Dispatch #4
A Play Date with Jesus
Welcome! These are dispatches — firsthand reports from the interior life of faith, sent from the frontier as they happen. If you have arrived here without reading the earlier entries, you may find yourself disoriented. That is not a failure of imagination; it is simply that these accounts assume some familiarity with the Inner Room and the practice of entering it. Start with Learning to Enter for a plain-language introduction to the practice, then read the full series in order at Dispatches from the Inner Room & Other Frontiers. The sequence matters.
Not every visit to the room is vast or wordless. Some are small, ordinary, even a little funny. This one started with a Bible verse and ended, the very next night, with a joke.
I sat quietly, journal on my lap, pen in my hand, and asked the Holy Spirit to take me to the Inner Room to meet with Jesus. Moments later, that familiar room appeared before me, visible with the eyes of my heart.
❧
Night one, in the room.
“Hi Jesus. I love you.”
And I love you, Scot. My son and friend.
I smiled. This made me happy since I’d been reading in John that morning, the place where he told his disciples he no longer called them servants, but friends, because a servant doesn’t know his master’s business, and he had shared with them everything the Father had given him. I told him how grateful I was that he’d called me friend.
You’re welcome, he said. And I want to share the Father’s business with you too, Scot.
“Let me guess. That kind of sharing only happens in the secret place. The Inner Room.”
Yes. Of course. It’s all abiding in the vine.
“Of course. I’d have expected nothing less.”
That was the whole of it that night, brief, warm, and settled before I even had time to feel surprised by it. I was struck by the reality that Jesus wanted to share with me the Father’s business. What a wonderful thought. A friend, not just a servant tending to the master’s work.
❧
Night two, the following night. Same room, same opening.
“Hi Jesus. I love you.”
And I love you, Scot.
I admitted I’d only managed a page or two of journaling the night before, my wife wanted the lights out, and I hadn’t gotten far. Still, I brought up what he’d told me the night before, that it was here, in this room, that he shared his Father’s business with me.
That’s right, he said. You have to see and hear with spiritual eyes and ears if you’re going to see and hear what I want to show you. Otherwise I’m just talking to the wall.
I laughed. “That’s funny, Jesus.”
You used to find this kind of communication difficult, he said. Even fearful.
“Yes, I did. The thought of communicating with ‘the God of the universe’ was frightening.”
And now? What’s changed?
“Now it’s fun. Playful, even.”
I hesitated. Those words sounded strange in my ear. I was struck by how unreligious they sounded. A play date with God? What about ritual and the fasting and the long hours of prayer? Something had shifted underneath that phrase, something I was only now catching up to. None of this depended on me. Not on my goodness, my righteousness, my earnestness, or my piety. I didn’t have to fast for three weeks or pray for five hours to earn a moment of his attention. He had already paid for every bit of it, his death, his choice, the veil he tore so fellowship could be re-established without a mediator standing between us. I hadn’t opened this door and couldn’t have. All that was left for me to do was walk through it, and once that finally landed, walking through it stopped feeling like an assignment and started feeling like play.
What else? he asked. I know there’s more.
“I realized you weren’t mad at me, or disappointed, or waiting for me to get it wrong. I could just come and find you. I’m not chasing some rare, exotic experience that happens once in a blue moon. I’m coming for a play date.”
Indeed, he said. Love it. Tell others they can have a play date with me too.
“Good night, Lord.”
I’ve noticed something since. Both nights opened the exact same way, the same four words I use every time I come. It isn’t a different password for a different kind of visit. It’s the one door, opened the same way, whether what’s waiting on the other side is a lesson about friendship or an invitation to come play.
