Who is God to you?

A few days ago, I wrote that someone over 30 years ago asked me this question, and it changed my life.  In reflecting overnight on the question I was asked at the time, I suddenly came to realize that God was the God of my past----that is, I could look back over my personal experiences and realize where he had been there for me in the past.  Occasionally also, I sensed His presence in a present moment, when I would experience that He was with me, but those moments would quickly pass, leaving me once again fearful and worried. 

My conclusion was that God was the God of my past and occasionally of my present, but He was not the God of my future.  I did not trust Him for the next day, or the next year.  At the time, every silver lining had a cloud in my mind---yes, but....  I was worried about almost everything:  would my children be healthy or sick?  Would the United States experience food shortages and famine in the 80's and 90's, as Edgar Cayce had predicted?  Would we have enough money?  Would I be able to "keep up"?   Everything I thought about was related to my resources, my energy, my capability to meet the challenge, rather than to God's resources, God's divine and inexhaustible energy, God's capability.  No wonder I was so worried!

Peter says, Cast your care upon the Lord, for He cares for you.  And the Book of Lamentations says, He has taken up all the causes of my life.  Obviously, at the time of my great anxieties, I had no knowledge of these scriptures---and even if I had been familiar with them, my spirit was so blocked that I could not have entirely embraced them and leaned upon them as The Truth of my own life.

At one point in my own journey, a friend said to me, "Put it in the hands of God."
"That's what I cannot do!"  I sobbed.

But God hears our sobs, our inadequacies, our weakness---and not only hears, but takes action to fill the vacuum created by them. 

Asking the question, "Who is God to you?"  is only the first step in coming to realize where the holes are in our realtionship.  The next step is to begin to address that God, the One we have identified as "our" God.  I did not specifically ask Him to become the God of my future, but my answer, "He is not the God of my future" revealed a very deep longing in me that I had not before known---I wanted Him to be the God of my future; I wanted to be able to cast my cares upon Him, knowing that He cared for me, and that His care was powerful and active, not weak and helpless.  I wanted to know that He had taken up all the causes of my life so that I did not have to "solve" every problem, but could trust Him with the solutions.

God's gracious and smiling response to my cry was to teach me to wake up every morning and sing, as the cardinal on my windowsill did.  He did not say to me, "Do not worry," a command I could not have carried out at the time.  Instead, He sent me a little bird, singing.  "Sing," He said.  "Sing."  And as I learned to sing, I discovered that singing and worry cannot occupy the same space at the same time. 

He made Himself the God of my future.  I have learned since then that my own resources will always be pitifully inadequate to the challenge, that I will always fall pitifully short of the goal--but thankfully, I am not limited to my own resources, energy, knowledge, or ability.  I will undoubtedly fail at every moment of my life---but God.....is greater than any weakness I have.  And He will not fail.

Habakkuk, one of the Old Testament prophets, put it this way:

Though the fig tree does not bud,

and there are no grapes on the vines;

though the olive crop fails,

and the fields produce no food;

though there are no sheep in the pen

and no cattle in the stalls,

yet I will rejoice in the Lord,

I will be joyful in God my Savior.

The Sovereign Lord is my strength;

he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,

he enables me to go on the heights.

"Sing," He said to me. "Sing!"  And thus, He taught me joy.  If perfect love casts out fear, I have found that perfect joy casts out anxiety.