When you think about God, do you imagine someone who makes demands, someone who has a strict code of behavior you are required to meet, or someone who genuinely wants to be with you?
Here's an easier approach...when you come to pray to the Father does your approach require you to first repent, or start out with some kind of thanksgiving, is there a picture in your mind of someone distant that it will require a lot of effort to convince, maybe you feel more comfortable with the Son, so its sort of a backdoor to Gods kitchen approach in prayer?
Now forget about that for a minute...and lets think about a time when you were in love, think about the feelings of euphoria and infatuation and try to remember in that state did you ever want to control the person of your desire?
Could you ever imagine that the person you were in love with needed to be forced to do what you wanted, because of your love?
Was there ever a time when you loved an imperfect human that your love for them would want to take away their free choice and force them to love you?
Would you have been happy with a forced obedience even if it looked real but never knowing the heart of the person...or would your love always allow the freedom to choose and with that freedom also give the power to be whomever they wanted to be?
As I have been dialoguing with my concepts of God, I am coming to the conclusion that Gods goal for me is to be His friend...He wants to empower me and actually is calling me to live from a different place than my earthbound frame seems focused on...
That place is not simply some kind of heavenly geography, it is also a place of preference and power that is not limited to time and space.
True love always gives the power to choose to the object of its affection, because love empowers, fear enslaves...
What that means is that bad choices are always available...
And with bad choices consequences are inevitable...love does not protect us from the consequences of bad choices...
Love will warn us, but love will not control us...
Love will offer us the best, but love will not force us to choose the best...
Love will make us responsible for our own choices, but love will not belittle us or demean us for our choices...
Love will allow consequences to teach us regardless of how painful the lesson, but love will not use punishment as a teaching tool...
Where there is fear, love has not matured...
Where there is fear, slavery is not far behind...
Where there is fear, we have not seen God...
In the Bible the fear of the Lord is always connected to the understanding that the consequence of a bad choice is a life lived below the Fathers love and desire for us and that can mean simply living below our potential with meager possibilities or even going so far as experiencing death without hope...the fear of the Lord teaches us to depart from evil because...well it's evil....
So do you fear the Lord and understand that He loves you enough to let bad consequences teach you, or are you afraid of Him, and thus a slave to demands that you can never satisfy?
Do you see the Father as someone who longs to be your friend...or someone you cannot approach?
A slave doesn't know or care about what his master is doing except to avoid the masters anger...most of the time a slave is looking for ways to avoid his master...
So here's the tough question you must ask yourself...do you use tiredness, busyness, lack of discipline, or apathy and passiveness to avoid the Father...or are you becoming friends?
Slave or friend?...your prayer life declares the reality and you know this is true.
Selah.
