St. John Studies

“Examine the situation in light of Scripture and common knowledge, seek the advice and counsel of other believers, evaluate your skills, abilities and gifts, and consider the impact the alternatives will have on yourself and others. Review the factors involved with the Lord in prayer, ask for His help and then make a decision. Trust the Lord to direct your steps. With His word in your mind, His spirit in your heart and a desire to please Him impressed on your will, you may follow what seems the best course and assume that such a course is God’s answer to prayer” [Hunter, 80].*

This is our author’s advice about what to do when God does not answer prayer.

This situation can be disconcerting, discouraging and downright confusing. You have prayed and prayed. You have poured out your heart. You have sent God your most fervent words of supplication and

Nothing…

Some people continue with prayer in spite of not getting an answer.

Some people get so frustrated that they have a loss of faith.

Some people just throw up their hands and move on to other concerns.

This situation can be damaging for Christians who are serious in their relationship with God. In our world today, we expect answers.

My wife recently told me about overhearing a fellow shopper interact with a store employee in a local grocery store. This woman had been a frequent shopper in this store for quite some time.   She could not locate an item she needed for a recipe and she asked a store employee to help her find the item; she needed it.   The employee tried and eventually said, “I don’t think we have it any more.” The woman would not take no for an answer.   My wife listened to her interact with the store employee. “I need to speak to someone else. You just don’t get it. I have bought this here before.” The employee said “I am sorry; I can’t find it.” Again and again, she expressed the idea that “You just don’t get it; you just don’t get it…” My wife said it was as if she was purposefully trying to cajole the employee into producing the item through humiliation. Her strategy did not work.

Surely we don’t try to humiliate God to get what we want but how do we take no for an answer?

Our problem may be that we may be unwilling to act on our own behalf.   What this means is that some Christians use the “no” as a reason to do nothing. We act in a passive manner, procrastinating on taking any action that we could take.

My belief is that God has given each of us specific skills and abilities. Maybe God is waiting on us to act to help ourselves before He steps in.

Hunter* cites the relationship that Jesus had with his Father as support for this idea. He says that Jesus led a life of personal responsibility while He was on earth. He gave responsible service to God, never expecting God to do something He was capable of doing. We want to pray to God “If you loved me you would help.” We can’t believe that God would say “Because I love you, I won’t. I’ll help you do it yourself.”

God knows us intimately and He knows what we are capable of doing. He is our Savior but He may not be open to our mechanical manipulation and exploitation.   He has made us and expects us to use our God-given skills when we can.

Some of us [I am speaking about myself] won’t let concerns be handled by God. I keep worrying myself over matters that are beyond my control. Others may be too quick to pray and turn everything over to God. God is supposed to do all the heavy lifting and we are left with nothing to do at all.

Worrying about things beyond our scope of action is not good but inaction when we could take action is not good either. God is my treasure in heaven.   He gives me strength, wisdom, peace and understanding beyond my capability.

He has also given me some skills and I appreciate those skills.

I think He wants me to use those skills or He would not have given them to me.

Skills to help myself

and others…

Ephesians 2:10 “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

*W. Bingham Hunter The God Who Hears

Persistence

I had a student at my college who was an extremely devout Christian. I got to know her pretty well since she was a member of the speech team I coached. I also got to know her parents.   I know that her father and mother raised her to pray.   She also had a personality trait that some may call “obsessive” which really means that once she set her mind to something, she did not give up. I remember her telling me one time that her heart hurt for an older brother who had fallen away from his faith in God.   She said she prayed for him morning and night and had done so for years.   She wanted him to come back to his Christian faith upbringing.

This is what I would call persistence.

God values the trait of persistence.   Just look at James 1: 1-5 as James talks about not giving up during trials in our lives. He says we should welcome situations where we have to persist or persevere.

In Romans, Paul prays for the opportunity to go to Rome and he asked God to arrange it. Every time he got ready to go, his plans were ruined. Yet Paul continued to pray. His desire to go to Rome was not diminished but God was not helping him reach his destination. He finally received assurance that he was going to go, but he was imprisoned at the time. Paul was in prison for two more years before he began his trip. When he finally boarded his boat, he set sail through a two week storm, the boat wrecked and he was delayed for three months on an island due to foul weather. God got Paul to Rome but Paul’s prayers took two and a half years to be answered. His persistence paid off.

In other places in the Bible, Paul prayed for a physical discomfort to be eliminated and God replied that He would not remove the weakness. Paul found that answer sufficient and he did not persist.   Moses prayed for God to allow him to enter Canaan.   God had already said he would not. The Lord said “That is enough. Do not speak to me anymore about this matter.”   Maybe Moses did not have the same peace as Paul about this matter but he knew not to persist.

When do we continue to pray when we don’t receive an answer?   When do we continue to pray when we get a negative answer? W. Bingham Hunter* says we should persist in prayer when the opportunity for God to act is not gone and He has not told you to stop praying. If we don’t continue to pray our request will never be granted. In my opinion, this idea is based on Matthew 7:7 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” If you don’t ask, you will not receive. One never knows when God will be gracious to us.

A mistake we can make is the attitude that we can wear God down.   We should not treat God as if He is a stubborn friend who could easily grant us a favor.  We just need to keep asking and asking until the friend is so irritated that he relents.   We need to be careful that prayers not get mechanical over time. They can become meaningless. Sincere prayers can become rote over time and I cannot imagine that God is pleased with that type of prayer. If your heart is no longer in your request, you have to ask if you are merely going through the motions.

We need to remember that we are totally dependent on God. He is our Savior. He is our sovereign Lord. He is in control. We are not.

If we are not getting an answer to our persistent prayer request or the answer is a repeated no, maybe there is a good reason.   God knows what is best for us.   God knows what we need better than we do. Sometimes persistence is just stubbornness on our part and I am not sure that God honors human stubbornness.

We must always remember that we are the petitioner.   We are not God.

Persistence can be good if it does not fly in the face of a clear negative response.

If God says “Do not speak to me anymore about this matter.”

Accept things as they are and move on…

To other prayers.

Skepticism…

When one declares to others that they have heard from God regarding a prayer concern, the response that many Christians and non-Christians alike may have is skepticism.

Does God really communicate directly to us as He did in the Bible?  Bingham Hunter* states “most Christians in our day do not routinely experience these types of responses to their prayers. Many never do.”

But that does not mean that direct communication from God does not occur.  Some believers may feel they have had a word from God but they hesitate to tell others about it because they feel they will be judged as mentally unstable. Others may just tell their closest friend in hopes that their friend will keep their trust and not repeat the information to others.

Let’s assume that it is possible.   Let’s assume that people do get direct communication from God. Are there any guidelines that would confirm His words?   Hunter admits that some people may just have ideas inspired by a dream or possibly even indigestion and we know there have been people who have been arrested with guns or bombs who have said “God told me to do it.”

Obviously those people could use some guidelines for discerning God’s word.

What are some clues that would help the rest of us discern that a word from God may be authentic?

One thing we could do is compare the response from God with His word.   The trick here is you have to be a dedicated reader of His word. People who read the Bible so much that they are familiar with Scripture have a definite edge.   I know of some members in my church who have not only read the Bible; they can cite large chunks of God’s word by memory.

If you don’t have Biblical knowledge at your fingertips, go to your pastor or elders in your church.   Hunter says a good guideline is that God’s “response to prayer is not extraordinary. Prayer is not an invitation to a side show.”

God’s response to prayer may come in the form of a devotional reading. Many devotional readings cover general principles which can relate to a prayer petition you may be making to God.   Devotional readings are Scripture-based. God’s answer can also come in the form of a word from your pastor or Sunday school teacher.

Hunter cautions us about the Christian who says things like “I have peace about a situation.”   Seeking peace can be real and God-inspired but he says that peace can also come from fear or just pure laziness. Some people report peace about a concern but this may just be an effort to quit thinking about their problems and they are tired of praying.   Maybe they need to keep praying or thinking about their problem but they have thrown up their hands and have decided to let God handle the whole matter for the wrong reason.

That is not all bad.   Too many times, we think we have to control life and we don’t control life. God does. However, when it comes to prayer, I personally believe that God is sometimes waiting for us to do our part.   It may be prayer. It may be undergoing a personal change.   It may be reaching out to someone who needs to be a part of our lives.

First, we act.

Then God will respond.

Just turning everything over to God may not be the best thing to do.

Hunter says that God may indeed respond to our prayer by changing our circumstances. We know that for a prayer to be addressed, God is going to have to put us in a new place.   Maybe He is going to have to introduce a new person into our lives. Maybe He is going to have to help us accomplish a new task, one we are not used to doing.   If this be the case, our action is part of the answer to prayer.

If an opportunity to change passes and we take no action, we have missed our answer. Our efforts in the future may feel like a no from God but maybe the answer is no because we failed to act when the time was right. When He presented the circumstances, we balked.

Skepticism is a common response to people who report that God has communicated to them. Maybe Bible times were so special and today we are not living in special times. But then we read Scripture like Matthew 7:7 which states “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”

If you believe, really believe–you know you will find your answer, you know that the door will be opened. You know you will get your word from God.

The author of The God Who Hears

“I got a word from God!’

Has anyone ever told you this?

I have had many opportunities to be around God-believing people so I have heard that exclaimed from time to time. I was “born again” twenty years ago and I started hanging out with a new crowd, a group of people who were more dedicated to living a God-centered life.

Before, I was spending all my time with people who did not profess a belief in God or if they did, I would characterize them as “religious.”   Let me use myself to explain what I mean.   I went to church. That was about it.   I did not worry when I missed church.   I just attended when it was convenient and felt that I was not missing that much when I was absent.

No dedication to worship [I did not see a need].

No commitment to a Sunday school class [not convinced I needed to learn about God].

No commitment to Christian service through my church [ I was too busy with my own “stuff”].

I would characterize myself as “Christian in name only.”

I was never around anyone who said “I got a word from God!”

If I had heard that, I would have probably thought they were crazy. They were physically, emotionally or mentally weak.

But then God changed my life in the midst of a major personal crisis.   I asked Him to help me out of my crisis and He did.   Christian friends began to appear in my life.   Loving people who helped me through my problem.

Yes, I began to hang out with a new crowd.

A few of those folks have told me they got words from God. Now, I no longer think them crazy.

What about you?

When you hear someone say they have prayed about something and God answered them, do you believe? Have you ever personally heard from God?

Is there Scriptural support for hearing from God? Of course there is.   Moses had direct communication from God as well as Samuel and Elijah.   In Acts, God responded to prayer by speaking during dreams. Angels visited people in Scripture in Daniel, and in Acts.   Others experienced visions [for example Acts 9 and 10].   God even used third parties to speak to petitioners in 2 Kings and Acts and angels were sent to third parties in Acts 12.

In the next few posts, I will discuss some of the most important aspects of prayer: getting words from God; getting direct answers to prayer, and how we know we have an answer.

We will also deal with the idea that God sometimes does not answer prayer? What do we do if that happens? What is God up to?

Finally, we will consider the value of persistence.   When we don’t get the answer we want, or we don’t get any answer at all, should we keep asking God for the same thing over and over again? Is it right to pester God?

Even though there may be Christians today who report they have experienced a word from God, is this real?  Did words from God only come to those people in our Bible?

My direct question to you today is this: what do you think?

Has God ever given you a word?

Mechanics.

Techniques.

Method.

All these words refer to how something is done.   I am a Methodist.   My Christian denomination was started by an Anglican priest in the 18^th Century who emphasized mechanics and techniques of prayer.   He did this so much that other students at his college called his student prayer group “Methodists”.   It was not a complimentary term.

One of the things he was obsessed with was his dedication to early morning prayer.   Not only did he worry about getting up early, he also obsessed about the time he spent in prayer.

I was told one time “Jesus got up early to pray and you should be doing it too.” Martin Luther was well-known as a person who got up early to pray and when he knew he would have a hard day, he was known to get up even earlier. Monastic church tradition has always encouraged early morning prayer. The day begins at 3:00 A.M. with communal prayer. Obviously there is church history that encourages early morning prayer.

This news may invigorate you. You may be thinking “I need to start doing this!” This news may also discourage you. You don’t function well in the early morning hours.   You cherish your sleep. You don’t think you can roll out of bed early.

Are there advantages to early morning prayer? Of course there are.   I am a morning person. I like to get my cup of coffee and as the caffeine begins to do its work on my brain, I am more focused. I can concentrate on prayer because other concerns of the day have not become important.   Appointments are later, jobs are later, phone calls are later.   Not much is going on early in the morning.   I am not a person who has to eat early in the morning. It takes a while for me to develop some hunger.   Some people may need to keep their blood sugar levels up early in the morning.   The fact that coffee is all I need helps me to concentrate.

I like to get my day started right. Having my early morning talk with God is an excellent way to begin my day.   I may have peace, strength and wisdom that I would not normally have due to my time of prayer.

But now let’s talk about the needs of others.   I began this post with a reference to John Wesley.   The more you read about his life, the more you realize he was dedicated to his faith in God.   Some would indeed describe his early efforts at spiritual discipline as “obsessed.” In my experience with “dedicated” people, their lives can be very inspiring or their lives can be very discouraging.

I have been around many, many people who just can’t muster the strength to match the discipline of others. In fact, the “dedicated” person can cause some to just give up and become totally undisciplined.

I don’t think people who are trying to pray need to measure their own level of effort with the effort of others. Just because some like the early morning hours to pray, does not mean that the early morn is your ideal prayer time. God does not “come on the air” at 5:00 in the morning. He is available all day long. There is no set time for prayer.   Furthermore, you don’t have to pray for an hour. You need to feel you can pray for as long as is necessary. A fervent five minute prayer is better than no prayer at all.

Our world is so focused on others.   We feel good or bad according to how we stack up against others.   Is our home acceptable? Is our car acceptable? Is our clothing stylish?   It all seems to hinge on how we compare to others.

With prayer, it is a process where you need to find what works for you. Somehow, we need to individualize prayer to the point that we can get people praying where they are.   As prayer begins, the time may change, the length of prayer may change, and the words used may change.   You may go from five minutes in the car on the way to work to a greater level of dedication.   If you don’t, that’s ok too.

In Psalms 42: 1-2 the Bible says “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.”   Some prayer may indeed lead to more prayer. Your desire for prayer may grow over time. As W. Bingham Hunter says “Those who taste find that the Lord is good” [Hunter, 74]. His recommendation is “look for the most helpful time of day, find out what will help you get focused and do it”

In my teaching career*, I have had many experiences with students who like the “limelight.” From a speech teacher’s point of view, this makes life easier. These students do not have as much stage fright as some and they can concentrate on other aspects of making a public presentation.

Since I am writing about a book on prayer**, let’s view public prayer as a “speech event.”   Some may not want to think of prayer that way, but in reality, a public prayer has several things in common with a speech.

I want to focus on the person who prays and likes to be seen praying; they like the “limelight.”

The Bible has something to say about the person who likes to put on a show as they pray. Matthew 6: 1, 5 states “Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in Heaven. . . When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.”

This is pretty harsh criticism but it is based on seeing into a person’s heart.   I don’t have the power to see into a person’s heart, but Jesus suspected that some public prayer by the Pharisees and Sadducees was designed to make them appear righteous and they didn’t have the right motives for what they were doing.

A public speaker who really enjoys making presentations can be a good thing, and in my opinion the lack of stage fright frees the speaker to concentrate on crafting a message that can benefit the audience.   However, I have seen that go wrong too.   Some people love being up in front of others so much that they will do anything to call attention to themselves.   Content can suffer, audience understanding can be scuttled in favor of attention getting material and the whole speech event is just a way to get the audience to respond to the speaker.

This is manipulation whether it is a Pharisee or just an attention-loving speaker. The Pharisees were manipulating the audience in order to look more righteous than others.   The speaker manipulates the audience in order to get a positive response [ie. adoration].

Here is where we have to draw the line. It is one thing to manipulate an audience; it is something else to manipulate God.   W. Bingham Hunter states “God, like all personal beings, dislikes being used by others in pursuit of objectives which are personally offensive to Him.   What Jesus is really saying in Matthew is that if the reward of public prayer is flattery, the idea that we should commune with God and grow our faith is lost.

Where is a better place to pray if your public prayers have incorrect motives?   Matthew 6:6 says that “When you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

In today’s world, the big challenge is to find time to be alone with God.   Many say they just don’t have the time; some just don’t have the discipline, and others don’t put prayer high up on their priority list. Yet the practice of daily personal devotions has been a characteristic of sincere Christians for centuries. In the book of Daniel it says “Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God.”

What is the outcome of daily devotional prayer in private? Over time, one can build a relationship with God. This relationship leads to a stable life with God in times of joy and in times of trouble.

Let me repeat, I cannot see into the hearts of men. When I see someone pray and they want to be seen as righteous, I can only suspect that. I don’t know that.   When I hear a speaker make a presentation and they want to be adored by their audience, I can only suspect that. I don’t know that.

As Christians, we should be about doing anything which “allows us to come in times of crisis and triumph and find the strength to keep life in perspective . . .His perspective.”

The safest alternative for prayer: private prayer.

Just you and your Lord…

*I taught speech communication for thirty-six years at Hopkinsville Community College.

**This post comments on material from the book The God Who Hears by W. Bingham Hunter.

“Some people object to calling God personal” [Hunter*, 70].

Yet, can we make a case that there is some form of personhood for God?

The Bible does say that God is spirit but when you explore Scripture, you realize that this spirit is a personal spirit. Hunter cites the frequent use of personal references to God in the Bible. God’s personal name in the Hebrew language is Yahweh, Yahveh or Yahoveh [Jehovah]. This reference is far more common than people realize because translators have substituted the more formal and less personal Lord and Go in the place of Yahweh. Taking the New American Standard Bible as an example, Yahweh is changed to God 315 times, Lord 6,399 times and Lord’s 111 times. Even though we have become accustomed to using Lord and God in our references to our Divine Father, the Hebrew language intended Yahweh to be the best word to use due to the personal nature of the Word.

When you read Scripture and think about how God is portrayed, His more personal aspects become clear. He seems to be self-conscious and able to determine His own life. He does this through the use of clear, rational thinking. He has a will, He acts, He does things to reveal, He creates and does all this in a way that reveals He has a sense of right and wrong.   God also has emotions like love and “righteous” anger. God knows joy and grief.   There are many references to the fact that God desires to have a relationship with His children [us]. The keys to that relationship are very human activities like fellowship and mutual self-disclosure.

When you turn to the creation in Genesis, you read the book as God sharing His personal qualities with man. Our personal qualities did not come from some strange unknown source. They came from the Supreme Being. We are made in God’s image. How the first man was created was a clear indication of the personhood of God.

Perhaps the strongest case for the personhood of God is the person of Jesus Christ. God chose not to be eternally invisible when He put “skin on” and became man. John 1:14 states “The Word became flesh and lived for a while among us.” Jesus states in John 14:9 “Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father.” The Apostle Paul says “He is the image of the invisible God….God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him” [Colossians 1:15, 19]. Taken as a whole, one can just read the Gospels and see that the writers of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John intend for us to believe that Jesus [God] was fully personal.

People who object to making God personal seem to fear that we will take the concept of a personal God too far and somehow we will demean the dignity and divinity of God. For people with this concern, Hunter says that the best way to explain the personhood of God may be to say “there is personality in God” [Hunter, 70].

But from my point of view, I see the value in emphasizing the personhood of God, especially in the area of communicating with Him through prayer. I feel the most effective prayer is a personal connection with God.   It is not an exercise in trying to figure out God. Prayer is not a set of techniques to get what you want from God.   Prayer is opening as much of my heart to God as I can.   God knows me intimately because He knows all anyway. I am the one who has to make the choice to share or not to share. To share a little or to share a lot. To be partially honest or totally honest. To reveal all of my motives or try to hide some of my motives.   God knows what is going on and He wants to see how much I will connect with Him.

In my opinion, the more I share with God, the better my relationship with Him will be. In human relationships, the idea of sharing with another human being can be the bond that will cement a true friendship if we can trust the other person to be sensitive with our personal information. With God, that is not a problem. There is no problem with trust.   He will listen, He loves us, He will help us and He is always faithful to us.

I think that prayer will always benefit from a personal connection with God. The more you allow Him inside you during prayer the more your prayer connection will be strengthened. He will give you the key to a better life as you open your heart to Him.

You will increase your personal knowledge of your Lord and Savior.

Yahweh…

*our author W. Bingham Hunter, The God Who Hears

In Luke 10 a certain lawyer arose to try to test Jesus, asking “What am I to do to inherit everlasting life?” Jesus replied “What is written in the law? How do you read it?” The lawyer said “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”   Jesus said “you have answered correctly.”

In my way of thinking, this is the “bottom line” for Christians.

Maybe, just maybe it is the bottom line for our behavior this Christmas and for the new year.

It is a simple sounding goal, yet it is not simple either. Love is such a symbolic term and it can be interpreted so many ways [love of the soul, love of the mind, love of the child, etc.]. In addition, how much love is enough?   When do you know you have dedicated yourself enough to your Father? All your heart? All your soul? All your strength? All your mind?

Being humans with fleshly bodies and minds, we constantly wonder, “Have I done enough?”

What does the lawyer mean by loving your neighbor? Helping them? Giving them money? Telling them how much you admire them? Whatever we are supposed to do, we are supposed to do it to others as we would want it done to ourselves.

Yes, the instructions are a bit unclear, but the goal is so appropriate as we think about the gifts we receive this Christmas. The greatest gift is expressed in the most popular verse in the Bible: “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life” [John 3:16].

Should we not pass our gift of love onto others?

My thoughts are not earth-shaking and hardly original, but this is the time of year when we need to pause and assess how we are fulfilling the greatest command and the second greatest commandment: “the bottom line.”

Are you finding a way to express love in our world today?

Maybe there is a phone call to a friend that is long overdue. Can you pick up a pile of leaves in your neighbor’s yard or can you offer to nail a loose gutter to their house?   Maybe they are elderly and have a hard time getting things done? While sitting in a hospital waiting room, can you ask about another person’s injury and express your concern that they get well soon?   Can you volunteer at church accomplishing a short term project—maybe sorting food for food baskets?   When you want to say something incendiary about politics, maybe you stop and keep your thoughts to yourself.

Love expression opportunities are all around us…literally.

As Christians we should be the leaders of the world in showing others how to love. We should be showing others how to love God and in the process, God’s love will direct us to how to love others around us.

In a day and time when love is in such short supply…

Our behavior can help turn the negative tide that sometimes seems to envelop our world, you know, all the expressions that are so selfish and hurtful. All the expressions that get the attention of the news media. There is only one way to fight this trend that will probably never end.

We have to fight it by learning to show love. We have to obey the greatest commandment.

Don’t worry about how much you give to others, just give.   Don’t compare your effort with the efforts of others, just make your effort. Don’t overthink the process of giving your love to another, just give it.

This Christmas, we cannot give enough love and our neighbors can’t get too much love.

Do your part to change the world this Christmas. Learn to give love.

At the risk of stating the obvious, when we pray, we pray to an invisible God.

Now some petitioners may not be bothered by that but does that hold true for all? How can God’s invisibility cause problems for people who want to pray?

Bingham Hunter says that the first problem resides in the fact that some people don’t deal well with abstract ideas. An abstract idea is a thought that does not have a physical existence.   In essence, a person struggling with understanding abstraction would prefer most ideas to be something to touch, smell and see and God does not “fill the bill” for them. Terms like “The Great Spirit” and “The Power of the Universe” don’t help. Many people may be like the child Billy at the beginning of Chapter 5.* He is afraid in his dark bedroom and he expresses that to his mother.   She admonishes him that there is no need for fear; God is always with us. Billy says it would be a lot better if God were a real person with skin on. Now there is nothing we can do about this; sorry Billy. We pray to an invisible God.

In a related way, some people may fear what they cannot see. I take it for granted that I have my 65 year old conception of God. I am not a theologian, only a layperson in a Methodist Church, but I was exposed to God early in my life and as the years have gone by, I have been blessed with a strong need to learn more about Him and His invisibility is not a problem. He meant for it to be that way as you turn to Old Testament Scripture like Exodus 33:20 “No one can see Me and live.” But what about the novice, the person who, for whatever reason, has never really considered the need for worshipping a “Higher Power”? How does a new Christian begin to conceptualize God?   I have been around a few “new Christians” and one of the most negative struggles I have heard about is the woman who had trouble conceptualizing an invisible God because she could not help but visualize her unloving earthly father in the place of an invisible God. Another Christian I know prays to God as an empty chair. He knows God is invisible but the empty chair gives him both that idea and a prayer focus. It is a shame that invisibility can rouse anxiety or even fear, but it can.

The God of our childhood can be carried over to adulthood.   Many of us have seen children’s Sunday School materials that attempt to picture God. He may be a bearded fatherly figure in the clouds or a benevolent friendly elder with His hands stretched out over the earth. The problem with this is the “otherness” that God seeks to present to man. God is divine and should not reflect our experiences and desires.   The more we humanize God, the more we may find Him easier to pray to, but God should not be put “in a box.” He is bigger and more complex than man can imagine; He takes many forms; for example a lion, a lamb, a whirlwind, a burning bush, or an angel to name a few.   He is not limited by man’s imagination.

Finally, we can be distracted when we pray in the company of people. I lead pray from time to time and I wonder how I can fit my prayer to the group I am praying with. Should that be my ultimate concern? No. Maybe I am trying to impress with my prayer. Is my prayer sincere enough? Maybe I should raise my hands. I need to remember to mention that person’s mother who is very ill. An invisible God does not care about how we sound or the “thees” and “thous” we use; He probably just wants to hear a clear and honest expression of what is on our heart.

To be honest, the more we study the Bible, the more we encounter the abstract spirit of God. The more we humanize God, the more we make God a particular earthly entity. YHWH became “Yahweh”, and then the more familiar Lord and God. Why did God reveal His name to us? Because He did not want us to think of Him as a cosmic “it”.   Maybe He did not intend for us to use the familiar name Bob in place of God, but He wants to be a part of our lives.

Whether you have to use an empty chair or a Sunday School characterization, He wants us to relate to Him.   He certainly does not want us to fear Him. We may have many distractions that take us away from God’s divinity but He wants us to feel His presence in our lives.   He wants to relate to us…

God to man.

*Of the book The God Who Hears