Why You Can Love God And Still Feel Distant

Ever feel like you’re doing everything “right” and still can’t shake the sense that God is far away? We dig into three core questions many Christians carry in secret: why we can feel anxious or avoidant with a God we call our secure base, how early attachment wounds color our view of His heart, and what’s going on when faithful practices don’t translate into felt closeness.

We unpack the crucial difference between what we know about God (God concept) and how we experience Him (God image), and why both matter. Drawing from Scripture and attachment research, we trace how anxious faith tends to perform to avoid rejection while avoidant faith relies on self-sufficiency to dodge vulnerability. Along the way, we normalize lament as a faithful response, explore divine struggle without shame, and highlight rupture-and-repair as the slow engine of secure attachment with God—where repeated experiences of His presence re-train our bodies to expect safety, not abandonment.

You’ll hear practical pathways for integrating head and heart: treating Scripture as conversation instead of a checklist, approaching prayer as shared life rather than a wish list, and engaging church as a living conduit of God’s nearness. We also contrast correspondence and compensation—how our family stories either echo into faith or are healed by it—and challenge the myth that religious activity automatically equals intimacy. If you’ve wondered why closeness feels elusive, this conversation offers language, tools, and hope.

If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review so others can find it. What’s one small practice that helps you sense God’s nearness today?

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome, Updates, Two-Part Plan
• 2:07 Question 1: Secure Base Yet Anxious
• 8:45 God Concept vs God Image
• 15:20 Scripture, Emotions, And Feeling Distant
• 20:45 Healing Over Time And Rupture-Repair
• 24:04 Question 2: Early Wounds And God
• 30:25 Correspondence vs Compensation Paths
• 35:10 Doing For God vs Being With God
• 38:24 Question 3: Why God Feels Far

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:05

Alright everyone, welcome back to the God Attachment Healing Podcast. I'm excited that you're here. Thank you for tuning in. And we are on episode 104 of God Attachment Healing. And today I think you guys are gonna enjoy this episode. I'm gonna answer three of the most uh popular questions or questions that come up for a lot of people who are wanting to figure out what their attachment style to God is. Um, but more importantly, just what are the barriers or what are some of the questions that they have um about those barriers in being able to connect with God? So I'll touch on three. Uh uh, I think I'm gonna do this as a two-part series. Um, there were so many questions I could have chosen from, and uh I picked these three, and I think you guys will enjoy um today's episode. So, again, thank you for tuning in. I've been working on getting a couple of guests, some who are returning, some who uh are new, and I'm looking forward to presenting those to you guys in the next couple of weeks, probably at the start of next year. I'm gonna close out this year. I think I have maybe two or three left for this year. Uh, they'll still be still be released. They're pretty close to Christmas and New Year's. I'll still release the episodes. Um, and then we'll just jump into a new year and get right back to it. So I'm looking forward to that. And I just have to say, it feels so good to finally be done with uh schoolwork, no more dissertation, uh, no more grading. I actually finished grading last night. So yeah, it just feels it feels very weird, but I feel like I need to get some rest and then I'm gonna have some projects that I'm gonna work on here at the house. And uh yeah, it just feels I just feel like a different man, you know. Hopefully, um that shows in the upcoming episodes. So again, I appreciate you being here. All right, so today we're gonna talk about the top three questions that Christians have about their attachment to God or potential barriers to their relationship with God. So I'm gonna touch on this first one here. And the question basically is if God is my secure base, why do I still feel anxious or avoidant with him? Now, this is always an interesting question because, you know, obviously this podcast focuses on attachment styles. And as you, if you've been following the podcast, one of the things that you'll know about the podcast or about attachment is that the way that our relationships are with our parents kind of shapes the way that we then view our relationship with God. And one of the biggest barriers that I've seen in churches or people who grew up in the church have is that they feel distant from God or they feel like they have to perform or do something in order to be accepted by God, right? We all have the desire to please God and to honor him because he's our Father, our Heavenly Father, and we want to do what's right because we have a relationship with him, but the anxiously attached individual to God has this ongoing thought of I need to keep on doing in order to be accepted. So it's not that they feel anxious just about getting close to God or or um having questions about their relationship with God, it's that they actually feel that if they don't do these things, God will reject them. Right. And then you have another type, which is the avoidant type. And this is someone who learns to be independent, kind of takes things on their own, and they don't really need anyone, at least that's the way that they that they feel. You know, they do well with interacting with other people, uh, they even do well in church and you know, can't talk about having a relationship with God, but they're not really having an intimate relationship with God where they not just know him, but are able to experience him. And I think I talk about it today, but I will talk about it in future episodes where the what's the difference? And I actually have some guests on for that. What's the difference between experiencing God in the relationship and just knowing about God? I think that's a very important question, especially when it comes to discussing how we see God as a secure base. So to answer the question, if God is my secure base, then why do I still feel anxious or avoidant with him? And maybe one of the questions that we can start with, or one of the statements that we can start with, is we've all heard the concept or the teaching that God is always with you, which is true, right? God is always with us. And but oftentimes we don't feel that way. We don't feel that he's close to us. So again, for the anxious, it's gonna be this idea of, well, because I did something wrong, then God is not gonna be close to me. He's actually gonna push me away because I've failed him, right? Uh for the avoidantness, I just don't know what it is that it actually feels like. I don't know if he's close or if he's far. I don't know. They can't really identify whether or not God is close to them. So what happens is that they're they do become or they start to feel uh distant, disappointed, um, and really don't know how God views them. Right? In the research, one of the ways that this is described, and I've talked about this before, is you have the God concept, which is what you know about God, and then you have the God image, which is how you experience God. And there's different types of people that are going to lean one way or the other, okay? Uh, both of these elements are essential, both having a God image, which is the experience of God, and a God concept, which is our knowledge of God. So they're both important, right? There's gonna be some people who focus more on the experience, and there's gonna be another group of people who focus more on the knowledge of God, right? And both of those are okay, right? I tend to be more from the knowledge perspective, like if I know more about God, I feel closer to him because I'm learning more about him and I keep learning new things. And it wasn't until maybe I wouldn't say just a couple of years ago, but many years ago, where I started to have uh experience God differently, meaning I had emotions about my relationship with God, which I didn't have before. Like I felt the knowledge was enough. I felt like if I had enough data, enough facts, enough verses that I memorized, that that would be enough. So I felt close to God in that way. But there was really no emotion attached to that. And again, I think that's important. So for those of you guys who are listening who tend to be more logical based, for you, that might be what feels comfortable. But if you don't are not feeling anything in your relationship with God, then I think that could be uh a sign of trouble in a sense, or not having the full um understanding of who God is. And obviously we we have limited understanding, but I'm trying to say that you broaden your experience and your relationship with God by having those emotions attached to it. For example, one of the emotions that you can have is disappointment, right? There are times where we've been disappointed with God. I I felt that way before. I'm sure many of you have felt that way. And the question is so is it okay for me to feel disappointed? And you might initially kind of shame yourself, like, why am I feeling disappointed? You know, the Lord is faithful, he's just, he's kind, he's all of these things. But right now, I don't feel that way. I feel like this is unjust, what's happening, right? It's okay to express those feelings, and I think that's that was missing when I was growing up, is that I felt that because I knew that God was faithful, just, and righteous, that my feelings would eventually align with that. And that wasn't the case, and that was part of my my struggle is that how does this knowledge that I have about God, how come my feelings aren't lining up with that? Like I know he's faithful, but I don't feel that way. I feel like this is very unjust, that this is very wrong. Like, why, why aren't you here, Lord? I felt him distant. So allowing myself to experience though that disappointment and that frustration and maybe even anger at times was healthy because it showed me, wow, I feel this anger, I feel this disappointment, even a little bit of uh of bitterness. But I feel like God is closer even during this time. And that was hard for me to understand because again, if I'm not honoring God, or if I'm not letting God use this experience to actually teach me something, then I must be doing something wrong. If I wasn't learning anything, then it must be because I'm doing something wrong. And what I learned is that that God was kind of the sounding board for me to air out these frustrations. You know, obviously we see this in the Psalms, all over the Psalms and over through the scriptures as well, that there are these moments where many people in the scriptures express disappointment or confusion or even anxiety about God and what he's doing and so on. So I realized that it was a very important part of our relationship and experience with God. So this is again totally normal to be able to lean on one side or the other, but what we want to have is a good balance of both. Understanding that you're gonna have a tendency to lean towards one more than the other. So that's important. You know, the attachment research basically teaches that people often map their early caregiver experiences onto God. So when theology says that God is faithful, the inconsistency really comes with how our bodies experience that. Again, it's it's important to have the knowledge of God. And if you grew up in a home that was dysfunctional and was aggressive or abusive in many ways, your body records all of that, right? And when you get older and you have these same thoughts of God being faithful, and let's say you grew up in a home where maybe that was taught, or maybe that was said, but the experience maybe it was that your parents were always fighting, or it was that they were very aggressive towards you, or that they just misunderstood everything that you'd say, or you'd get in trouble for nothing, or there was always discipline, but no love. All of these things, right, can be very confusing for you to experience as a child. So when you get older and you see these things start to happen again, your mind is trying to counter the beliefs that you had at that time with biblical truth. But your body is saying, No, but you've heard that before, and you actually were scared and hurt and disappointed. So there's a disconnect here, right? So that's very, very important to understand because again, you're gonna experience that if you grew up in a home that was not um evidenced what you've been taught about who God is and who Jesus is. Okay. So if there's a disconnect there, your body's gonna feel off, even though your mind's gonna try to reconcile those two. But you have to pay attention to what that could actually mean, right? The anxious attachment to God shows up as a preoccupation with being rejected by God and overreading negative negative events as signs of his displeasure or of his discipline. And that is really what the anxious attachment style is looking at. If they're going through something difficult, they will think to themselves, This is God punishing me. I must have done something wrong to deserve this. Why is God upset at me? What did I do to deserve this? Oh, that's what I did. Oh, this must be a punishment, a punishment from way back when when I failed God in this situation. Right. So that's where the anxious attachment style goes. They start to think of all the possibilities of why they're being disciplined by God. Because if God is good, then I shouldn't be experiencing these things. But because I am experiencing these things, then I must have done something bad, right? If you've listened to previous episodes, one of the things that I talk about a lot is the view of self and the view of others, part of the attachment styles. And God attachment is the view of self and the view of God. So in this case, I'm worthless, I'm nothing, everything's my fault, I failed, all of those things. And God obviously is just, righteous, and good. That belief is good. The view of self, though negative, again, that's where the anxious attachment style um sits, and everything is their fault. So it doesn't allow for them to actually experience the grace and love and forgiveness of God. So that's really where the anxious attachment style will remain. So there is for the avoidant this over-reliance on self and discomfort with intimacy and prayer. And that was really that that was really interesting too, because again, there is this element of, you know, I'll go to church and you know, I'll sing the songs, I'll be in community with other people, with other Christians. And then after that, I'm I'm I'm gone, right? Um, prayer in and of itself is a very intimate relationship, communication that we have with God, not just of what's going on in our day, but you know, how is God showing up in the situation that that I'm in? It doesn't have to be bad all the time, it could be good. Um, and maybe that's what we need to focus on. We think that if we focus on the good, then obviously everything that we're doing is good. At least that's what we think. Um, and if something happens that's bad, what the avoidant will do is okay, this is my fault. I'm gonna take ownership and I'm just gonna fix this and correct it, right? No dependence on God, over dependence on self, if that makes sense, right? So, as opposed to the anxious attachment who says it's my fault, I need to make this up, and they work even harder to gain back the Lord's favor. The avoidant attachment style will look at the situation and say, you know what? I gotta take care of this, I gotta fix this. You know, obviously, my relationship with God matters. So I'm gonna do what I can to make this right. And in their eyes, it's all within their power that they're able to make the changes to feel better about themselves, not necessarily about their relationship with God. So that's how you see these attachment styles kind of play out. And by the way, scripture acknowledges each of these things that people can believe in God intellectually while feeling abandoned and afraid, right? We have David uh in Psalm 13 and Psalm 42. Um, we see in scripture all throughout it, we see how God reveals himself as someone who is near the brokenhearted, and that's in Psalm 34, verse 18. God also says, I will never leave you nor forsake you. That's in Hebrews 13. And there is this ongoing message again about God's presence in our lives, which is again true. The question is how the avoidant and the anxious interpret that in their own relationship with with the Lord, right? So it's very important that we pay attention to those things because you're gonna land on one of these things. I assume that most people are gonna be on the anxious attachment style. Um, avoidance typically, I mean, they're harder to to identify, especially within within the relationship with God or with the church, um, because we just look at people who leave the church and that's avoidant. And that's not necessarily the case. It could be, but not necessarily the case. So here's what we need to understand about this question about why do I still feel anxious or avoidant? Well, one of the things that we need to understand is that healing takes time. And when we feel distant from the Lord, we may think that, oh, I'm not healing because I still feel distant from the Lord. But sometimes, remember, you're going through a difficult situation. We don't know what the timeline is on that difficult situation. I wish I did. Um, and if I did, would that make me cling to God a little bit more, or would it push me away? Like what would happen if I knew what the timeline was? Right? So we need to understand that when we feel distant or that God is distant or has abandoned us, that maybe it's a time where we're just reflecting on you know who he is in that moment. Maybe we need that, right? Um, so as we start to allow God to heal us with time, then we start to grow our dependence on him more and more. So we need continued experiences of him responding in safe ways, which is what I experienced. When you have multiple situations where it feels like everything in your life has just broken down and it's a disappointment, and you don't know what to do, and you just feel abandoned, you feel alone, right? It's in those moments where God starts to speak to you, and the way that we create a safe and secure attachment to God is that we see, as we I've said before, the rupture, which is the disappointment, the despair, the discouragement, the depression, whatever it is. And then you see God show up. And if you see that enough times, you start to develop a secure attachment to God. Like, hey, God's gonna show up like He's done many times before. I know this is very hard what I'm experiencing right now, but because of the many times that God has shown up, I know that it's gonna happen again, right? So that's the security. It's not that the pain is removed right away, it's that you know that after the pain, that God is still going to love, care, and be there for you. So that is the first question. Uh, second question: how do my early attachment wounds affect how I relate to God? Well, for the insecure attachment style, there's kind of three factors that that we need to pay attention to that they've probably experienced in their early childhood. Um, neglect, inconsistency, and emotional unavailability. Okay. Neglect, inconsistency, emotional unavailability. So when they experience this in their relationship, think think what happens in the relationship with their parents or primary caregivers when they get older and they have these feelings come up, it's natural to transfer those same feelings over to God, like, oh, the Lord is neglecting me, or he's being inconsistent. Because last time I prayed about this and he answered it in the positive, and now it doesn't seem like it's working, right? So we say, Well, maybe I need to pray more, so I'm gonna keep praying more, keep praying more. Maybe I need to go preach the gospel more. So they go and preach the gospel, maybe I need to be around church people more, and they go and do that as well. So they're trying to find ways to build a secure attachment with God. And what they think in their mind is that if things are working out my way, then that means the Lord is being there for me. If they're not working out, then that means I'm doing something wrong. Right. And again, that comes from this idea of I need to establish, I need to do more in order for me to be valuable enough for the Lord to be consistent, for him to be emotionally present, and for him to be um uh a secure base for me. Right. So on the other side, for the avoidant attachment, they're gonna have experiences of they will have some neglect, um, and specifically regarding needs. So again, the avoidant learns how to meet their own needs. Because their needs weren't met when they were younger. So when it comes to relationship with the Lord, like they can ask for things, but they're not going to go deep dive in it because they still have this almost this moral responsibility, moral responsibility to do things, do things on their own to meet their own needs. So they don't really want to fully depend on God, but just enough so that it sounds like they are depending on God. And that's really important to understand because people who grew up with harsh, unpredictable caregivers often picture God as stern, easily disappointed, or emotionally distant. Right. So again, the parents I think that this is one of the reasons why the family is so important. Um, it really does create the picture of us of what the church looks like and what our relationship with God looks like, right? We have our parents who are to model for us, what love, care, discipline, um uh emotional attunement, presence, all of these things that they're supposed to model that for us. And when that doesn't happen, we have we begin to develop a distorted view of God. Now, this is very important too because there are a lot of people that I know who grew up who didn't grow up in the church. They came to know the Lord later on. So they actually develop a very secure attachment to God because of so much chaos and so much distress when they were uh growing up that they didn't know anything different. So they come to know the Lord, and it's like the best thing that they've ever um experienced, whether it be through the church or as they're learning through scripture, learning more about God's character. Wow, this is who Jesus is. Wow, that's amazing! Like, I didn't know he loved me so much. I didn't know he died for me on the cross, I didn't know all of these things. And they come to know the Lord in a very special, meaningful way. And I'm not saying that those of us who did grow up in the church don't have that, but I think there's a point where we take it for granted. I think there's a point where, yeah, I'm a Christian, you know, I grew up in the church and we have all the knowledge, at least that's that's how I was. But like I had all the knowledge, I knew how to um talk about what that relationship with the Lord could look like without the experience. Like, what does it really feel like to be close to God, close to Jesus in a relationship? So um I knew what to say, but I didn't actually have that close relationship relationship with the Lord. And I think many of us who grew up in the church have that experience. So those who didn't grow up in the church, they have what would be called the um compensation theory, which is for everything that they lacked growing up, the Lord compensates for that through relationship with Him, through the church, and through His Word, through prayer and so on. Right. So God compensates for what they were lacking in their childhood. For those of us who grew up in the church, we have what's called the correspondence theory, which is the way that our parents treated us and reflected um Christ in the home, is how we grew up seeing our relationship with Jesus when we get older. So we see a lot of these um uh verses that talk about God being a father, right? Him being a shepherd, him caring for us in that way. So again, these pictures that we're seeing of okay, here's how my parents treated me, and here's what the Bible says about God being a comforter and like a shepherd and like a father, and there's a disconnect somewhere, right? So that disconnects that disconnect is obviously gonna affect how we relate to God and also how we view God, right? So, how do we then relate to God if we had a good upbringing? Well, it's gonna be the same way that you relate to your parents, right? If you grew up with loving, caring, attentive, faithful parents, you probably have a good relationship with them. Uh, and you probably know how to talk about your day, right? Know how to talk about your emotions, know how to talk about some beliefs and thoughts that you've had as you've grown up, because they provided a space for you to just share everything, right? And if you have that, that's great because then you can transfer that over to your relationship with God. And probably most of you who have that probably do that already. For those who had a more maybe anxiously attached style where it was inconsistent. Um, maybe at times it was um uh sometimes your needs were met and sometimes they weren't, or they weren't met correctly, right? Even though your parents tried as hard as they could, there's this belief that maybe God can't meet all our needs, or maybe I'm just too much. Maybe that's why we feel like we have to work for God's love. So they start doing that and they get so involved in the church, they start doing all of these things, all these all of these activities, hoping that that will bring them closer to God. And in some ways it does, and in other ways it doesn't, right? Again, the main thing to keep in mind here is that the anxiously attached individual believes that if they do those things, God will accept them and God will love them. God already loves them, God already accepts them. It's just those things should be a natural outgrowth of our relationship with Him. So there's a lot of work that gets done there. Now, for this last question, if God loves me, this is question three, if God loves me, why does He feel so distant? Especially when I'm actually going to church and doing the right things. Okay, so this is this is very uh similar to the first one, but I wanted to talk about it because it focuses on this idea of doing the right things. Again, those of us who grew up in the church, we knew what to do, we knew what to say. And in many ways, the our parents and people around us looked at that and said, Oh, they they love the Lord, they must be growing in their relationship with the Lord. But we just grew up kind of knowing what to say, and I think that's normal. I I don't think that there's a way to get around that. Like, I mean, I have my kids, I'm teaching them about Jesus, and they're gonna say and do whatever I'm teaching them, right? And um, and that's gonna be normal. Now they're gonna reach a point where they're gonna have questions. And can I provide a safe space for them to ask those questions and not get defensive or feel like they're falling away because they're starting to create their own um minds or have their own minds and have questions? Like I can't let that scare me. I have to be very firm in my beliefs and my convictions about what I believe about scripture and what I believe about Jesus so that I can pass that on to them. And when they have questions, that I can ref refer them back to scripture so that they can continue to explore what that means for them. I'm not saying it's gonna be easy. I actually think it's gonna be pretty hard for me, but I'm hoping that the Lord gives me some grace so that they don't experience what I experienced growing up, or it was I knew the things about God, but I didn't have that relationship with Him. And I'm trying to really demonstrate that to my boys that it's not just the that they know about me, but that they also have um this relationship with me where they feel comfortable to talk about these various things in their lives. So um that is what I plan to do with them because what happens with Christians who grew up in the church, they experience this painful dissonance, right? That regular spiritual practices and attent to and attendance to church, to church activities should draw me closer to the Lord. So if they're doing all of those things, they may falsely believe that that is that automatically means that they're closer to the Lord. But remember, there are many times where we can be doing the right thing, but our hearts can still be far away from God. I mean, this was the error of the Pharisees and Sadducees, right? They were doing all the right things, but their hearts were far from the Lord, and he calls them out on that, right? So there's some research that talks about this struggle with with understanding God, and the research calls it divine struggles, and suggests that feeling abandoned or punished by God, even when one is religiously active, predicts more depressive symptoms and overall distress, and definitely have seen that, right? That the idea of if there's something happening negatively in my life or negative in my life, that I'm being punished by God. And because I'm being punished by God, the creator of the world, the person who I'm supposed to call father, the person who is supposed to love and care for me, if I am feeling punished or abandoned by him, then that's gonna create in me a sense of I'm doing something wrong, or the way that I'm feeling doesn't make sense. I shouldn't be feeling these things, because if God is all of these things for me, then what's wrong with me? Right? There's something off here. And I can't blame God because he's perfect, so it must be me. And there is a humanity part to that, right? That this is the effects of sin in our lives. Original sin, right? Sin that we're born with, but it can also be when we look back at our lives and we see sins that we've done and we feel that we're being punished for those sins. Now, does God actually operate that way? And I have this is one of the questions I'm gonna ask for one of these, um uh one of my guests. Is does God operate that way? We know that God punishes his children to correct them, to bring them back into right alignment with him, right? We we see that in scripture, I think it's in Hebrews. Um, and we see, I mean, we see with the children of Israel all throughout the Old Testament, right? He's constantly correcting them because they're going off track. So we do see that. Um, but does he always punish us for things from our past, or is it only things in the present, or is it just a natural consequence of living our daily life, right? Just sin in the world. So it could be a variety of things, but that's one of the questions I want to explore with uh with this with this guest. So uh that when we have these these um religious doubts, right? After uh and for feeling depressed, uh, like I shouldn't be feeling this way in a relationship with the Lord, um, obviously it can cause more uh uh dysfunction, depression, anxiety in a relationship with him. However, secure attachment to God is associated with more engaged participation in congregational life and a greater sense of belonging and spiritual vitality. So when we do have a secure relationship with God, when we see him as good and we see the work that he's doing in our lives, and we are drawing closer to him, there is this desire of wanting to know him more through reading his word, through prayer, and through seeking out community, right? That it brings back this vitality. And this is what I mean for those who did not grow up in the church, when they come to know the Lord, they experience all of these good things for the first time in their life that they learn to appreciate it and they they draw closer to God because of it. Like they see God as a safe haven, as a secure base, right? And for us who grew up in the church, I think we we kind of become numb at some point and we start to ask all these questions, which creates some levels of distress, which pulls us back a little bit. But then we start to realize no, what I've been taught was good, and this does align with scripture, and now I'm just experiencing something different that I didn't know before, right? Um, scripture normalizes these seasons when God feels hidden. And by the way, I have a friend, um, Dr. Josh Waltman. He actually has a book called Why Does God Seem So Hidden? And you can read to learn more about this. I think we talked about it a little bit in an episode a long, long time ago. But if you're interested, that's one book that you that you want to get. Really smart guy, really great guy, and I'm sure he has a lot to say. And I hope to have him back on the show as well. So, his covenant love, his steadfast attachment. So let's think about that. Just God as a secure base, his secure attachment to us and us to him, provides in us the ability to seek him out during difficult times, right? You want to learn about a person, who do they turn to? What do they turn to when they are under stress? And this is where you start to see that secure base, that rupture repair process where there's a rupture, the repair is where do I go? Um, I always talk about this. I think I've said this before, where we all have our Peter moment, right? Uh, this is the moment when Jesus was healing and doing miracles and teaching. And there came a point where the people stopped following. They they start to pull away and leave. And Jesus looks over to his own disciples, the 12, and he says, Uh, would are you guys going to leave me as well? And Peter makes the most um remarkable comment that he can make, which was to say, Um, Lord, who do we turn to? You have the words of eternal life, basically saying, We're not going anywhere. You are our secure base. There's nothing else that we have to turn to that's gonna give us the security that you have given us. Security both for salvation through him, and also just the life that he's given. I mean, he gave them a new life, and after that, obviously, they were willing to die for their belief in him. Um, and there's a whole story, there's so much more beyond that. But um, yeah, this is this is very important as we see all of these examples in scripture of how God is seen as a secure base. So just because you're doing the right things doesn't automatically mean that you're gonna be closer to Jesus, right? We do those things out of an outgrowth of our love for him, but they are not necessarily things that will automatically move us closer to him, right? Again, similar to the Pharisees, you can be doing all the right things and still feel far from the Lord. Believers are called not only to individual practices, but to embody life in the church where Christ's presence is promised in gathered community. So, again, I preach on this all the time, right? Scripture, prayer, Christian community. If you have those three things, those three things are contributing to your relationship with the Lord, and they all have a different function or a same goal, but function differently. They each provide something different. So prayer, that conversation with God, where you're not just talking to God and saying, Here's all the things that I want, where which some people do, they just treat God as a genie. But it's this relationship, like not asking necessarily how your day is, but being able to hear what God has to say as a father. Like I have three boys, and there are times where I'm trying to share something with them, and they'll try to interrupt. I'm like, hey, wait, wait, wait. I'm trying to teach you something. Uh with my oldest, I was trying to teach him how to throw football, and I was telling him all the little details about here's how you hold it, and so on. And he said, Okay, okay, I got it. No, no, no, you don't got it. Wait, let me teach you. You have to grab it like this, and he he calmed down, got patient, and so on. Right. And I think sometimes we we do that with the Lord, where, yeah, Lord, I've heard this many, many times before. You don't need to tell me about this again. Patience. Let me teach you. You're going through this right now. Let me show you how I work, how I operate. Here's my how I uh I'm gonna show you my love, my grace through this experience. And it's very, it's very comforting to see someone who cares about you so much that they're willing to take the time to be patient with us as we as we grow, right? I love my sons a ton. And based off of that love, I can be patient with them when I see that they're trying to rush through things or they're not really paying attention. It's not this frustration with them. I can be frustrated with them at times, but for the most part, I think I understand their age and how I was as a kid as well. And I think the Lord understands our humanity as well and continues to be patient with us through our life. So in attachment language, God often mediates his nearness through the body of Christ. Safe, nurturing relationships in the church can become relational conduits through which God's presence is experienced, gradually softening insecure internal models of God. So, this final point here about the reason why community is so important is because the Bible, especially in the New Testament, makes a lot of emphasis on the importance of community, the importance of the church. And what I will say is know that you can't grow in your Christian walk if you're not in community. Like that is a requirement in a sense. And I don't say it's so you can sit note it and say, okay, there's something I have to do. It is a natural thing that the Christian should want to do. And if you don't want to gather together with other believers, if you don't go to church regularly, if you're not meeting with other believers, then I can say that there's something off there because that is something that we naturally want. Now you might say I'm an introvert, I'm an introvert as well. That doesn't remove the desire to want to gather together with other believers, right? There are moments in life where we're busy and we're doing things and everyone's in different stages of life. Totally get that. What I'm referring to is not having the desire to gather together with other believers, right? Almost rejecting wanting to get together with other believers, right? We should look for opportunities. Now, everyone has a different um energy system, meaning, like if you're extrovert, introvert, whatever the case is. I again, I get all of that. For me, what I'm asking is as you reflect on your relationship with the Lord, is what is your relationship towards the church, towards community like? Do you want it? Do you see purpose for it, right? Iron sharpens iron. This idea of if you're around other believers, you're going to continue to grow because they're going to expose things or they're going to sharpen areas of your life that you may not fully be aware of. So that's why we need community to make us aware of those things for accountability, for Christian growth, and so on. So all of those things are extremely important for you to grow in your walk with Christ. All right, man, I felt like I covered so much today. Um, so yeah, so those were the three questions for today, guys. Hopefully you found that helpful. Um, next week I'll do a part two and answer the next couple of questions. But as always, thank you again for tuning into the episode. Um feel free to share this with your friends, other people who may benefit from this. Again, attachment. I love talking about this because it seems like there's a lot of people who are interested in it and only see it in their relationship with other people, but they don't see it and how it applies in their relationship with God. So hopefully I'm opening some room for you to have those type of conversations and we'll see how it goes moving forward. Thanks for tuning in. I'll see you next time. Bye.