Obsession

But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. Matthew 7,14

I want to talk to you about relationship to God. :) Relationship is only possible when two sides are involved. An active me and an active other person. Maybe there's a general opinion that there is no active God - at most an active me trying to please a passive Watcher - thus relationship with God is not possible. So the question is HOW can a relationship to God work?

If you're viewing the relationship to God thing with a raised brow of skepticism or maybe a frustrated heart, you've found a companion in me. :) I mean, we're supposed to expect more from God than from ANYTHING else, at the same time HE seems so invisible, so far off, quieter and more subtle than anything. Bottom line: it can drive you mad.

I think it's essential to say the picture you have of who God is determines your relationship to him. If you think he's irrelevant, to a great extent he will be irrelevant in your life. It's your choice to give him room or to lock him out. That doesn't mean he depends on what you make of him. But he respects a shut door. Respects, but not ultimately accepts....he is permanently trying to win our hearts - and that doesn't stop once we've opened ourselves to him. I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me; I was ready to be found by those who did not seek me. To a nation that did not call on my name, I said, 'Here I am, here I am.' All day long I have held out my hands to a stubborn nation, who walk in ways not good, following their own imaginations. (Isaiah 65,1-3) God stretches out to us even when we couldn't care less. But the picture you carry in your heart, the conviction you hold to WILL have an impact on how open your eyes are to SEE his attempts to win your attention.

What can I do with my obsession -
With the things I cannot see?
It's a madness in my being...

I was listening to the song Obsession some days ago and it caught my attention. What can I do with my obsession? It is true, we all carry this obsession. The subtle thought that rules everything we do: Who or what can I give myself to? Although we think that what we do is decide, lead, rule - what we're doing in reality, everyday is bowing down and worshiping. There is nothing else we can do. We give ourselves away to people, to our convictions, to what we enjoy or to what we hate. We couldn't stand existence without a subject to adore....Power doesn't satisfy us. Wealth doesn't. Not even the affection we get....

Only giving ourselves away does.

There's nothing wrong with giving yourself away. It is our inmost being. It is US. But there is something fundamentally wrong with giving yourself away to emptiness. To nothingness. To things that don't fill you in return. Because the result is disastrous: the more you give yourself away to what DOESN'T fill you, the less will you be ABLE to give yourself for what gives you life - the less will you even be able to see what is truth and what isn't. And suddenly meaning and pointlessness all becomes the same colour.....

Living in a relationship with God may seem like an abstract term although we know what relationship is. :) We live it, experience it, fight over it every day. The one difference here is of course that God isn't exactly a human being. But many aspects of relationship between humans can be applied to the relationship with God, because we are similar to him, in many ways. God wants intimacy with us. God wants to talk to us, he wants us to negotiate with him.. Worshiping God is a way that you choose to live. A life that you choose instead of worshiping sports or worshiping knowledge - anything else you could possibly choose is worshiping yourself. Walking for God is walking the narrow path. The path is hard. You might think that's an excuse cuz Christians never experience God, suffering under the silence, the doubts whether he even exists - and then saying ohh man, it's so hard! No, I'd say what's hard is that you inevitably DO experience God and you'll end up seeing him turn everything inside-out and there'll be moments you won't know how to handle it anymore.

God speaks.
Once you let him in, he'll walk with you through every room of your heart, every room of your life. He'll start healing what's shattered and restoring what's broken. He'll start working with you on your weaknesses, your addictions. He'll ask you to hand them to him and to let go, because he wants to set you free from what this world wants to chain you with. So if the Son sets you free, you will truly be free. (John 8,36) One aspect of the relationship is trusting God, unconditionally. Another is hearing his voice and following it. He'll lead you to people who need him desperately and once God has set you free, you'll want those you see in chains to be set free too....In many cases they won't want to come, clinging to their scars, screaming and kicking when you try to drag them...because people are TERRIFIED of meeting their creator. Lies about him have unconsciously taken hold of us. And the picture that many have of GOD looks remarkably similar to Satan's hideous face.

Sometimes the things God says are vague and you'll only have an impression, a strong inner urge to do something. That can be God's voice. God can also speak through other people. I was at a prayer weekend in Frankfurt about 2 years ago. I joined a "listening to God speak" workshop where the others (who I didn't know) prayed for me and then listened for a few minutes to hear if God had something to say to me through them. After that they shared their impressions, one girl had received a rather strange picture and said she really didn't know if it was from God so she was reluctant to tell it. Eventually she told me that she had seen two people jumping at a beach....everyone kind of giggled but it struck me because I knew exactly what it meant. I knew that it was a word from God right into my situation - amazingly through someone who knew nothing about me but my name.

Sometimes God speaks through songs, through movies, through books...God speaks very strongly through the Bible. Once I was reading the Psalms and just about to start a reeeally long one that stretches over about 3 pages and I didn't at all feel like reading it, so I just didn't read anything that day.. x) nor the next....A few days later I found myself in some pretty big relationship problems and when I couldn't take it any longer I grabbed my Bible because I NEEDED to hear God's voice...I started reading that endless Psalm, thinking man, this is gonna be fail.....what happened was what I read STRUCK me in a way no Bible passage ever had. Basically I dissolved reading it. I devoured it in just a few minutes and burst into tears.. I think I sat there crying for like an hour - not cuz I was emotionally unstable at that point, but because GOD had met me. It was so intense that I couldn't keep my senses together anymore... That moment he put my entire attention off my heart and my world and my pain, onto his heart. I couldn't even feel my pain anymore because he was letting me experience a moment of HIS gigantic pain towards humanity....a weight overcame me that was greater than any weight I had felt before. Since then it hasn't let go of me - the shattering reality of GOD's immense suffering....

God speaks in many ways. A reason why we think nothing gets to us is that we talk most of the time, that we don't ever really listen. Or that we expect us to feel him, as an emotion - and turn away disappointed when we don't burst into tears or faint to the ground. God doesn't let us manipulate him - there's nothing we can do to earn an encounter with him. :) But he wants to meet us, he wants to be close to us. Emotions are often a result of feeling God's touch - but his presence itself is not an emotion. It's a dimension that goes way beyond the physics of our body or the intelligence of our brains - and yet we can perceive it because we were MADE for unity with God. And we haven't lost that ability.

At times, God speaks to me almost audibly... I can hold dialogues with him because I can "hear" him answer immediately. I can't really describe what his voice is like. It just....OVERWHELMS me every time.....The words he says are so utterly different from what I'd expect "the God I know" to say. Sometimes he asks me questions...once he asked me Do you see me? It made me smile and I answered x) No....Then he told me he was sitting at the end of my bed, and he asked me if I knew what he was doing....I said no again. And he said I am crying....

God is the craziest CRAZIEST person ever... There is NOTHING better in life than experiencing him. :) ...But sometimes, I have to add, I don't hear a thing. Even in the moments that I feel I'll DIE if I don't hear him now....and I don't understand that. God reveals himself when HIS time is right. And God's time and God's WAY of appearing is often different from what we expect. So be on the lookout. :)

Sometimes we can SEE God... When I was a child I was tortured by severe nightmares, even when my parents prayed for me, sleeping was dreadful. But at some point, night by night in the worst parts of my dreams, an angel would appear and tell me that I was just dreaming.... Once - recently - I saw God's face, well not really his entire face... I was talking to him, wanting desperately to explain my situation to him cuz I was driven by the feeling that he didn't understand - and suddenly there was a BREAK. It was like something in the atmosphere drastically changed, like someone pouring a bucket of ice cold water over me for a SPLIT second - and I saw his eyes, just his eyes... and it wasn't even about seeing his EYES, I can't even say I know how they looked, but I saw the LOOK in his eyes, his expression... :)) I saw the WAY he was looking at me...and I HAVE NEVER seen ANYONE look at me that way.......I broke off in the middle of my sentence, unable to do ANYTHING, I just froze, it totally took me away... I had never seen a look that ************ before.... God is not describable. And the way he meets us is not describable. I wish I could make words for it though... He has the most understanding, the most BEAUTIFUL eyes you can imagine.......
And I am desperate. The more I hear his voice or see of him, see how he ACTS towards me.. the more I NEED him....He is the most severe ADDICTION.....and the only addiction that has set me free.
We all carry the desire to worship God, worshiping God means meeting him...and I want to encourage you to EXPECT him, to be open to hear him, to see him, so he can step in when his time is right. Ask him to meet you.... :) And don't believe the lie that he doesn't want to meet you. Don't believe the lie that you need to change first to meet God. Meeting God will change you. And the reason you're still here is that he's not through with you yet.... :)