The flow state of God

An invitation to pay attention to the prophet's pattern

Photo by Brandon Stecz on Unsplash

I’ve learned that If you really want to scare off evangelicals, just say: “Me and God are the same thing.”

Now before you call me Kanye, I invite you to walk with me through the calling of the prophet Jeremiah.

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart;

I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”¹

~ Jeremiah 1:5

The story of God naming Jeremiah a prophet begins with a word.

“Then the word of the Living Presence came unto me…” (v. 4)

Much like the creation story, goodness is brought forth through the divine voice. Creativity begins with a word. Jeremiah’s very existence, his name, vocation, and identity emerges from the Hebrew dabar דְבַר־ : “to speak.”

And yet, after receiving that word, Jeremiah does his best Heisman stiff-arm:

“Ah, Lord God! I do not know how to speak, for I am only a child.” (v. 6)

And that, my friends, is the big human pattern - the pattern of most prophets. Moses did the same thing and so do we… Sorry, boss, but you got the wrong guy!

When invited to bring forth something that is distinctly you, something only you can birth, we almost always doubt that God could ever do that thing through us.

God’s response is lovingly loud & clear:

“Do not say, ‘I am only a child.’ You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you.” (v. 7–8)

And then, in unshakable affirmation, God reaches over, tenderly touches Jeremiah on the mouth, and says:

“Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.” (v. 9)

That levels me all the way to the ground. In God, I see a mother instinctually drawing her baby to the breast, nourishing what is so helpless and fragile, yet so abundant with future magic and sacred possibility.

The prophet is not asked to manufacture eloquence or power on his own. He’s asked to trust that Love’s relentless tenderness is already present and deeply imbedded - already actively flowing through him.

The great pattern. The great invitation.

God creates.

God names.

God brings forth.

And then God invites us to participate in continuing the great pattern—to bring forth something fresh and distinctly healing out of creation.

That pattern and the historic prophetic lineage points to a ridiculously relatable sense of absurdity. We’re always gonna respond with… Who me?

Listen to the infinite echo within German theologian and mystic, Meister Eckhart:

“What could be closer to you than the One who gave you everything;

who molded you inside, who stamped you with the divine image,

who made you good, very good?

Nothing is so similar to something else as you are to God.”

And again… Nothing is so similar as something else as you are to God.

Many of us have been so meticulously discipled into religious systems of hierarchy and dominance - into systems that insist on fearfully fawning submission to an authority. Such systems are incapable of imagining God loving us into a radical vision of similarity with Godself… a way of sincere equity, mutuality, and shared power.

While God’s word to Jeremiah was distinctly for Jeremiah, there’s a practical invitation that is universal. That’s the invitation to mystical awareness and receptivity, to deep listening and attunement. Like the prophets, we too are divinely invited to erase the illusory lines between secular and sacred in order to receive a whole new word that sets people free.

The Buddhists call this receptive stance the beginner’s mind. Jesus named it becoming like a child. Jeremiah initially saw it as a weakness, while God always perceives it as the heart’s most fertile soil.

No more hierarchy

I grew up in an environment shaped by the likes of Gotthard, MacArthur, and Falwell. Whew, doggy! That suffocating ecosystem drew defined lines of authority with a Sharpie where God spoke from way up there, and the rest of us down here straightened our ties and (ankle length) dresses to listen quietly and obediently. The same hierarchal pattern structured the home: Husband → Wife → Children. (Cue the trauma response…)

The more I observe and consider Scripture, the more baffled I am at how anyone ever arrived at such a slaveholder’s religion. From creation onward, God has been inviting radical collaborative co-participation - tenderly inviting, compassionately drawing, and infinitely empowering all creation into divine partnership. The invitation into a unified consciousness with her own delightfully love-drenched life is always present if we have the ears to hear.

In recognition of this, the early Jesus people called themselves “little Christs.” Not as a pretentious flex, but as a flow state with the divine – a most humble recognition that the same river running through God runs through us.

Of course, nothing enrages religious people more than this type of language. Meister Eckhart was condemned by the catholic church for statements like the one mentioned above and if it brings on allegations of arrogance and heresy for us? Well, you should expect it.

For me, it produces not a cockiness but a severely sobering humility and contemplative grounding, one that demands a highly sensitive attention to all of life. It means leaning in and listening closely to all those voices long overlooked (neurodivergent), long silenced (women, especially trans women), and long forgotten (indigenous peoples).

The Flow State of God

To live this way is to step into what I can only call the invitational flow state of the Living Presence.

Where God’s word and our words blur into one swirling current. Where our lives become part of God’s ongoing act of creation. And where being a prophet is not some lofty title but a lowly posture of listening, receiving, and bringing forth on behalf of the demonized and despised.

Jeremiah, Moses, Mary, Mother Theresa among so many other lesser knowns eventually recognize that it’s not about notions of perfection, eloquence, or mastery, but about trusting the One who already placed her words in our mouths.

This week, I watched my two sons step into their freshman and junior years of high school full of anticipation, possibility, and fresh tapered fades. The curiosity I hold for them is the same as it is with you along with myself…

In this season, can you risk imagining that the Living Presence has already put her touch, her sacred word in your mouth? What distinctly beautiful, joyfully creative, and foundationally divine thing is being drawn forth in you?

1. The Hebrew for “prophet” (navi - one who brings a word)