited him to a worship night our kids had at our house two months ago. And so, we talked through it. It has been two years since I met him, and I had never shared the gospel clearly because I hadn't gotten a nudge from the Spirit until that exact moment.
During our conversation about the Holy Spirit, I told him the story of how we met. I told him that the Spirit nudged me to invite him into my car, and that was such a full-circle moment for us.
He just said, “I can't believe God saw me.” And that led to him praying to receive Jesus later that day. We prayed together and got him a Bible.
The Spirit has continued to reveal how I will relate to this kid, who is now living with an aunt and spends a lot of time in our house. That is an example of something I typically would have ignored because it seemed ludicrous but has brought about great blessing. If I had only been relating to God with my head but missing this whole realm of living by the Spirit, I would have missed out on so much that He has for this teenage guy.
We tend to fall into different sides of relating to God. But ultimately, God designed us with the capacity for all of it. You will want to get a copy of Kathryn Maack and Aaron Williams’ new book ‘Whole: The Life-Changing Power of Relating to God with All of Yourself’ right here.
MADE FOR THIS PODCAST
If you liked this content, you’ll love this season of the Made For This Podcast where we’ve been going through Jennie’s book Restless. Available anywhere books are sold!
