It is easy to be faithful to God when things are going well and we feel happy in our circumstances.  However when our lives are in chaos and the people around us seem to be adding to our frustration or anxiety it is often more difficult to trust and rely on God.  Although we may turn to God in our weakest moments and hope that He will make our problems go away, relieve our fears and anxieties and give us wisdom, too often we ultimately choose to rely on our own decisions and instincts to get us through.  Part of the problem is that we do not receive instantaneous answers or solutions or God reminds us  that we are either part of the problem, or even worse, most of the problem.  What are we supposed to do with that?

As we discussed in the last post, I believe God does whatever it takes to help us become all that He designed us to be.  Learning to trust God when things are not going the way you would like them to go is a challenge as well as a discipline.  Honoring God with true humility when our flesh wants to blame someone else is another challenge. Yielding to these challenges allows us to grow into the person God wants us to be.  As we learn to accept responsibility for our own failures or weaknesses and humbly ask God to help us change behaviors, habits or prideful beliefs we begin to understand what Christ is doing in our lives. It starts to make sense to us. It is through hearing, believing and accepting  the truths which God presents to us that we are able to lean on Him with more and more consistency. You may not believe this now, but truth does bring with it a sense of freedom.  Once we are able to honestly look at ourselves, or others,  we gain the ability to see things through different eyes.

Whether our circumstances are caused by ourselves, others or life in general,  the Lord will challenge us to patiently rely on Him for answers and wisdom. The next time you feel God speaking to you, take the time to listen to what He may be saying and ask Him to help you accept the truths presented to you with an open mind and heart.

Too often we tend to think the more we know, the more we will change. Unfortunately, that is not really true. Gregory Boyd says in his book "Seeing is Believing" , "contemporary Western Christians are as a whole arguably the most informed generation of Christians in all of church history.  Yet no one would be so foolish as to suggest that we are the most transformed; to the contrary, research suggests the faith of American evangelicals has very little effect on our day-to-day lives". 

Why is this...because knowing something intellectually will never replace "experiencing" something.

There are many people who believe, as do I, that part of the reason for this lack of transformation is that we do not use our imaginations when praying or relating to God. Unfortunatly, too often we equate the imagination with a child-like perception of reality and associate it with a make-believe world.  However  throughout the Bible Jesus speaks to us in parables so that we are able to understand what He is trying to tell us; He purposely gives us images in order to allow us to understand who He was and still is. ie: the rock (psalm 18:2, psalm 62:6-7); the shepard (Isaiah. 40:11,
John 10:14) etc. These images must be processed through our imagination.

He created our minds and our imaginations, yet when it comes to relating to Him, we set our imagination aside and revert to our human-ness as we tend to become rational and methodical in our prayer life. We need to change our thinking and allow ourselves to let our minds and imaginations flow freely in order to begin to relate to the invisible God who is waiting to spend time with us. I believe God wants us to use our imaginations so that we are able to draw nearer to Him and begin to EXPERIENCE transformation.