Relating to God and trying to understand

Prayer. What is it actually for? I started to think about why praying is such a non existent thing in my life. Because it doesn’t do anything. Because I never see the results I want, I never hear anything or get a direct response. I never know what to really say that isn’t already understood between God and I. I guess those are the top things that come to mind. When I get down to the real concept of prayer for us humans, I think it’s a way of being honest and sharing our lives with God. Culturally I think we have prayer backwards, like most things, we think it’s a formula, or you only do it at certain times. Also culturally, prayer becomes this part of our spirituality that only gets expressed on Sunday mornings, or Saturday nights lately. I guess the more and more I think about prayer being the way I can communicate with God, it makes more sense that it’s a form to let God know where I am at. Like hey today sucks, this place sucks, and why did you create such a suck world for me to exist in. But really God hears, I am having a hard time not letting this place get to me, I am having a hard time not feeling insignificant, I need some help, I need someone to care about me, I need you to be here in person, not this microphone in my mind that some how sends a signal to you. I think prayer isn’t something that God can just respond to and have it be that. First, because it would defeat his purpose of existing as God, as if we have some kind of wavering control on what God will do if we ask enough. It would also defeat our purpose to live and have free will. I think it’s a place to just be real with God. He knows what you think when you think it and how you feel when you feel it, but it also is a good place to just get stuff out there, off your chest, so it’s been said. There is something psychological about it, when you keep things inside or hidden, it has a way of making you less aware of what is important right now because you are still holding on to all that stuff. It is hard to not be disappointed when you pray for something and it doesn’t happen. I also think it’s hard to only have that type of relationship with God, where you ask for things and that’s it, so when things don’t happen, you either feel mad at God and think he doesn’t exist, or you feel unable to be good enough that God wouldn’t do that for your life. We should be aware that we shape a lot of the world in its fallen state. We do a lot of the damage to each other, and expect God to do the damage control. I don’t think God will ever treat his creation like they are stupid and can’t figure anything out. If God was like that, he for sure wouldn’t have given us this example of how to try to live in Jesus, knowing we would never get it, and never be capable of following after it. People can pray and know that God is listening, not that he is going to drastically change his game plan because you are hurting or someone is in great need of something. I think it’s a way for God to be God. It is similar to relationship between children and parents, you may curse at them about not being able to do something, that they know isn’t good for you, but they still won’t let you do it. You might realize that as you get older, what they were doing when you were so frustrated with them was caring about your whole life, and not just your emotions that sporadically change everyday. Also something bad happening to you or those close to you, we can’t always just ask God to change it or explain it. For example, when your friend dies and you don’t know what else to do, or you want someone to change it and bring them back, parents like God, just hold you and let you know it’s going to be ok, because it’s part of life and things happen. I cannot change it, because if I did, I would have to rewrite history, and I would ultimately defeat your purpose to exist. Our existence is what makes God our God. If God did whatever we ask, it isn’t God, it is just a genie in a bottle, a cosmic parent who is a unwilling to sacrifice his own image of being loved for doing everything I want. Its kind of like the parents you watch that give into their child’s whaling about something they want. The child will probably grow into a crazy power hungry person who thinks they deserve everything in the world. I think God is God and knows what he is doing, and to put trust in that is to have faith that when I don’t or do receive something I don’t glorify God for the answered prayer, or say I am not faithful enough or God doesn’t exist when the prayer isn’t answered. I should look to the beauty of what is demonstrated on the Cross. It’s a switch. We are human and screw up everything. We can shape truth into deception and say God screwed something up, but that is your own deception of what is real. We are given a chance to switch. We bring our hurt, pain, deception, dissatisfaction, discontentment, worst fears, and all of our baggage to the cross. We sit there and wait, and wonder what it is exactly we are doing, is this even going to work. But it has already been working and already happened. It’s when you are ready to trade with God. He has this huge operation running throughout life. Where we come as a suspicious consumer with all of our stuff, we look around and see all this truth of what we really are, who we are, what life is really about. We turn and look around us and see all are exhausted stuff and think there is no possible way I could trade anything I have for any of the stuff here. It’s right then that God is in your face when you look back up and says, there is no harm in asking. It is up to us, it’s our choice to accept what is already there as truth, or to stop believing and living in all the lies around us. I think prayer is like this, we talk about something with God, we build relationship and grow with him. Eventually we work out this already designed partnership with God and we trade, we trade ideas, truths, love and everything we have backwards. We get to grow something new with this trade. It doesn’t really matter what we start to grow in this love alone, it is about this relationship with God that we start to grow, and reflect to everything around us. We become good people, friends, parents, siblings, and partners. I mean good in the sense that we know truth and always reflect that in love to ourselves and others. We start turning the world upside down, we build this community that God can always work in. We start to see the truth in this place and its value for being here. I ultimately see prayer as a tool, it’s a tool of being open and honest. It’s communication with God, who knows us best. If you have ever had a hard time communicating with someone, because they just don’t understand what you are saying, it’s a hard thing to continue being open and honest. It is hard to continue communicating without a purpose. I believe God loves us individually, and delights in us communicating throughout the day, even when we don’t understand. I think if we did understand, we wouldn’t need to pray at all, we would just do what we do everyday. It is interesting to see how much we like to act like we understand, and we know exactly what we are doing and why. At the end of it all, I think prayer is what we are internally designed for. I think a lot of us are praying without recognizing that it’s prayer. I believe a lot of us want God to just say something back so that we know and understand, but I think he doesn’t work that way. It’s trust and faithfulness out of love that he wants from us. We always have a choice, each day is a brand new choice, even though at the cross it is always the same choice of love and grace, we always have a choice to believe God is there and he is doing what he does best. Being God.

Refined

It is beautiful to remember God is creator, not man. Man only inhabited the earth and did what it does best: In pursuit of meaning, or purpose, man chose to opt out of the hard search realizing that it takes effort, discipline, and love; instead man went with a dull and numbing pleasurable way of life. More pleasure over contentment, more destruction over painful awareness, more selfishness over selflessness, and more idolatry over perfect love. Created in his image, not as him, but to be like him. God is love. Image of God is love. We are to be love. Don’t take pleasure in being numbed. Take the pain of being real, being free and being love.

Romans 12:2
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is- his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Experience God

I recently listened to a lecture by Donald Miller, who is a very interesting human being. What I started to think about, along with all these other spiritual speakers, is that they try to give you something. They are trying to get you to see something, trying to get you to think or understand something, trying to get you to somehow, with words, experience some sort of love, or existence, or truth. I think an even bigger thing is they are trying to tell you who God is, or what God is like, or how God loves you, or why God loves you. At some point Donald Miller started describing one of his many analogies of how God can be related to us, how God could be understood in our own realities. It was about a romantic relationship, or even a very cherished friendship that encompasses love beyond yourself. I started to wonder why people don’t connect with this. Why don’t more people identify with this? Why isn’t this something that people would want to be true? I ultimately came to the realization that I think and believe that everyone wants this to be true to some degree. Everyone is different, we are all individuals with different ideas, hopes, dreams, realities, and different understandings of love and God. I started to think about how the church sells God; how its come to this building and find truth, come to this service and get healed. Not come meet God and no longer be broken hearted.
I started to think about the experience we go through when we get to know someone, when we get to share in someone’s life. What we go through, all these struggles and hardship. We also go through pure happiness and contentment at times. We only understand relationship as a series of memories or experiences. If we did not remember these experiences we would not know all the intimate things we do about those that are close to us. But how do we do this? How do we become close and know these intimate details? We experience them first hand.
I could go sit by the Mississippi River off of Summit Ave and have a wonderful experience there. I would also have a different experience than anyone else, because I am me. I would have my mind, my imagination, that was created for purpose: to experience these things that are so wonderful to me, the way that I experience them. And it would be different from everyone else’s experience. It would almost make up who I am in existence, since we are living in experience on a moment by moment basis, and time is only record of when something happened. My existence is based only on my experiences. I also started to wonder if the church allows people to experience God the way that they actually want to, or should be able to experience God. Instead our minds, our imaginations are shut off, or shamefully turned off, and we are to follow the guidelines that were set out generations before we existed. Is that beautiful, is that loving, is that truth?
I started to wonder how I would feel if I didn’t actually ever get to experience love, or loving someone, if I didn’t get to choose it? I wondered what it would be like if someone just described why I love someone, why I would choose to marry this person, but I had no experience with them. I wouldn’t actually love them or know them, or have any truth about who they are, because I haven’t experienced them. I haven’t actually lived in reality with them. I have just been told with words what they are like, who they are, why I love them, why I will be faithful to them, why I should trust them, why I should believe they are real. As a human being designed to live in experience, designed to not just be told I am excited, or I am joyful, or I am sad, or I am in love. I was designed with the ability to experience this first hand, in whatever way possible. I am designed with this imagination to understand what is real, how I experience it.
I think we can experience that we are freed by Gods love for us, and we can’t experience that the same as everyone else, with the same words being repeated to us; we have to experience that separately, as individuals. We have to be able to understand ourselves as God made us, instead of listening to everyone around us tell us that its wrong, this is how you experience God. It would be like going to an art museum that you are so excited about, and there are so many different styles of art, and it can all be beautiful. But when you get there, you learn that there is only going to be one artist being displayed, and it isn’t the one you identify with, or like at all, but you have to say its beautiful in order to go into the art museum. I think many of us would just leave, or might go in and experience something less than we expected, or experience something the opposite of beautiful.
I wonder how arranged marriages, or any marriage if you don’t know the person, really work. I mean, you know nothing of this person, you have no joy or happiness experienced with this person, you have no interaction, and you don’t know if they love you exactly how you are, but you don’t experience that, so ultimately you don’t really know it, or enough to trust it. Love becomes a concept, or mechanism. You can describe it with words, what it should be, or what it should look like, but you don’t actually experience love. You have to come and say all of these vows that are so intimate and passionate, but could you possibly mean it if you have never experienced this person.
I wonder if a lot of people run from the image they have of God because they are told they are awful, disgusting, bad, and not saved, unless they say these certain words, and have this very specific belief, that is said to right all of humanity’s wrongs, if and only if you believe it this way (our way). I wonder if people had their own individual experience with God who is love, they might experience someone saying I love you, you are loveable just as your are, I know you passionately, I know you intimately, I have been in all of your experiences, and I love you still. I am your friend, your lover and I adore you; will you love me? God’s resounding voice. I think we would all have different experiences, but I don’t think I would see as many people running from God. I would hope to see more people experiencing God in a very personal way, that no one knows but God. You can keep that locked inside your own heart, where God says he interacts with you. Own and identify your experiences. Don’t let other people create your experiences for you.

To the Fractured Souls

A fractured soul finds the ultimate healer

Fracture: A) The act or process of breaking.  B) The condition of having been broken or ruptured.  

A friend of mine recently broke his hand.  The break occurred in the upper part of his hand, where the bone connects to your wrist.  Although he only broke one bone in his hand, he was undoubtedly useless doing certain things by himself.  It is clear that if you lose the use of something like your hand, you have a hard time functioning without it.  I am not saying this to say that people with out the use of their legs or hands are useless. It is just an example of something you are naturally used to having that effects your everyday way of living.  It takes away your ability to function without someone else’s help, or at least makes it more difficult, and it takes up a lot more time and energy to function like this.  If you are skeptical of this, try tying one hand, your more dominant hand, behind your back for the day and see how you feel.  My friend had to have surgery to fix the broken bone.  The doctor told him the longer he waited to fix the break the worse off his hand would be.  

I was able to get together to talk with my mother the other day.  We went for a drive by my childhood house, and my first school where I attended kindergarten, and just talked.  I was really struggling with some childhood memories with my father.  They were just kind of surfacing for me, so I had asked my mom to try and remember some things about me when I was younger, to get an idea of the lost memories, or things I just don’t not remember when I was younger.  We talked for awhile about a lot of hurts and pains you endure through out childhood, and your life.  We started to talk about the lies that develop about ourselves from other people, and how if you don’t let God’s love recondition those ideas about yourself it will eat away at your soul.  You will effortlessly break yourself apart without even understanding how it happens.  I got this vision of my friend with the broken hand, and how he seemed to struggled to do anything without the use of his hand, because it was so unnatural for him and painful to sit with a broken or fractured bone.  I saw myself, my soul rather, all full of fractures that keep reoccurring.  Fractures can go unnoticed for sometime without any pain, until one day with a certain amount of pressure, the fracture will just break.  Causing all kinds of problems and pain.  It is hard to understand how we human beings live out our lives with fractured souls.  Never healing what is broken or fractured.  All of these things we endure put a certain amount of pressure on the fractures that have occurred overtime, and without a doubt we all have some fractures, that without time to heal and maybe even unnoticed attention to it, they break.  We break.  Our souls don’t have the nutrients to sustain the pressure, and to correct the break on our own.  I experienced God in a different light with my mother and I sitting in the car.  I saw the ultimate healer, and I am broken and fractured all over.  All of it had gone unnoticed, unaware of what I had broken.  I am not able to function like I should, like I would want to.  In this unnatural, fallen state, I am fractured.  The extent to which you will not let God reconstructed these fractured mangled breaks in your soul, you will remain that much more paralyzed in your life.  Time is of the essence.  I am just starting to schedule all my appointments with God, to do some reconstructive surgery.  

If you let the person who created your soul, your heart, reconstruct it to where it should be, you’ll experience something so true about yourself.  God’s truth of who you are, as you were created to be.  You get lost along the way, endure some pressure on these fractures, and ultimately break yourself a part.  If you let God in with these things, or release these things over to God, God will always be able to reconstruct something beautiful.  

Proverbs 4:23  

“Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.”