The Stripping of Illusions...

A wise man I spent some time with recently said to me that often our journey towards God is a striping away of illusions about God. I think this is quite profound.

I have found in my life that as I journey towards God, I have come to realize that God is not primarlily a lot of the things I have been led to believe He is. I believe in the promises of God in scripture and I believe that God may well at times give people special revelations and promises for their future (if you feel God has given you something for your life then hold onto it), but I am less convinced that God guarentees us particular 'things' in life especiallly when our faith in God is only based on the condition that we will get these 'things' from Him if we do.

My journey towards God strips away the illusion of a God who will guarentee me everything I want and instead brings me deeper to the God who loves me for who I am and who I therefore love in return. Faith in God, is faith in God, not faith in faith.

I believe God wants to bless us His children and I believe that in seasons He even wants us to prosper but I feel there has been an imbalance in contemporary Christian teaching here. Of course God wants to bless us and I want to be a partaker in these blessings, but surely this must be balanced with the fundamental decision taken by the true follower of Jesus - surrender, sacrifice, giving up OUR rights. We loose ourselves and enter into the story of God (the story of Love itself), like Abraham we go out not knowing where we are going. In this we find an abundance of life that is not from this world, but we also come to realise that God is not primarily interested in making us merely happy but in us becoming instruments of Love, vessels of mercy and grace, characters in His story helping fulfill His dream for this world which will one day culminate in the glorious redemption of this earth. Paul said he was convinved that this present suffering would be nothing compared to the glory that would one day be revealed in us. Amazing....

God does not send the sufferings of the world, He is more broken than we are about it, but He uses them, if we let Him in all our brokenness to be the channels of His love in this world, knowing that one day He will wipe away every tear.

My journey towards God has stripped alot of my illusions of God away of the years, at the minute I hold onto two verses I am more sure of now than ever.

'God is light and in Him there is no darkness'

'God is Love'