Calendar

10/20/2008

Thoughts

In the school of prayer, as published by the Covenant Church, the idea of the Christian life is described as an intimate relationship with God through his Son Jesus. 'If my word remains in you' John 15, 'This is eternal life, that you may know the one true God, and his son Jesus Christ.' John 17

Relationships are interesting. Pinning them down is impossible as the perspective of any side of a relationship might be a universe away from the other side. But such situations make for interesting stories as Shakespeare loved to emphasize. There are two ingredients to a relationship, first is position or office. These can be titled as father, child, wife, husband, friend, etc. Such labels can provide a framework for what the relationship should look like but reality is another thing.

The second ingredient is vulnerability or exposure. Unless you are ready to reveal yourself as you are, you will not experience any depth in your relationship. (I'm not talking only physical here but aligning ourselves with God's Holiness and confessing how we've missed the mark in relation to him or to others.)

Experiencing fatherhood is very exciting. I now have five kids and each relationship is unique because each child is unique. Of the five, three are adopted and one when he was 3 years old. My desire for him and me to have a relationship as strong as the others is true, but in experiencing it, I realize that he does not have the capacity for a deep relationship. Is it because of scars and wounds of abandonment as a young child? There could be many reasons but I know his shallow approach to connections leave him vulnerable to petty lies to cover his tracks on issues he perceives and relationship killers and I'm sure he doesn't want to experience abandonment again.

God as our adoptive Father also desires a relationship with us and yet we are universes away from understanding his perspective of what that relationship looks like. Is it because we sense the abandonment of our relationship to Him from our inherently sinful nature and therefore are ready to settle for a shallow sense of belonging when we think he might possible be interested in us? What capacity do we actually have that we might experience this relationship which Scripture describes as his desire towards us as the most awesome love known to man, as well as in the form of adoption?

For those of us who were adopted into His family at a young age we know God's voice and can respond to it as heard it long ago (my sheep will hear my voice.) but I'm not sure that gives us a greater capacity to understand the deepth of God's love unto us. Sometimes it's the man or woman who have been rescued from the great depth of sin that have had their capacity expanded and show a great appreciation for God's saving grace.

No matter what your spiritual heritage, take some time today to ask God to allow you to go deeper in your relationship with him. This is not easy, replacing the shallowness with something meaningful. It means reveling deep levels of pain or hurt or sin so He can take it from you and tell you He loves you. Those items we might consider to be relationship killers if he were to ever find out, surprise, he already knows and continues to love you. So agree with him that you need Him and love Him and want to have a better relationship with Him. There are no relationship killers from his perspective.