where are you? Where is God?

He is supposed to be there when things are falling apart - why cant I feel Him? He is supposed to give us the strength - yet I am falling apart. He is supposed to carry us, be our light.

Why do I feel all alone in the dark?

We (the girls bible study) have decided that we are going to read the chapter before the actual bible study so we have more time to discuss it. This weeks chapter is on Submission, which I started today. Its crazy I cant even read a full chapter and its only 8 pages long - I am really struggling with being exhausted.

Anyway - submission. This is a concept I have struggled with as I was taught submission to be a negative thing. I also associate it with negative things in my past and so I find submission really hard. However in the bible submission isnt a negative thing. In the bible submission is full of love and reverance.

The past few days I have been looking particularly at Proverbs 3:5-6. I have been considering my questioning of God and my trust of Him. Now I am wondering if this is all related to submission - not the verses in Proverbs but the things I have been considering.

My past makes me fear submission, and makes it hard for me to trust. I have never really considered how this might affect my relationship with God. This made me really think about how my past affects the way I veiw God and how I relate to him.

I like thinking of God as the loving, forgiving Father that he is. But I dont spend time thinking of Him as the fearful, all powerful, selfish God - the vengeful God that is seen in the Old Testment. I see God as loving, forgiving, a protector who will guide me and give me the strength I need to get through things.

I do see him as the creator of all things and in that I recognise his power however when looking at this power I am admiring the beauty of His creation. I dont think of our Lord as the angry vengeful all powerful God. The God who showed his fury on the Egypt - killing the first born of all those who were not his chosen. I have trouble putting these two pictures of God together, to me they are so opposite.

I suppose no one really likes thinking about God's rightous anger, however I now wonder if I shy away from it more because of my past. I myself have not felt anger - ever really I have been getting closer lately feeling annoyed and frustrated but never full anger. Anger frightens me, and the idea of all powerful God being angry? That is terrifying.

However if I dont try and see God as all that he is how can I love Him? And if I constantly only focus on the loving forgiving God I am likely to see Him more as friend than as the Almighty who has authority over everything. And this is where submission comes in - we are told in the Bible to submit to God - to his authority.

I apologise if this post doesnt make much sense or is muddled. A lot of it came to me as I was writing and was not full thought through. As I began writing about what I had thought it lead me on a bit of a tangant but a good one I think that needs considering.

I missed reading my bible yesterday, for those of you who follow my other blog, Multiplicity, you will know this is because I have been sick. I did however take time to pray and think some more about Proverbs 3:5-6 and to reflect on my own thoughts as well as the comment by Sunshine (which was much appreciated).

I am beginning to think that maybe that maybe he is not challenging me to stop questioning but to TRUST more. I thought I trusted God and I do in a way but thinking about my relationship with God I realised that I see him as one aspect of my life and not the centre in which I rely on.

I am not sure how to change this and prehaps this blog and trying to read my bible everyday is a start to this but I dont know how to make myself trust God more. I dont know how to rely on him completely. I want to believe God is always with me and that he loves me. But there is alot of times when I just cant feel him there and I do feel so alone. I dont know how to change this.

Intellectually I have accepted that God exists, that he loves me and he sent his only son to die for me. But in my heart of hearts do I believe this? I want to. But how do I know if I really do? I am going to pray on this some more.

Today when continuing with Proverbs these verses stood out to me. I am not sure why yet, if there is some lesson to be taken away or if its just purely comforting. Here Solomon is describing wisdom:


I also wonder if this is a way God is telling me that it is ok to question - to seek understanding and wisdom. But to remember that these things first come from Him and for me to truely find wisdom and understanding I must turn to Him.

At the moment I am making my way through Proverbs (though I only recently just started) While I might deviate from that if someone directs me to a particular verse or if want to find something because I want God's wisdom in a particular area of my life.

Today I stuck with proverbs, today I started chapter 3 and came to one of my favourite proverbs

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight."

~ Proverbs 3:5-6

Tonight I found the same comfort that I always do - that God is with me and he will guide me even when I am not sure. This can be real comfort alot of the time because I often come across things that make me unsure.

However tonight I also looked at these verses in a new way. Often I read it as a whole (which is important) and so I often just am reminded that by trusting in the Lord he will guide me. However it says more than that and tonight what stood out to me was "lean not on your own understanding". This really challenged me. I am mostly a very logical person and I have to reason everything out. I also question most things.

This can be very good but I wonder if God is challenging me to be more trusting of his word and try not to question this as much. This is going to be a challenge because I feel more confident if I have questioned something. I think this needs more prayer and thought - or maybe thats the point - I think to much!!

Tonight I want to share a part of a book I am very slowly reading. Its called "Mister God This is Anna" and its by Fynn (there is no last name given), it was published in 1977 by Fount Paperbacks.
The book is written for the perspective of Fynn, a 19yo young man who takens in a 6yo girl who has run away from an abusive home. The girl, Anna, has an amazing view of the world and of God especially, and this is what the book is about. This section is where Anna is talking to Fynn about God's love.

"So we were in bed, the street lamp lighting up the room, her head cupped in her hands, and both elbows firmly planted on my chest. I waited. She chose to remain like that for about ten minutes, getting her arguement in its proper order, and then she launched forth.
'Mister God made everything, didnt he?'
There was no point in saying that I didnt really know. I said 'Yes'.
'Even the dirt and the stars and the animals and the people and the trees and everything, and the pollywogs?' The pollywogs were those little creatures that we had seen under the microscope.
I said, 'Yes, he made everything'
She nodded her agreement. 'Does Mister God love us truely?'
'Sure thing', I said. 'Mister God loves everything.'
'Oh', she said. 'Well then, why does he let things get hurt and dead?' Her voice sounded as if she felt she had betrayed a sacred trust, but the question had been thought and it had to be spoken.
'I dont know', I replied. 'There's a great many things about Mister God that we don't know about.'
'Well then,' she continued, 'if we don't know many things about Mister God, how do we know he loves us?'
I could see that this was going to be one of those times, but thank goodness she didnt expect an answer to her question for she hurried on: 'Them pollywogs, I could love them till I bust, but they wouldnt know, would they? I'm million times bigger than they are and Mister God is a million times bigger than me, so how do I know what Mister God does?'
She was silent for a little while. Later I thought that at this moment she was taking her last look at babyhood. Then she went on:
'Fynn, Mister God doesn't love us.' she hesitated. 'He doesn't really, you know, only people can love. I love Bossy (Bossy is a cat that is mentioned earlier), but Bossy don't love me. I love the pollywogs, but they don't love me. I love you, Fynn, and you love me, don't you?
I tightened my arm about her.
'You love me because you are people. I love Mister God truely, but he don't love me.'
It sounded to me like a death-knell.'Damn and blast', I thought. 'Why does this have to happen to people? Now she's lost everything.' But I was wrong. She had got both feet planted very firmly on the next stepping-stone.
'No,' she went on, 'no, he don't love me, not like you do, it's different, it's millions of times bigger.'
I must have made some movement or noise for she levered herself upright and sat on her haunches and giggled. Then she launched herself at me and undid my little pang of hurt, cut out the useless spark of jealousy with the delicate sureness of a surgeon.
'Fynn, you can love better than any people that ever was, and so can I, can't I? But Mister God is different. You see, Fynn, people can only love the outside and can only kiss outside, but Mister God can love you right inside, and Mister God can kiss you right inside, so it's different. Mister God ain't like us; we are a little bit like Mister God, but not much yet.'
It seemed to me to reduce itself to the fact that we were like God because of some similarities but God was not like us because of our differences. Her inner fires had refined her ideas, and like some alchemist turned lead into gold. Gone were all the human definitions of God, like Goodness, Mercy, Love and Justice, for these were merely props to describe the indescribable.
'You see, Fynn, Mister God is different from us because he can finish things and we can't. I can't finish loving you because I shall be dead millions of years before I can finish, but Mister God can finish loving you, and so it's not the same kind of love, is it? Even Mister Jether's love is not the same as Mister God's because he only came here to make us remember.'
The first salvo was enough for me; it all needed a bit of thinking about, but I wasnt going to be spared the rest of her artillery.
'Fynn, why do people have fights and wars and things?'
I explained to the best of my aability.
'Fynn, what is the word for when you see it in a different way?'
 After a minute or two scrabbling about, the precise phrase she wanted was dredged out of me, the phrase 'point of view'.
'Fynn that's the difference. You see, everybody has got a point of view, but Mister God hasn't. Mister God has only points to view.'
At this moment my one desire was to get up and go for a long, long walk. What was this child up to? What had she done? In the first place, God could finish things off, I couldn't. I'll accept that, but what did it mean? It seemed to me that she had taken the whole idea of God outside the limitations of time and placed him firmly in the realm of eternity.
What about this difference between between 'a point of view' and 'points to view'? This stumped me, but a little further questioning cleared up the mystery. 'Points to view' was a clumsy term. She meant 'viewing points'. The second salvo had been fired. Humaity in general had an infinite number of points of view, whereas Mister God had infinite number of viewing points. When I put it to her this way and asked her if that was what she meant, she nodded her agreement and then waited to see if I enjoyed the taste. Let me see now. Humanity has unfinite number of points of view. God has infinite number of viewing points. That means that - God is everywhere. I jumped
Anna burst into peals of laughter, 'you see,' she saud, 'you see?' I did too.
'There's another way that Mister God is different.' We obviously hadn't finished yet. 'Mister God can know things and people from the inside too. We only know them from the outside, dont we? So you see, Fynn, people can't talk about Mister God from the outside; you can only talk about Mister God from the inside of him.' " 
(page 39 - 43, of Mister God this is Anna, by Fynn)

Ok so that was longer than I remembered but I think it was important to share. It really made me think about what Love means in human terms and how that is really different from God. I dont think we can truely comprehend God's love because its so much bigger than we are.

I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. I did do bible reading today and I also did one on one with Sarah C which also made me think. But both readings were about being wary of worldly things and trying to stay on God's path in a polluted world. That is an important lesson to but with the way I am feeling tonight I wanted to focus on God's infinite love for us.

 Tonight was girls bible study again and we worked through chapter 2 of "Displines of a Godly Woman" by Barbara Hughes. This is all about the importance of the Gospel and how we should really priortise to read it everyday. It is God's word and the way he speaks to us and it is through Jesus, the Spirit and the bible that we are able to be saved.

While this was the message of the chapter I took away something different tonight - I believee there was something else I needed to learn/know and the Holy Spirit guided me in taking that from tonights study. There was actually 2 things I took away, apart from the main message. The first was from something Barbara wrote:

"I will never forget the day fifteen years ago when a young woman named Carol who had received Christ as Savior only a few weeks earlier came to Bible study for a second time. She sat, with her borrowed Bible in her hand, in a circle of women who were well-versed in the Scriptures. Carol quietly listened as the study questions were answered. When there was a lull in the conversation, Carol said with great enthusiasm, 'I found the most wonderful verse last night!" All those Christian women turned their attention to this baby believer. Slowly and reverently she began to read: "For God... so loved... the world... that He... gave.. His one... and only... Son... that whoever... believes... in him... shall not perish... but have eternal life"
The quiet of the room was palpable. She was reading John 3:16 - a verse many believers memorize from childhood and can prattle off in seconds - as it should be read, as each word were a holy treasure. Around the circle eyes began to glisten as Carol's awe of the Gospel laid bare the shame of those of us whose senses had been dulled to its wonder.
Never lose the wonder of the Gospel!"
(page 27-28 of 'Displines of a Godly Woman' by Barbara Hughes)

I wasnt born into a Christian family, I believe I am the only Christian in my family but I found God in 2004 - 6 years ago and while I have wondered away for some of that time, I believe I have tried to follow a Christian path for most of that. Reading this I realised that in the last couple of years my wonder has slowly faded. We need to read God's word through the eyes of a child, with a child's enthusiasm. This is something I need to work on and do and remember - especially while I have been so tired. It is hard to be enthusasitic when you are constantly exahausted.

The other was a more of a reminder - it was a verse that we were refered to and it stuck out to me. God gives us everything we need  - he gives us the strength to get through our struggles.

"His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness."

~ 2 Peter 1:3

I had someone let me know that they were unable to comment. I believe this has now been fixed