The Thicket
I wanted it to be comfortable. I wanted it to be a breeze. Follow Jesus? Sure! As long as I'm the one that calls the shots. As long as He doesn't get in the way too much and doesn't poke his head out at inappropriate times. As long as this relationship is on my terms. Yea, sure, Ill follow Jesus.
This is the way I wanted my faith.
Easy. Simple. Not affecting my "real" life. Not asking for too much, but giving to me all that I asked. Faith? Yea I had it, but on my terms. So faith? I don't know if we could call it that. Fear, complacency, laziness. Yea that's more of what it was. And how it would be until my senior year. No longer would I live "that" way. No longer would I talk the talk but not walk the walk. No, I was going to let God really have control. Really be in charge. Really have real affect on my life.
And then something happened. Something so close and personal that i can barely describe it. but yet something so real that I have to try. Near the end of my first semester of college something happened. I no longer "felt" God. He seemed away. Absent.
Far off.
I had a feeling that I should feel something but didn't. The safe feeling of certainty was gone. Doubt creeped its way in. Suddenly the Sun that shown every day was nowhere to be felt. I suddenly found myself in a forest where the trees blocked the sunlight. I was in a thicket.
But how could this be? I was doing everything right? Why would God allow me to feel this way, or better yet not feel anything at all. Where did the feelings go? Where did my God go? Was he on vacation? Or was I the one that left? I've struggled with this for months now. This feeling of not feeling God. Now I know that faith isn't based on feelings, but months? I have questioned my faith, the authenticity of it, God, and who would win in a fist fight Jason Bourne or James Bound (unrelated). And then it hit me one night. A professor at my college was speaking at a worship service and talked about how some of us like to have everything planned out when we go on a vacation. We like to have every specific thing planned so there are no hang ups or unexpected detours. We need to be in control or we don't want to go. We need to do and have what we think we need. We want to be in charge, not just simply tag along. He said we are like this with our spirituality, and I agree and know this to be true more so now than ever before.
Sure we want to have a relationship with God, but on our terms, the way we want it, how we think it should be. We want to call the shots and plan the places we stop along the way. We want a perfectly planned vacation. But the problem is that faith isn't a perfectly planned vacation. It's a journey. With mountains, and valleys. With green pastures, and arid deserts. With cloudless days where we bask in the sun; and then there are days, and weeks, and months spent in the thicket with only the memory of the sun and the flashes of light that pierce quickly into shadows to keep us warm. And here lies one of my own many hang ups. I wanted faith to be a vacation. Like back in high school when I didn't want God interfering with my life too much. I thought I had left that way of life. I thought I had moved on, and that I was letting God call the shots. But I was wrong.
I was foolish.
I was foolish because this "all about what I want" style of faith that I thought I stopped during my senior year, had carried on into college. I still wanted to call the shots, just in different ways. Instead of God not interfering with my popularity and sin, I wanted "feelings" all the time. I thought I should get to "feel" God, feel his presence, feel his love 24/7. And when God lovingly stripped me of this in December my world crashed. I didn't know what to do because my faith was supposed to be on my terms and I didn't order this.
And there on the floor of my dorm room, my God, my Dad, woke me up, again.
He reminded me that in fact He is in charge. That this faith is not about me, my wants, or what I think it should be like. No, this faith is about God leading me into what he knows I need. Its about God being for my joy, meaning whatever I go through is meant to bring about joy in my life. I was trusting more on my feelings than on God. I was trying to call the shots in a relationship where I was not in the lead role. I wanted to go on a neat and tidy vacation. When God wanted to take me on an adventure.
And so in love he poured cold water on me to wake me up. He stripped away the things that I said needed to accompany my faith. He has shown me that I wanted things on my own terms but that I needed to have things on His. He has shown me that a life lived in faith isn't safe, and is anything but what we think it will be. He took away the very things I was trusting in. He destroyed my idols. He lead me out of the sun and the warmth of its rays that I trusted in and lead me into the thicket where I no longer had anything to trust in –not feelings, or morality, or myself– but God alone. He has raised the question, "Would you still follow if things were on My terms. If I stripped away the idols and comforts and only offered myself? Because contrary to what you have thought that is the only offer I bring to the table". And while I have hesitated, dug my heels into the ground, and kicked and screamed "No! I need those!"; I am finally ready to say yes. To relinquish control that wasn't mine in the first place. To say "What you would have for me is good". And so I have decided to depart on this glorious journey through the glorious Sun bathed fields and the glorious shaded cold thicket. Because God will lead me to both and all in between and if He has lead me here then I can rest assured that He will lead me out once more.