lost in the woods.

I’m just going to come out and say it with complete honesty; I’ve been really struggling lately. The mind is a powerful thing and it can cause you to believe or disbelieve things based on your current understanding or your capacity to fully understand. I know that statement probably only makes sense to me and me alone, but the bottom line is….I’ve really been struggling with my view of God lately. This post isn’t a confession of all my sins and short comings because dear Lord, who has enough time in their day to write all that, but its more a transparent confession of where I’m at in my relationship with God. Knowing that this post has the potential to be a mile long and in my attempt to summarize the best I can, simply put, I’m struggling with this warped view of God.

Example: Those times where I fall short and do the things I know I am called to live above, I feel this immense guilt that God is just standing by my side with his finger firmly and ever so stable pointed in my direction, shaking his enormous glaring face at me in utter disappointment and anger. The guilt consumes me more than the desire to ask and accept forgiveness. The guilt makes me feel like I’m never good enough, always a screw up and laughably unworthy.

As I drove around hashing this all out with God…it quickly became ‘story time’ with God himself. Knowing the heart of God, the immense depth and pure adoration and compassion for his creation, I know without a shadow of a doubt that my struggling view of him is nothing but simply that…a view, not the truth. My mind just can’t seem to comprehend God’s unconditional, unfailing love lately. I just can’t seem to wrap my head around it. As I gripped my steering wheel (okay, let’s be honest…as I drove with my knee) while explaining to God in as much detail as possible that I knew he was mad at me and if he could just put down his sternly pointed finger and stop shaking his head in disappointment for just one minute that I could just beg and plead with him how I know how big of a screw up I am and how if he could just forgive me one more time, I would make promises to fulfill all the duties I felt he expects of me. (yes, I realize now how dumb and foolish that sounds.)

Out of breath and sobbing, knowing that the God of the universe could hear me and does hear me and not only that, but knows my heart…I got this moving picture in my head. This detailed picture of someone settling for a cheap imitation of the real thing (truth, wisdom, health, love, you name it…) and a man standing behind them filled with sorrow and pain, knowing that the void they were trying to fill would only fill it temporarily. The man standing was grieving for the other, overwhelmed with emotion…so vivid that you could see on the outside that his heart was breaking within.

As the picture became engraved in my mind, my view of God became rapidly different…again. It’s hard to understand that when you disobey God or do things so outside of your purpose that the one you are choosing to live for will undeniably still claim you as his own. Its even more difficult to wrap your head around the fact that when we separate ourself from God, through sin, he doesn’t  react in anger, but in love. In fact, it’s even harder to accept.

I continued to drive with no sound, but the noise of the street echoing through my sunroof. I contemplated how I got to this point and how and when my view of God rapidly became everything but the truth. As scary as the thought was, of being unaware of my current reality, even more dangerous was the result I began to see had taken place from this warped view. It’s a dangerous, lonely, vulnerable place to be in when all you feel is guilt and never good enough. When you heart and mind are that susceptible, everything else becomes open to deception. When I view God as someone who I can never please and will never be good enough for, I get this uncomfortable feeling that feels like an elephant is sitting on my chest. I begin to give up in other areas because why try or give effort towards something you believe is unachievable?! But when I allow myself to believe the truth about what the Bible teaches us about God, I have this sense of hope, that even in spite of all of my shortcomings (ones past and those undeniably to come) the God of the universe loves me with a love not based on my reaction or lack there of. I was reminded on that drive that God doesn’t shake his head in disappointment, but looks at us with love, reminding us that he is the only one to fill the void we constantly reopen within our hearts. He doesn’t point his finger at us in blame, but opens his hand to us in support and continues to wipe off all the dirt we childishly roll around in.

Donald Miller’s blog post today was encouraging to me. He mentioned “… it’s never actually helped me to “work on my spirituality or my relationship with Jesus either. What has helped me is finding myself lost in the woods and calling out to God, looking for wisdom in the scriptures.” He goes on to say, “The idea is that faith makes sense in the context of some other pursuit.” Man, is that true, especially in my journey/rollercoaster with God. My relationship with Jesus and my knowledge of him and who I am has come through sob-fests in my car, the random puzzle and tree analogies I come across and through experiencing some of the greatest and worst heartache in my life. It’s in those pursuits that I realize He’ll never stop pursuing me. It’s not about my circumstance(s) and it won’t ever be, it’s about his love, grace and forgiveness that I find, at times, so unworthy of accepting.