The God They Gave You

In our efforts to open our hearts, minds and spirits to God in our lives, one of the major obstacles is the image of God we have unknowingly created. Thomas Keating says, The spiritual journey has a great difficulty in getting off to a good start if we are carrying a load of unexamined and unquestioned negative attitudes toward God.[i]

No one is immune. We each create an image of God out of our childish experiences and also through the way we saw our authority figures in our lives. That is not God. That is the God they gave you. Most often the spiritual journey is about breaking away from that God into ever broadening experiences.

Jesus taught us to see God just as we see Him. He gives us a great tool and spiritual exercise that will aid us on our spiritual journey of knowing God for who He really is. Matthew 6:6,9 are parts of Jesus’ teaching about prayer, But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you….Pray then like this: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Praying is the spiritual discipline that leads you to a more authentic experience of God. You may learn how to pray by praying with others, but the best kind of praying happens behind closed doors. All that matters then is your heart and your God. God is in the secret place, God is in secret. Never pray as if you know what God thinks or feels. Pray to the God who is in secret. He is the God you want to know. He is the God who is real and mysterious and majestic and sovereign. He is more than your mind can conceive. But if you need to conceive Him, think of Him like your Father. Think of Him like a Father unlike the best father on earth. Think of Him as a Father who will reward what happens in secret.

Jesus gave us a great tool to increase our experience of God as He really is when He taught us to pray to Our Father. Just those two words are packed with wonder about the God who is our Father. He is a Father who is in heaven. He is hallowed. His name is above all names.

The God they gave me is so far from the God I am coming to know. Though I am confident of the God I know, I know for sure that the God I know is not who God is. He is above my own knowledge and experience. He asks more of me than I could ever imagine. He wants me to give Him my whole heart and that is when I begin to understand Him.

Your spiritual journey of knowing God should make you more aware that He is more wonderful than you previously imagined and far beyond the goodness you could attribute to Him.

A Pilgrimage that Started with Tears

Who would think I would shed tears deciding to set out on a wonderful journey that I have longed to take for many years? Before I was ready to fully accept God’s invitation for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, I had to journey to a place of agreement between what my soul wanted and what the Lord wanted for me. For years I have been declining opportunities to travel to Israel—not because I didn’t want to go but because I wanted to go with my husband by my side. I know that God could have arranged that for me, but instead He asked me to accept that He wanted me to be willing to go and leave everything behind. When I was asked to make a decision about going on a Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, God gave me this verse in answer to my prayer -- Debi, observe therefore all the commands I am giving you today, so that you may have the strength to go in and take over the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess (Deuteronomy 11:8). I decided through tears that I would go on

Day Nine - Journey's End

I didn't think I could write today, but do to bad weather we now have extra time at the airport. Today we looked over the model city and I can't believe all I have learned. Some of the excavations since the model was completed reveal differences in what they built in the model. What amazed me was that I could see what wasn't where I expected based on what I experienced. Here is a wide view of the Model City which is 1:5 scale. It was created by a Jewish man who wanted his son to understand what Jerusalem was once like. Someone said that if you didn't see Jerusalem during the time of Herod the Great, you have never seen a beautiful city. Do you understand what I mean about how grand this Temple was? Next we saw the Dead Sea Scrolls. I learned a lot about the Essenes. They lived like monks today. Like Jesus, they were not happy with the way the Temple was being run and they came to the desert to offer truly holy sacrifices, untainted by the mismanage

Not Treating Others as Their Sins Deserve

Turning the other cheek has become a Christian cliché. These beautiful and penetrating words of Jesus are minimized when we humans try to apply them without God. The best we can do to achieve Jesus’ description in our power is repress our anger about the way someone sins against us. This only serves to make us look stupid to the world, creates ulcers, or causes an unplanned, embarrassing, public explosion of anger. Jesus spoke these words and many others like them to invoke the spiritual understanding that it is impossible to live out His directions for our lives without Him. He has no intention of our trying to take His work on in our flesh. It happens all the time in marriages and other relationships where one person who thinks they need to be a certain way to please God centers his or her relationships around keeping peace. I don’t believe that kind of turning the other cheek is very pleasing to God. No, God is inviting us

AnonymousOctober 14, 2011 at 5:17 AM
My extraordinary parents did me the great favor of introducing me to God and they did a pretty good job of it. I was also lucky enough to have an earthly father whose primary goal was to emulate his Father in heaven. So, yes, as I have matured in my faith, gaining personal knowledge of the Bible and personal experience with my Saviour, I have grown in my understanding - but what a great foundation I got from Ruth and George.

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