Faith, love, time and my friend SN

My friend SN was in a spiritual funk, a path I’ve been on several times. I’d like to share portions of what I wrote her, rewritten to suit this space.

Dear SN,

I'm sorry to hear you feel like you're "away" from God. Perhaps there are some things in your life you need to sort out. Our relationship with God is sometimes affected, strongly, by our relationship with our earth fathers and mothers. The father and mother wounds we have dictate how we see, appreciate and deal with God the Father.

Don't worry about not being "diligent." Our relationship with God is not a set of do's and don'ts—reading the Bible, praying, reaching out, etc.—no, never like that. Ours is really a relationship: dealing, talking, searching, hurting, processing, understanding. We deal with God out of the overflow of our hearts as to what He has done for such as unworthy as we.

Sometimes what we lack is awe, for a love as unfathomable as His.

And we lack reverential fear, at what He is and what He can do.

The world is too loud: it drowns out His still, small voice. But do not ever think that the God of the Old Testament has changed: He's still the same—powerful, majestic, holy. God of the OT flexes a muscle and the man holding the ark dies. He speaks, and a world is formed. This world that chooses to hurt Him so, He can wipe off the universe with a single word, a thought. But He chooses to love us gently, inspite of.

Reading His Word is just like wanting to hear a beloved's voice. Approach it that way. Know that the author wrote it for you, you whom He formed with such care, attention and love.

The Lord is a big guy. He can take all your ranting, and not blink. I've had numerous occasions to just rail at Him, to wrestle with Him, but He knows me so well, as He should—He made me, after all—and what I do doesn't surprise Him. But what I do can hurt Him, grieve Him.

When I run away from Him, it is not so much that He gets angry or wrathful and brings the heavens down on me (as He could, but doesn't), but it's more that He gets grieved at the willful rejection. Like we would, if we were to be rejected.

God is a loving Father and desires no more than to be yours. For us He made an entire world, and peopled it for us. What we do—fellowship, worship, quiet time, prayer—is really just our response to Him. It is not borne out of guilt or duty, but of love.

Ours is a heart-to-heart relationship, a spirit calling out to a Spirit. God always looks to the heart, not to the letter of the law. My prayer is that you would really hear Him speak to you, to encounter Him in fresh, new ways that will make your relationship with Him flower and just come alive, that you would be so sensitive to Him that you would hear Him, always, on the street, while you work, as you sleep.

Love,
J