On Relating to God

I'm a very goal oriented person. I have a matrix of goals that I keep updated (more or less), with columns for goals in the spiritual, physical, personal, financial, and social areas, and rows for the time frame: one month goals, 3 month goals, goals for the year, for the next 3, 10, and 30 years.

One of the goals I have written down in the spiritual area is to have a close enough relationship with God that, when it comes my time to die, it will be just walking home with my best friend.

But I came to realize some time ago that I had a mistake in this goal. Not that it is a bad goal, but I had it as a 30-year goal. And none of us has any assurance of any given length of time to accomplish it, let alone another 30 years.

So one of the areas that I struggle with regularly is building my relationship with God.

A couple years ago, I studied a book by Gary Moon entitled Falling for God. It's about the topic of developing a relationship with God, and he draws analogies to human relationships. For his purposes, he divides the development of our relationship into 3 phases: Conversation, Communion, and Consummation. I'm still in the first phase. Moon makes the point that you cannot expect to develop a relationship with anyone, God or a human, without spending time with the person, time in conversation.

Like many believers, I'm a firm adherent to the idea of a more-or-less daily "quiet time". Like most believers, I thought of this in terms of time spent in studying the Bible, and in prayer.

But I'm reminded of an episode of a sit-com I saw many, many years ago. I can't remember what show it was, or who the actors were, but the essence of the plot line is something like this. The mother in the story is in the chapel of a hospital, because her son is in ICU, and she is desperately praying for his recovery. This native-American spiritual guru comes in, and strikes up a conversation with her. She tells him about the boy's situation, and how she is pleading with God, bargaining with him, recounting to him what a good boy her son is and how he deserves to be healed. Then the Indian says gently, "Let me get this straight. (Pause) You're carrying on a conversation with the Great Spirit (Pause) and you're (rising inflection) doing all the talking?"

And isn't that how we spend most of our time with God? We talk, talk, talk, telling him what we want or what (we think) we need, asking him to bless OUR plans, asking him for others needs, perhaps even spending time worshipping him and thanking him. And we certainly should be doing these things. But is that how we get to KNOW God? If you were always doing all the talking to a friend, and never listening, how would you get to know him or her? So, I have purposed to spend more time trying to listen to God.

The problem, of course, is that we're not used to hearing God talk the way we here a friend talk. We are taught that Christianity is a relationship with God, but when it comes to developing that relationship, there are very few voices raised to indicate that we can actually here from God personally. One that I have encountered is John Eldredge. He devotes his most recent book, Walking With God (sub-titled "Talk to Him. Hear from Him. Really.") to expounding the idea that "We are made for intimacy with God. He wants intimacy with us. That intimacy requires communication. God speaks to his people." (p. 16).

But, for me (and I don't think I'm alone), listening for God to speak is very frustrating, because, listen though I might, I hear his voice very seldom, or at least I don't hear it clearly. I don't know if this is because he is not speaking to me, or because I haven't yet learned how to listen. Moon's book (referred to earlier) is about learning to listen, by spending enough time quieting ourselves to give ourselves a chance to hear his voice. This is what has been referred to as the Christian discipline of meditation, or what some have referred to a "contemplative prayer." But I find that, while I may spend as much as an hour trying to quiet myself and hear God's voice, if I can get as much as 60 seconds without distracting thoughts that would totally obliterate God's voice, then I think I'm doing good.

But I find I'm not alone at this. Henri Nouwen, who, according to my understanding, is viewed by many as one of the foremost authorities in this area, says " 'Why should I spend an hour in prayer when I do nothing during that time but think about people I am angry with, people who are angry with me, books I should read and books I should write, and thousands of other silly things that happen to grab my mind for a moment?' Nouwen posed that question in different forms, toying with different answers. Sometimes he fell back on the need for spiritual discipline, for being faithful even with no apparent reward… In the end, Nouwen concluded that 'sitting in the presence of God for one hour each morning – day after day, week after week, and month after month in total confusion and with a myriad of distractions – radically changes my life.' " (Henri Nouwen, Primacy of the Heart, quoted by Philip Yancey in Prayer, p. 153)

And so I muddle on.