God’s Search For You
How often do we say that something is “in God’s hands” and want to believe it?
For some of us, one of the most difficult aspects of prayer is that it demands so much faith and trust in God.
Do we really believe that He is listening to us? Isn’t it easier to do things ourselves than to put it in His hands? Sometimes, it seems hard enough just to stop working or worrying long enough to spend time with God in prayer, let alone having the trust to turn over our lives to Him and let Him handle our worries.
Our life with God is supposed to be an intimate relationship that works much the same as the relationships we have with others. If we feel as though we have to do everything ourselves, we find ourselves not only doing everything alone but after awhile, are very much alone. Because we lack the trust to ask for help, eventually, we become isolated and it becomes difficult to talk or listen to others.
If, however, we work with others and let them share with us, we grow in an awareness of our essential communion with other people; and because we have shared responsibilities and play, sorrow and joy, we find it much easier to communicate verbally and non-verbally as well.
From this very human fact of our experience, we should learn something about our relationship with God. Because He is the most important relationship in our lives, we should trust Him and let Him into the practical, day-to-day side or our lives. We should let God act and not shut Him out. If we do allow Him in, our relationship takes on all kinds of new dimensions. We have much to talk to Him about because He has been sharing the whole day with us. He’s been there with us so we can be silent together in the day’s failures and/or successes.
In order to reach this stage, however, we have to be able to put some things in God’s hands and trust Him. For most of us, this is easier said than done.
The person who can put things in God’s hands and trust Him grows daily in the knowledge that for him who loves God, all things work together unto good. Out of the great sorrows and pain of my life come goodness, beauty and insight I never had before. French novelist, Leon Bloy (1846-1917) once said that there are places in the human heart which do not yet exist, and into the heart comes suffering, that they might have existence. Out of such a heart prayer rises naturally as thanksgiving for the wholeness of everything that is, as a hymn to God who draws good even out of what was thought as evil.
Most of our own anxieties about communing with God, I believe, come from what preachers, authors and acquaintances say they experience. The constant “high” that many share, is usually very different from the darkness and emptiness we often feel. In truth, God comes to each one of us in His own way and time and in the manner best suited to each person. He doesn’t come according to a manual or primer of prayer, but according to our need and readiness for Him.
Even when faith is low, many of us keep praying because contrary to what many “pray-er’s” proclaim, common sense tells us that God is more loving and aware of who we are and what we need that those advisers in the spiritual life who are more like Job’s accusers than wise men of the Spirit.
God loves each and every one of us. If only we could hold to that above everything else. We long to believe it but others sometimes make us doubt it because they don’t seem to care. And, of course, what we can see and hear and touch affects us more that what we believe. It is only when belief conquers experience that we are truly men and women of faith.
The search for God ends up in the end to be God’s search for you. You take so many wrong turns just where you might have met Him at some corner of your life. But in the end, He surprises you by finding you looking for him in the wrong direction. God comes your way, no matter how far afield you are. That is the story of God; He goes out of His way for his children. You are that important; that is the story of man.
