A couple of months ago, I sent you a devotional called “God as our
Loving Father and Us as His Beloved Children, Part I”. You can read it
here if you missed it:
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/gettingfed/message/53. For Part
II, let’s begin by looking at the Jesus’s words as recorded in Matthew
7: “7Keep on asking and it will be given you; keep on seeking and you
will find; keep on knocking [reverently] and [the door] will be opened
to you. 8For everyone who keeps on asking receives; and he who keeps on
seeking finds; and to him who keeps on knocking, [the door] will be
opened. 9Or what man is there of you, if his son asks him for a loaf of
bread, will hand him a stone? 10Or if he asks for a fish, will hand him
a serpent? 11If you then, evil as you are, know how to give good and
advantageous gifts to your children, how much more will your Father Who
is in heaven [perfect as He is] give good and advantageous things to
those who keep on asking Him!” (Amplified Bible)

Let me just start by saying I love the Amplified Bible! If you’ve
never read anything from it, surf over to http://www.biblegateway.com,
type in your favorite Bible verse, and choose to the Amplified Bible
version. It’s been helpful to me in the past few months to read from
this version because it often brings to life verses that I’ve read over
and over and gives them new meaning. Anyway, back to the Scripture!

We talked about in our last devotional about who God desire that we
come to Him: as children, inquisitive, affectionate, open with our
love, honest, vulnerable, looking for affirmation, but most of all,
totally and utterly dependent on God. So, when we come to God as
children, how does God react? How does He interact with us, and how
does He see us? Let’s look for some guidance in Jesus’s words.

First of all, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that verses 7-8 are
including in the same section where Jesus talks about how God interacts
with us, His children. How many people on this list (raise your hands,
even though I can’t see) pray for something once, figuring you’ve
bothered God enough and you won’t trouble Him again with your concerns?
How many on this list start your prayers with “God, if You have time
and if it’s not too trouble, could you help me?” I suspect that there
are quite a few with hands in the air. Well, this Scripture is
actually telling us to keep on asking, to keep on seeking, and to keep
on knocking. It reminds me of the parable in Luke 18 about the
persistent widow. If you read verse 1, it specifically says that Jesus
told his disciples this parable “to show them that they should always
pray and not give up”. That doesn’t mean pray once, as we learn from
the story. The widow in the parable bothered the judge over and over
again!

We can apply this not only the frequency of our prayers, but also the
content and intentions behind our prayers. God knows what we need
before we ask for it, but He likes for us to ask because it shows that
we’re relying on Him. It reminds us to praise Him for answering, and
not be tempted to think the answer came about because of our own
effort. It also reminds us to not be afraid to ask for anything, as
long as we always pray that God’s will be done above our’s.

Sometimes, you may feel silly asking God for the “smaller” things, when
people in the world are dying of cancer and awful catastrophes like
Hurricane Katrina happen. But we need to keep things in perspective.
No problem is too small (or big) for God. Let me give you an example
from my own life (and it will probably make you laugh).

I used to have this kind of embarrassing problem: my right armpit would
sweat a lot more than my left one. So I started praying for God to fix
it. I remember sharing this with my mother once, and she said that God
had more important things to worry about. I disagreed. I figured my
embarrassment over having just one armpit sweating profusely was
something that God cared about as much as He cares about kids with
cancer, so I kept praying. And guess what? My right armpit no longer
sweats profusely! Woo-hoo!

Don’t ever be afraid to pray. Don’t be afraid to ask for the desires
of your hearts. Don’t shy away from dreaming huge dreams, or asking
God to heal your smelly feet. Nothing’s too big or small for God. If
He cares enough about the hairs on our head to know exactly how many
are there (Matthew 10:30), He cares about all of your fears, desires,
and anxieties.

Some of you may still be stuck thinking about how God is your Father.
Maybe you had a Father who was absent from your life growing up, and so
it’s hard to imagine that God would take the time to listen to your
prayers about sweaty armpits. Maybe your father has unreasonable
expectations that you could never live up to. Maybe your father was
abusive to you, and every time you hear the word “Father”, you cringe.


We need to always remember that God is not like and never will be like
our dads. Even if you had an amazing childhood and can’t think of even
one bad thing your father ever did, God is still better, bigger,
stronger, and more caring than your earthly father. We need to
continually check ourselves to make sure we’re not projecting our
experience with our earthly fathers onto God. As one wise person said,
“He’s God the Father, not Father the God.” Let my share another story
here.

Roy (my husband) & I often seem to attract the slightly socially inept
people, the “misfits” so to speak, wherever we go, and a speaking
engagement I had a few months ago was no exception. But sometimes it’s
these very people that have the greatest insight into God and His
character. We were talking to this man who had been kicked out of his
church for 3 years (he didn’t say why). He was talking about God’s
fatherly love for him, and he gave this analogy. God is like a proud
father in the bleachers at a sports event. Every time we do even a
little something that makes Him proud, he shouts, “That’s my son!” (or
daughter). Sometimes, that’s so hard to imagine, you know? That we
could do something to make Him proud - the very Creator of the universe
who wants for nothing. He loves us more than we could even imagine!

If you’ve never read it, I strongly suggest that you read the book
“Divine or Distorted? God As We Understand God” by Jerry Seiden. It
does a great job of dismantling who we think God is versus His true
character. I’ve included an excerpt at the end of this e-mail.

Let me close with a prayer for all of you:
Lord, I lift up all my friends on this list to you. Today, I pray,
God, that they would grow in their understanding of You as loving
Father. You alone are good, faithful, humble, caring, all-sufficient,
and all-providing. And above all, God, You love us with an
everlasting, never-ending love. Help us today to know You more, to be
more honest and open with our prayers and with our love of You and
others. Thank You, Lord, for who You are. In Jesus’ name we pray,
Amen.


Excerpt from “Divine or Distorted? God As We Understand God” by Jerry
Seiden:
One day as I walked through my favorite park, I recited the 12 Steps as
was my custom. This day I stopped at Step Three: "Made a decision to
turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood
Him." Something inside me asked, "How do you understand God to be?" I
responded by reciting all the wonderful characteristics of God, but the
voice within me said, "No! That's what you've been told about God in
school and in books. Tell me what you really believe God to be."

Just as if a dam broke in my heart and mind, I began to cry, grit my
teeth, and curse. I was angry. I believed deep inside that God was
unconcerned with my life, unforgiving of my sin, impatient with my
weaknesses, intolerant of my failures, very angry with me, and more. I
believed I deserved all of God's wrath and nothing of his grace.
Nothing good could or should happen to me. I wept until I was ashamed.

Then came silence followed by that voice in my heart again. It was
God's voice. It said, "You have described yourself and the way you
treat yourself. And I am not like you. I am none of those things."
.
.
.
"You thought I was altogether like you!" These are God's words, found
in Psalm 50:21, when he spoke to the injustice and delusion of the day.
Think of it: a God who is just like us. No thanks. That's backward. We
don't want a God who is like us. We want to be like God.

An important distinction emerged between the God of Israel and the gods
of the ancient world. Few ancient peoples wanted to be like their gods.
Godliness was no virtue. Remember how capricious, immature, and cruel
the Greek gods of Olympus were? Or what of the Roman's gods? Worse yet,
would anyone want to be like Molech, the god of the Ammonites, who
demanded that children be sacrificed by fire? To be godly would be
cruel, unfeeling, and immoral. However, the opposite was true in
Israel. God was good. And he wanted his people to be like him. He said
again and again, "Be holy for I, the Lord your God, am holy!" So in
Psalm 50, God points out a grave mistake: the assumption that God is
like us.

Sadly, we have not moved far from that mistaken assumption. The very
institutions--family, church, and state--that ought to operate on and
promote godly principles, operate instead with the dysfunction of our
own perverted image of God. We grow up with the image of God that we
saw in our parents or in our churches. And please understand, churches
are not exempt from dysfunction. We carry the dysfunction of our
personal lives and families into the pews, pulpits, and board rooms of
our worship centers.

Excerpted from Divine or Distorted? : God As We Understand God by Jerry
Seiden. Copyright © 1993.

===================================
"Faith is trusting in the character of God when life gives you reasons not to."
Corrie Ten Boom, a Christian concentration camp survivor

Looky-See Me New Web Page:
http://www.unveiledfaces.org

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