Where I am with God

It is my assignment this week for CR to write out where I am with God so that it may be compared with where I am with God in 22 weeks when the 12-step program is over. I thought I'd share this with you and you can offer any insight or encouragement if you want to.

For the most part, what I know to be true about God and the way I feel about him are extremely different and often conflicting. For example, it makes sense to me that God is a loving, merciful, tender God who has counted the hairs on my head and wants his light to shine in every area of my life. But the way I feel about God is that he is some kind of control-monger who just wants to own me and use me. I feel like he just wants me to know how powerful he is and how little my actions affect him, right or wrong. I feel like he just wants to have his way regardless of what I think or feel. When I feel far from him, I think, "how is it that my wife can spend lots of time and energy pursuing Christ and I can spend almost none, and we can still feel the same amount of discouragement?"

In general, I feel mad and resentful toward God because I think of him the way I think of most of the Christian leaders in my life growing up: as invulnerable perfectionists, power-hungry, controlling, manipulative, efficient and success/purpose-driven. Like these leaders, I feel like God is always trying to put the blame on me and just wants me to sit in my pain as long as possible sometimes.

As a result, I haven't spent time much in solitary prayer (my wife and I pray often together) and I have almost no desire to read the bible, and have never developed a habit of doing so. I should mention that I contributed to these feelings with my own pride, laziness, selfishness, lack of faith and trust in God. I haven't helped that situation by trying to escape for so long and deny that this is an issue whatsoever.

I do have hope that God will heal me of my bitterness from past church experiences and make me whole again. There are evidences of his love every day and I want to hold on to and look for those. I want to believe fully that God is good and that his way is better, and that no matter what hurts occur in the body of Christ, that he is big enough to heal those bitter wounds. I want to believe that he is worth my time and energy and love.