Daily Archives: May 31, 2024
Could I please come in?
Image from buraratn on Freepik.com
I had a dream. In it there was this sign that read: Could I please come in? I had been praying for God’s guidance on another matter, but He wanted me to focus on a concept that spoke to me on both issues. I thought, Has that been the problem that caused me to struggle with two completely different ones? He had been asking me to let Him in. Filter out the noise. Stop thinking about the many things that needed done. Take time away from my schedule to concentrate on Him.
Had I become so familiar with many years of being a Christian that the essentials of my relationship with our Father was one of saying, “God, you know me. You know the struggles my wife, Karen and I face. Need I bring them before you again and again? You’re not hard of hearing. I don’t need to shout at you. You hear the still small voice that speaks in the silence when we don’t have the words to express our great need of You.”
If Karen had seen me laying in bed thinking she would have said, “What are you thinking about? I can smell the wood burning.”
I became acutely aware that God hadn’t received as much of my time as He should have. How could our Father speak to me if I even for a moment justified my busyness as acceptable? God wants all of us, not just part of us.
We can become too familiar with God. We need to try and remember this is the God who created us we are speaking with.
We can deceive ourselves into thinking He’ll understand if we slip in our spiritual disciplines for just a little while. Have you noticed, though, how that brief straying from your private devotions gets longer?
Why do we think five minutes with God will give us the godly discernment we need in our relationships with our spouses, family, friends and colleagues? Perhaps it is because there are so many devotional books that give you your five-minute spiritual supercharge. They are advertised as having the ability to deepen your connection with God. These books have their place. If they get us thinking more about God that’s a good thing. We need to be careful about them becoming the sole source of our spiritual nourishment.
How many of us have a full stomach after eating half a sandwich? Most of us need one. I prefer having two. Spending a little bit of time with God is like having half a sandwich. It doesn’t give you the energy you need for the rest of the afternoon. I’ve tried it. I’m feeling sleepy before it’s 2 p.m.
It’s easy to get caught up in the lies we tell ourselves.
I’m a good Christians. I care about others. I do whatever I can to help those in need.
We may visit the sick in their homes or in the hospital. We profess to God in acts of service that we love Him. Isn’t that enough? That’s more than most people do. If there was a statistic for how much we show our faith we would be above average. That’s something to be proud of. Isn’t it?
But when God challenged me to turn the request please let me in into the question Could you please let me in?, the central problem became crystal clear. The Lord was challenging me about the state of my relationship with Him.
We risk becoming too dogmatic in setting up the conditions that must be met before we can feel God’s presence.
If every step we take towards Him had to be done in a certain way, how many of us would miss out on the blessing of feeling His presence?
Just come to our Father as you are with all your sin.
Let Him give you the present of peace within.
Come to God with everything you’re feeling.
Anger
Frustration
Rage
Sorrow
Loneliness
Doubt
Fear
and how God also loves to hear your thankfulness and joy for who He is – for how much He loves you.
In all you experience God is there at the center of it with His abiding presence.
But what about those who go through most of their lives without sensing the living presence of God?
For almost 50 years that was the experience of Mother Teresa.
“That absence seems to have started at almost precisely the time she began tending the poor and dying in Calcutta, and–except for a five-week break in 1959–never abated. Although perpetually cheery in public, the Teresa of the letters lived in a state of deep and abiding spiritual pain. In more than 40 communications, many of which have never before been published, she bemoans the “dryness,” “darkness,” “loneliness” and “torture” she is undergoing. She compares the experience to hell and at one point says it has driven her to doubt the existence of heaven and even of God. She is acutely aware of the discrepancy between her inner state and her public demeanor.
“The smile,” she writes, is “a mask” or “a cloak that covers everything.” Similarly, she wonders whether she is engaged in verbal deception. “I spoke as if my very heart was in love with God–tender, personal love,” she remarks to an adviser. “If you were [there], you would have said, ‘What hypocrisy.’” Says the Rev. James Martin, an editor at the Jesuit magazine America and the author of My Life with the Saints, a book that dealt with far briefer reports in 2003 of Teresa’s doubts: “I’ve never read a saint’s life where the saint has such an intense spiritual darkness. No one knew she was that tormented.” Recalls Kolodiejchuk, Come Be My Light’s editor: “I read one letter to the Sisters [of Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity], and their mouths just dropped open. It will give a whole new dimension to the way people understand her.”1
Who would have known beneath that smile there was this tortured soul?
She did everything she could think of to feel God being with her, but there was only this empty void of loneliness.
Great is her faith for continuing to believe in the absence of God’s presence.
We can’t fake it ‘til we make it. God will know if we’re trying to fool Him. We need not waste our energy pretending. Just get honest. Don’t think you have to have it all figured out. You don’t. God does. He is, after all, our Lord.
“As we draw near to God, He will draw near to us. And day by day, the hope of God’s light will grow within us “- Dieter F. Uchtdorf
Father, help us to have that be our daily prayer.
Please reflect upon these Scripture memory verses sung by Stephanie J. Yeager. I pray they will draw you closer to God.
Dr. Kevin Osborne is the Vice-President for Student Affairs for St. James the Elder University. He is a doctor of theology candidate through SJTEU. He is s therapist, writer, poet, and singer. He helps people in their inner healing journey. Dr. Osborne lives in Timmins, northern Ontario, Canada, with his wife, Karen. She is the Registrar for SJTEU. Karen has a B.A. in Clinical Christian Counseling from St. James the Elder University. Karen is a writer, editor, and missionary of the heart.
Source:
Mind's Seat 