When I sit down to pray, I usually have this idea that God is all powerful.
And I think he IS but I often wrongly think that He has so much power that it takes him out of the real world.
Like I’ll sit for 15 minutes and try to pray through something I’m dealing with and when nothing seems to happen, I think it’s all God’s fault. I did my part so why didn’t he do his.
But I wonder if it’s more like a real relationship. My girlfriend and I have been working through some stuff, and a lot of my issues have been coming out. And it’s like a battle, in some ways, with myself. We have to push and fight for the hard victories. Once we find my wrong thinking, who knows how much work it will take to work my thinking out of those holes.
I also want to give a plug for a book that’s coming out. I have an advanced copy because he’s in my writing group, but Nick Cappa’s book Heaven Breaks In is like C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters but it is written from the perspective of the angels as they fight for the hearts of humans.
In the book their battle for the humans is waged not only with physical battle among the spiritual beings, but on thoughts, and discouragements, words exchanged, deep seated mindsets, situations, and friendships experienced by the people. I doubt anyone can imagine exactly what it’s like in the spiritual realm but the book really reminds me that I can’t blame God for not simply solving everything. It is so complex, and it may take hours and hours of prayer, and then the perfectly timed word from a friend, mixed with a willful change in my own habits, to change anything. God’s trying to reach me, but I and the world have put a lot of barriers in my way from which I must unbury myself to see him. I must fight and fight to see him. While He is fighting and fighting to help us see him.
I don’t think I can just say, “God, you didn’t show up and solve everything. So I’m off the hook.”
Raw Spoon, 6-28-16
