Not Looking At The Sky So Much

I figured out this past week that it doesn't help me a ton to always look at the sky when I pray, when I seek God. I am not doing it as often, and I found myself a few times glancing up when I wanted to talk to God, and feeling a little pull on my chin from something in my chest. It was like a little tug from my heart, with a reminder, "I am not up THERE. I am right HERE. Talk to me HERE."

Flashback to June: A British woman I met in Spain asked me an unsolicited question after a Spanish church service. I was sitting quietly, with my heart aching within me after hearing testimonies that week from people who had come to Christ out of Islam and found this amazingly loving, personal God. What should have been celebration in my heart (and a little was) was far more jealousy. There was a clarity, a joy, a spark, a hope in them that was so far from what I felt. It looked exactly like what they say non-believers should see in Christians, drawing them to the love and hope of Christ. Instead, here I was, a believer of 30 years, a missionary, realizing I was missing out on something amazing that I should know about, that I should have. I wanted it and I was a failure because I didn't have it and I didn't get it. I was a phony.

This dear woman came and sat next to me. I could barely speak. She asked me if I ever just held my hands open and received from God. Did I ever just sit in a chair, hands spread wide, telling Him I was willing to receive, not grasp, not clutch, not wrestle to receive more of Him? Did I ever just open my heart and receive?

No.

After that trip, where I had experienced the most significant spiritual warfare I had known to date (terrible, condemning voices all night during my last night in Spain, telling me what a failure I had been, what an embarrassment to my organization I was, that I had no business being at these meetings, that I never should have come--I didn't know it was a spiritual attack until someone pointed it out later), I came home and tried to ask God if I could just receive from Him. I felt so beat up, so battered, so confused, and so needy.

I discovered there were some things I had to drop out of my hands before I could receive. I thought I was holding my empty hands out flat, even cupped a little to catch whatever He wanted to bring. But it took a bit of time to discover I was holding some views and beliefs about God that were preventing more than a trickle of grace or love from pooling in my hands, much less pouring powerfully over my heart.

It's October, my favorite season is here, and I am learning to let go of what I think I know about God, and what he feels for me and expects of me, for what I can't help but find over and again in Scripture is the truth of his nearness and love. He isn't pouring out His love and peace from some distant corner of sky, from stone tablets, from behind the thick, heavy curtain of the Holy of Holies.

He's got His hands cupped under and around mine, sitting across from me, held up close to His face where His breath fills and warms my fingers and palms and stirs new things in my heart and spirit and soul.

Hebrews 8:8b-13, The Message (emph. mine)

Heads up! The days are coming
when I'll set up a new plan
for dealing with Israel and Judah.
I'll throw out the old plan
I set up with their ancestors
when I led them by the hand out of Egypt.
They didn't keep their part of the bargain,
so I looked away and let it go.
This new plan I'm making with Israel
isn't going to be written on paper,
isn't going to be chiseled in stone;
This time I'm writing out the plan in them,
carving it on the lining of their hearts.
I'll be their God,
they'll be my people.
They won't go to school to learn about me,
or buy a book called God in Five Easy Lessons.
They'll all get to know me firsthand,
the little and the big, the small and the great.
They'll get to know me by being kindly forgiven,
with the slate of their sins forever wiped clean.

By coming up with a new plan, a new covenant between God and his people, God put the old plan on the shelf. And there it stays, gathering dust.