Roles or Relationship?

When I was younger and thinking about faith, my question used to be “what CAN God do?” Now that question has changed. Now I ask “what WILL God do?” The change in the relationship surprised me when this hit me the other day – the first was about existence; the second is about trust.

Before God blew out of the box I’d put Him in, I thought He was pretty easy to understand. The roles were neatly defined: He was God; I was human. He saved me; I had a duty to serve Him.

The problem with the whole scenario was the number of times I walked the church aisle to rededicate my life to the Lord. The problem was that no matter how good I was, how much I served, there was always more good to be, more service to offer. God would use me up and pour me out for His glory and His purposes and that was all I needed to know. My desires didn’t figure in unless I wanted something He wanted (so nothing “worldly” was okay), my needs were irrelevant because of course God would supply them – and if He didn’t, I wasn’t trusting Him enough or praying right or being content enough or believing enough that His grace was sufficient.

I think He’d had enough of my box. Enough of my careful arranging to please Him and justify myself to Him and everybody else. So He asked me to wait on Him. And when I say wait, I mean WAIT. Things that HAD to happen just didn’t happen. Relationships blew apart. Practical daily needs started cropping up and not being met. And when the big need, the one I was scared to pray about, hit and I didn’t see it getting met the way I expected it… Well, that’s when He managed His way out of my box. When He let me shake my fist in His face and tell Him exactly what I thought of Him and how He had “used” me in the past and said, “okay, now what?”

And I said, “now what?” too.

Because I just shook my fist in SOMEONE’S face. Because this Someone wouldn’t be manipulated or controlled by me or anything I did. He wasn’t saying “if you, then I will” – He was saying “You BE, and I’ll BE, and we’ll have a relationship.”

It was invitation, not obligation. It was grace, not duty.

I ask myself sometimes why if I was so capable of being good and doing right, why did I stop being good and doing right? And the answer comes: “It felt like a lie.” The truest things I did didn’t look “good” or “right” to people, even to my closest friends. In fact, sometimes they weren’t visible at all. They were spirit things, a kinder heart, a more honest love, an upward tilt of my soul that changed my perspective.

My mind was – still is – being renewed. And transformation? It works from the inside out. I couldn’t teach a class on what the Holy Spirit did in me. I kick myself because I don’t have more “lessons” to impart, no seven-step formulas, no hard-and-fast principles.

I don’t even have “more faith.” I have only the measure that was given to me, that “He is and He is who He says He is.” It’s a mustard seed for sure, and not much for moving mountains on my volition.

But when every day is a mountain, when there are five steps to getting dressed and I can’t find the pants I was going to wear and have to sit down and start over and end up showering instead, when I sit down at my computer to rack out projects and meet obligations and then I get lost on the way to… what was it I started again?

I am not good anymore. I don’t have the energy to BE good. I don’t have the energy to be bad, either – I can just BE. And every day I ask myself what I CAN do, and ask God what He WILL do. And some days it feels like He won’t do much, because He’s got other things He’s sharing with me, things like humility and rest and truth and stuff that has nothing to do with anything on my priority list.

I know He CAN make me feel better, can change the kids’ hearts and get them to chill out, can just miraculously dispense with time and spread it out so I get more done – but He doesn’t always. He lets me fall, lets me make a mess out of my life – not because I’m trying, but just because I am dust – and then He comes in with all this compassion and reminds me that He is still Him and that because He’s Him, Jesus is enough for me, Jesus means that He can be there even if I do the things I don’t want to do.

When it boils down, He wants me to know Him, and to know that I am deeply known by Him and loved just as I am. He’s not on a one-track improvement mission in my life, taking me up a spiritual ladder. He’s working through me, soaking Himself into my soul, blowing out darkness with His light and being who He is.

I’ve been thinking that I need focus to get my life more solidly on track, but really, I think I need wonder. I need to just see Him work, sit right here and watch Him move through my life. I need to wait like a child, impatient for love and attention, less willing to run ahead of One who asks me to trust Him, more willing to believe He knows more than I do.