God wants the opposite of whatever I want. After some time processing with friends this morning that’s the statement I came to. It is a statement of the way I view God. Now before you call me a heretic and pull out a Bible to throw verses at me, let me clarify. My study of Scripture and my past experience tell me this is not true, and I believe that. But on a deeper level, one I can’t just decide to change, I live as though it is true.
Here’s how it plays out in my life right now—I assume because we want to move and do what God has called us to do that we won’t be able to. At the very least we will have to scrape to get by in Denver for another year or two, working odd jobs and never having any time together as a family. The moment I began hoping our house would sell so we could move when I finish at Southern Gables was the moment it became a lock that it wouldn’t happen.
This view contradicts my own experience. I look back on the past five years of our life and I can give many examples of how God has answered our prayers. It’s easy to believe in God’s faithfulness in the past, not quite as easy in the present.
I don’t think I’m the only one who deals with this view of God, and it has a couple disastrous outcomes. 1) We don’t believe prayer is “powerful and effective.” When we start to believe that God wants the opposite of what we want prayer becomes impotent. I pray for our house to sell, but I don’t believe that prayer makes any difference. I pray, but I don’t “wait with expectation” to see what God will do. 2) We lose joy. If the God we serve wants to rob us of the things we desire, even when He gives us the desire (and here I don’t mean possessions, he may want to rob us of those for our own good, but even kingdom-focused things), then it is difficult to take joy in Him or in serving Him.
I have begun praying that the Holy Spirit will remove this view of God from me. It might seem ironic that I’m praying for something because I often don’t believe prayer makes a difference, but I have seen God change me in the past and believe He can do it again. I want to believe whole-heartedly that God is a good Father who loves to give us good gifts. And I want to be filled with expectation and hope when I pray.
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2 comments:
Just spending the day here apparently rather than writing on my own project... But I loved this post - and related to it far more than I would actually like to admit. Umm, yeah, leaving it there, but thanks for this.
Thanks for sharing that.
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