“Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for His goodness, And for His wonderful works to the children of men! For He satisfies the longing soul, And fills the hungry soul with goodness.” – Psalms 107:8-9
When I was growing up, my parents made sure I was in church. I learned a lot of things growing up in a spirit-filled house of worship that became a foundation for who I was to become as a man. I witnessed and experienced the moving of the Holy Spirit and the demonstration of the gifts of the spirit. The power of God evident in those services served to guide me back to a relationship with God as an adult. That being said, there were many doctrines and beliefs in a dogmatically strict denomination that handicapped my ability to view God correctly.
I’m not talking about man-made standards or what was labeled “holiness standards”. I am still a firm believer that any personal standard that you uphold as a consecration to God is a beautiful thing. I am talking about the view of God that was presented and taught to me at a young age. The perspective of God as a loving, forgiving, and merciful Father was not one talked about frequently. God was more often described as the chastiser rather than the provider. There were far more sermons taught on judgment than on kindness. Unless it was preceded by “Amazing” in a hymn, grace was rarely taught.
These ideals helped to shape and color my perception of God. When I returned to God in my late 30s, I tried to let go of many of these approaches to the Father. I got ahold of some great teachings about faith, grace, and the goodness of God. Those resources helped me to rebuild my image of God and enabled me to release the condemnation that the enemy uses on each of us to keep us from being effective Christians. I didn’t just go to church and start calling myself a Christian again. I started serving. I started hungering to hear God’s voice and His direction for my life. I stepped out in faith and wrote a book. I was no longer going to just go through the motions, but I was going to go after God!
In the last few months, I have discovered a major stumbling block in my path to this empowered life that I was now trying to live. My view of God had changed some, but not enough. I honestly thought I had turned that corner. I no longer viewed Him as the spiritual police. I didn’t feel like He was always just waiting for me to mess up. I knew that He loved me. I knew that He was for me. Surely that was enough, right?
Wrong.
We all still struggle with things in our flesh. That is never going to end as long as we are on this side of the ground. Paul writes in Romans 7:14-15, “For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. If the one who wrote 2/3 of the New Testament complained that his flesh was constantly an issue for him, then we can certainly expect the same results.
My weight has always been an issue. I am constantly dealing with the consequences of being so overweight. It is not so much a physical issue as it is an emotional and spiritual issue. Food brings me joy. I have an emotional attachment to food. I have been praying about this frequently, but it is an area in which I have received no revelation. Until last week.
Once again I was praying that God would somehow help me to find an effective strategy to lose weight and get healthy. I have been praying this for years with no real change (either in my size or my understanding). I was talking with my wife about how I used to be so sure that God would call me to be a missionary to Africa because I had no interest in overseas mission work. Or that he would call me to the field of accounting because I hate math so much. She looked at me very puzzled and asked why I thought so negatively of God. The concept I believed was that God wants us out of our comfort zone (true) so He will call us to do whatever it is we hate or fear (SO NOT TRUE). What kind of image are we painting of God?
That is why so many Christians refuse to pray for patience or for humility. These are two areas that we desperately need according to God’s word. Ephesians 4:1-2 reads, “I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love.” James 4:6 reads, “But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: ‘God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble’.” Obviously, those are important to God and should be important to us. So are most Christians so hesitant to pray for God to teach them patience or humility?
It’s because we think like humans, not like God. Our thinking is that God can only teach us lessons by chastisement. We don’t want to pray for patience because that means God will make us wait for things. We don’t want to pray for humility because we think God will take us to rock bottom to teach us what true humility is. That is such a poor representation of God! He is a good Father! He wants the best for us. He doesn’t need to punish us to teach us about GOOD things that will produce GOOD results in our life. We are effectively telling God that we don’t trust Him to be good to us as we seek after spiritual gifts that His word tells us are vital and necessary to be victorious.
As I was praying about my weight and my love of food last week, God started dealing with me about my attitude toward food. Food gives me joy. I have prayed about how to overcome this problem, but I have never given this love and joy for food over to God. I was afraid. I didn’t want to lose that joy. I didn’t want to say “God, I lay this stronghold of food at your feet” because I didn’t want to lose that aspect of joy in my life.
What distorted view of God was I adopting?! I serve a good and loving God. He isn’t going to remove joy from my life without replacing it with something even better. He isn’t going to make every meal a chore simply because I need to view food differently. I realized I was guilty of viewing God through a lens of chastisement instead of a lens of goodness. Matthew 7:11 reads, “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” Don’t be afraid to turn your weaknesses over to Him. He is light and in Him there is no darkness. He will satisfy you in a way only He can!