"The greatest lesson I've learned came in the middle of a business crisis--a crisis of my own making. I thought I could "work" God to get what I wanted. My bad. I was spiritually immature. So, in love, He broke me down. As I sat in the rubble this lesson occurred to me: There is a God we want, & there is a God who is. They are not the same God. The turning point of our lives is when we stop seeking the God we want, & start seeking the God who is. No amount of reinventing Him in our imaginations to be the God we want is going to have one iota of impact on His unchanging nature & character. He is who He is."
Patrick Morley
This makes me think of Jesus saying "the truth will set you free" (John 8:32), Our imagination and understanding are too small to truly imagine God, and we mentally make him in our own image, which is not who He is. As we go through our life experiences, we come to know him better, and his truth frees us bit by bit. I know one person who advised to end prayers with "this or better for all concerned", somewhat similar to Jesus saying "not my, but thy will be done". We can't see enough to know what is actually best, even for ourselves. We can't begin to imagine what is possible, and that lack constrains us to think and imagine in terms of the patterns we've seen around us. Jesus didn't do many miracles in his home town area, because people lacked faith.
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"53 When Jesus had finished these parables, he moved on from there. 54 Coming to his hometown, he began teaching the people in their synagogue, and they were amazed. “Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?” they asked. 55 “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? 56 Aren’t all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?” 57 And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town and in his own home.” 58 And he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith." (Matthew 13)
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It's truly amazing to think that God works in this world in partnership with us, as his body, and that what we ask for in his name is done, and if we don't believe something can or will happen, it may not. We don't fully understand this, as sometimes it seems that what we ask for isn't done. I feel the best I can do is to trust him, know that he can do far beyond what I can imagine, and to express my concerns and desires and invite Him (the Holy Spirit) to move in me and others and the situation, then wait and watch expectantly, and be sensitive to the Spirit so I'm ready to do whatever he asks. (From the testimony in the Bible, this can sometimes look silly or strange -- marching around Jericho, going with just a few hundred men to fight thousands, washing in a river to get rid of skin disease -- things we "know" can't work, and never the same thing twice. There's no recipe or set of words we can use magically to "make" things happen. But if we pray and move following the guidance of the Holy Spirit, amazing things can happen.)
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Christ has no body on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours, Yours are the eyes through which Christ's compassion is to look out to the earth. Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good; Yours are the hands with which he is to bless men now. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)
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