Intimacy with God: Chapter Three

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"Trouble me, with all your cares and worries, Bother me with all your needs and doubts." -10,000 Maniacs

We were made to be dependent on God. This is the reality that we live in. For many of us though, bringing our lives consequently in line with this truth will require a paradigm shift - a re-thinking and re-ordering of the way we live our lives. To do this, we need to learn to see our selves as God does, to find our place in God's world.
When I was a boy there was a do-it-yourself ice cream parlor we used to go to. The set-up was a bit unconventional: You bought two scoops of ice cream, and then went through a self-serve line filled with all sorts of syrups and fruits and candies. My sister and I always loaded on so much chocolate, caramel, cashews, strawberries, bananas, coconuts, whipped cream, and anything else you can think to put on a sundae, that it would spill over on to our trays forming a little syrup lake. (Which to our parents horror we happily lapped up.) I hear the place eventually went bankrupt.
I used to view Heaven as sort of like that: a do-it-yourself paradise. Everyone's own version of what they personally thought perfection was. For you, Heaven would be one thing, for me another. But as C.S. Lewis said, "Heaven will look like it's made for you because you were made for Heaven." God's world isn't custom-made for us, we were custom-made for God's world.
Because of this, the best, indeed the only way to lead a fulfilled and realized life is to discover who we are and how we work as part of GodÕs creation. This is hard though, since our conception of how we define our selves and our desires has been warped to a degree both by our upbringing and our environment. And so we find ourselves seduced by the "fulfillment" of instant gratification, and intoxicated by the promise of "happiness" that escapism claims, or blinded by the "winner" status of the egotistical and selfish, until we have adapted a "sin is fun" outlook on life. In the movies, the bad guys get all the cool costumes, and even at church living dependently on God is often described in negative words like obedience and submission, bringing to mind a life resigned to becoming a blank-faced celibate somewhere in Africa surrounded by lots of dust.
This assumes a very uncreative and small God. Despite this Hollywood version of Holiness, it is sin that makes us boring. Psychologists can predict the exact behavior patterns that will dominate your life if you are the victim of a certain neurosis or addiction. Sin makes us the same, but only God can tell what the individual creative expression of your unique personality will become when it is freed to be itself.
Understanding God's will isn't some celestial version of "Eat your lima beans - they're good for you" (after all, God invented taste buds). When God places God's own desires in our hearts this is not forcing us to like something we hate, but rather helping us to find the desires that really fulfill us. Through this interaction we come to want what God wants, and our heart is back to normal, that is, free. This chapter will focus on how to do this in our daily life. Discovering what we, as God's creation, really want is a process. It is the result of an ongoing interaction between us and God. The Bible calls this the renewing of our minds; as we spend time with God, God's heart and desires rub off on us a little. It's about getting our hearts to beat with God's again, getting God's desires under our skin. This is possible through a life of abandonment - a life lived openly before, and rooted in God.

ALL YOUR HEART DESIRES

Even if we want to, understanding the desires God has placed in our hearts is, of course, easier said than done. We have a tendency to hear what we want, and rationalize situations to conform to our wishes. For instance, if a boy is attracted to the girl next door, he will unconsciously place a meaning behind every look, every nod that she gives him. "Did you see the way she smiled at me?!" he exclaims. Since he wants to see it, he does - even if it's not really there. Similarly, because of this rationalization process, even though God has put a desire in our heart, we may misinterpret what our heart is saying, because in order to act on a desire we must first decipher it in our mind.
This is where the concept of consecration (as the earlier Christian writers called it), or abandonment (as I am calling it here) comes into play - we consecrate, or abandon over our lives into God's care, recognizing our inherent dependency and living consequently in that reality. Practically that means not only bringing desires, hopes, cares, worries or troubles to God as we have done with our life as a whole, but goes a step further: After praying for instance that God guides or helps us in something, rather than jumping on the next open door that comes along, or general "feeling-of-peace-one-feels-when-doing-what-one-wants-to-do", an abandoned heart will bring this circumstance or impression before God as well, in a lifestyle of openness and honesty.
Living in harmony with the reality of our dependency takes some doing. Being dependent on God by God's strength is a very hard thing to do when we're so used to doing the opposite: "My striving for my understanding of how to be dependent on God by God's strength." It's been said that the beginning of all wisdom is to "know thyself." Coming behind all of our own ulterior motives and misconceptions to find what our hearts are really longing for is nearly impossible. We all carry a lot of baggage around with us, and there is always a chance that a cultural or emotional bias may crop up. But here lies the beauty in God's sovereignty: God is stronger than our weakness. The Bible teaches that we should come into the light (God's presence) so the deeds of darkness may be exposed. In other words, through being with God, these misconceptions will come to light. We donÕt need to go picking at scabs on our own, or digging in the backyard for bones we've buried. Doing so would be nothing more than attempting to be dependent on God by our own will, strength, and astuteness which is of course missing the point. God knows your faults. When the time is right, God will tell you about it.
What we should strive for is not to be aware of every possible deception and selfishness in us, but instead to constantly live openly before God - coming into the light and laying our lives before Him again and again. In this way the overlooked details will naturally become consecrated as they come into our awareness, just as a leaf is swept away by the flow of a river. This is what a life of abandonment is all about - a lifestyle of openness and honesty before God.

CASTING YOUR CARES

Jesus, in a parable of comical understatement, tells how two sparrows are sold for a penny yet God looks after them and provides for their needs. He then asks rhetorically, if we just might be worth more than a penny to God? Because of GodÕs care, Jesus tells us to be anxious for nothing. This goes of course completely against our grain. We are used to doing just the opposite, perpetually worrying about our problems, going over them again and again in our heads, churning and stirring them in the back of our mind until it's all we can see; rehashing scenarios and imagined mental conversations in a futile attempt to "solve" them for the umpteenth time. We've seen that we receive our needs from God through our interaction together. But what does it mean practically to "give" our cares, desires, or needs to God?
Our lives are a lot like little Harvey Stuttermeyer when he was struggling beneath the heavy weight of a cabinet. He strained with all his might against the burden, but just couldn't hold on any longer. In defeat, he dropped it, but it didn't fall! He looked around to see his father (Stanley Stuttermeyer), who had been holding the weight effortlessly the entire time. The boy never was lifting it - he had only been straining against something that was already being held.
One reason we cling so hard to our cares is the fear that if we give them to God it means that they will be lost. It seems to let go we need to cease to care, to forget about our needs. Didn't Jesus said not to worry? and if we don't worry about it, doesn't that mean that we don't care? So goes our reasoning, but giving something to God doesn't imply that it is abandoned or lost. Giving in this context means entrusting, as you would entrust an accountant to prepare your taxes for you, not because you do not care about them, but precisely because you do care and are confident that they will be in competent hands. The "abandonment" does not refer to neglect. We should not neglect doing all that we can, nor does it mean we cease to care, but it does mean that we cease to carry the burden ourselves. Abandonment refers to the openness of our heart. It has a lot to do with trust, or better, entrusting our needs into God's care.
Casting our cares is not some spiritual ATM machine transaction where you insert a promise or a faith-token and are zapped with spiritual power. God is personal and interacts though relationship. All God's gifts, anything you ever receive from God are always through relationship. They are not like cookies God hands out, separate from the giver - mom-cookie-child, giver-gift-receiver. When God gives us love, God is giving Himself, when God gives us peace, God gives Himself. And when God reveales his will, it is by sharing His heart. When we come to God with our hearts and needs, they are not met by some impersonal wave of spiritual "power". God does love us practically and instrumentally, but it is the interaction itself that leads to intimacy. Through it we get to know God and ourselves better, and thus grow closer.
These promises where never intended to be used as a formula, but to reveal God's character to us. When Mary's brother Lazarus became sick, she sent out for Jesus with the request that he would heal her brother's sickness. She was familiar with Jesus' healing and so was fully confident that he could heal her brother. His promise came back to her: "This sickness will not end in death", but then her brother died. Imagine how she felt. She had had plenty of faith, she even had a direct word from God to her specific situation. But she could not hold onto this promise now. The only thing she could hold onto was the character of God. The only thing she has left was the trust in who Jesus was.
Like Mary who saw her brother raised from the dead and her view of who Jesus was expanded, what we can expect from God when we come with our cares and needs is that the answer will often at the same time surprise us, and fulfill us. God does not answer our prayers in a bell-hop sense, God hears and answers you as a complete person.
Life had demonstrated to Mary two facts about reality, as Jesus said: "In this world you will have trouble, but take heart I have overcome the world". God promises us only one thing unconditionally: himself. God will never leave you, no matter how bad it gets. Paul, who certainly had his share of hardship writes:

The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

CLOSER TO INTIMACY

Trust is learned by experience, and as it grows, letting go becomes easier to do as we learn that our cares are in good hands. This is the difference between being careless, and carefree. When we entrust ourselves wholly to God, the result is not an empty shell, or a life of want, but the fulfillment of our needs and of our true potential as people.
The healing of our hearts takes time and the outward symptoms of our deeper problems may be the last to go. That's why we often ask God to heal us or forgive us only to have the problem crop up again later. Likewise, when we bring our cares to God in a lifestyle of trusting abandonment, chances are that they will show up on our doorstep again at first. This is not due to God refusing to answer our prayer because of a lack of faith, nor to an inability or unwillingness to help us in our need; but because intimacy and the healing of our hearts is a process.
In the following diagram, Josh McDowell traces the progression of trust in friendship that leads to intimacy which sheds light not only onto the development of human relationships, but of intimacy with God as well:

Trust - (leads to) - Vulnerability,
Vulnerability- (leads to) - Transparency,
Transparency- (leads to)- Intimacy

In McDowell's list the initial step is an assumed trust based on the other's integrity, (God seems to have good integrity); so we trust them with a little of ourselves, therefore making ourselves vulnerable. At this point the true character (transparency) of both parties is revealed by their response of vulnerable trust. Here the initial dangerous trust based on hope becomes a known resting trust based on knowledge - it is this deeper trust that leads to intimacy. It's the difference between knowing something in your head, and knowing it in your heart.
With God, we often feel guilty that we are not instantly intimate, or believe our fear of intimacy is unnatural. Many of us feel overwhelmed and frightened by God's love. This is all quite normal. Trust has not had a chance to settle in, and intimacy without trust is terrifying. It takes time for vulnerable trust to grow into resting trust. So don't worry if a care comes back, just bring it again. Think of it as an opportunity to be with God more, and through this contact trust will grow. As they say, practice makes perfect.

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