Approaching God (a review)

How does one do that? Approach God, that is. There are as many ways to worship as there are gods. You can take your pick: in silent contemplation, swinging a censor, on your knees, with hands in the air, singing, chanting, speaking in tongues, wearing a hat or fancy dress. When I was a little girl it was ‘every head bowed and every eye closed’. Reverence and awe for a distant deity.

I first met Lisa Borden when singer and prophetic poet, Brian Houston, asked us to host friends and fans of his – American missionaries, no less. Lisa and Byron were delightful company – we had Africa in common and they inspired me with their passion and zest for life. We saw them again when they were living in Portugal, preparing to return to their beloved East Africa. We were on holiday and the two families met up for food, wine and lots of thought-provoking conversation. The Bordens are blessed people who are heaven-bent on blessing others.

I follow Lisa’s blog: Let’s put the kettle on, with a photo of cooking African-style over an open fire with the kettle, and the tea, blackened by the smoke. That’s how Lisa does God too – out in the open, chatting beside the fire, her hands cupped round a hot mug.

Hers is not just any god. He is Jehovah Jesus - the Creator of the universe who delivered himself to us wrapped in swaddling clothes as an ‘act of pursuit’. The thing that pervades every phrase of her book Approaching God is that Lisa believes. She expects that when she goes to meet God he is actually there and listening – that he knows her name and her needs. Her God doesn’t insist that she dress up and sit up.

Lisa considers the attributes of her God: He is Father who protects and provides and he is a Guide who wakens her in the middle of the night or at dawn to whisper words of wisdom and direction. He is a Healer who invites her to be vulnerable in his presence and with other people, so that she can share the load of life’s stresses and lay bare her wounds, physical and emotional to the balm of divine healing.

More surprisingly, God is an Artist who has given colour to the world as well as texture, shape and design. She says that, ‘Creation speaks of her Creator’ - a God who is ‘seriously into art’ and whose creativity flows into and through his created beings to make a difference. I’ve always believed that part of the purpose of flowers is to demonstrate God’s bright yellowness or delicate pinkness, or his velvety texture and his exquisite scent. It’s all about God screaming his beauty and awakening our soul to sing.

Screaming and singing are all very well, but what about the silence? God’s there too, apparently. He’s in that moment when we are still and satisfied, like a weaned child. Lisa knows God as Mother, as well as Father – a life-giving source who nourishes and sustains. Neither Lisa nor William Paul Young invented the idea of God as a big black mama – it was actually Jesus who first compared his parent to a mother hen gathering her chicks. Mother God settles us on her lap – a safe and comforting place from which to view the world and its harsh challenges.

Approaching God is for anyone who is tired of religion and meaningless ritual. Don’t give up till you’ve read this gentle and personal aid to meditation. Lisa’s honesty is refreshingly real and she encourages rather than cajoles us into a revision of who God is and how he connects with his perfectly formed but flawed creation. Apart from anything else this book is physically beautiful, like its author, and peppered with fabulous photos. At the end of each chapter, the reader is invited to pause and reflect, to take time to grasp and embrace the full extent of God’s ‘outrageous promises’.

Perhaps our God has been consigned to the pages of a dusty Bible or to some minster’s mouldy interior. If so, this book suggests a new place to begin – with God as a Friend to be enjoyed – one who is always there, never judges and loves unconditionally.

I, for one, long for a friend like that so I now know what to do – slow down, sit down, open up and, without fear, approach.


We don’t need religion, but we could use the love of God. Brian Houston