Not Just A Snuggly Genie

I was reading Bianca Olthoff's very inspirational blog the other day when I ran across a pearl of wisdom she had written about dating and marriage - to sum up, it went this way:  "The way a person loves God will be how he or she will love you."

I started really thinking about that...and it's made me sit back and take a long, hard look at my relationship with God.

I thought about how I interact with God in relation to how I approach my other relationships.  Some of the questions that came into my mind were:

-Do I set aside purposeful, dedicated time to spend with God, investing in being with just Him on a regular (as in, not just when I feel like it) basis?

-Do I seek out His heart?  Do I strive to learn what pleases Him, what He desires from me, and what I can do to serve Him better?

-Do I listen - really listen - to what He is trying to tell me about what He wants from and for me?

-Do I tell others with enthusiasm and adoration how much I love Him and how happy I am that He is my God?

Let's just say I was not comfortable nor happy with how I felt about the answers to these questions.

Lately, if I'm being honest, I've been treating God as little more than a Snuggie with magical powers.  Someone who can simultaneously hold me and stroke my hair while making everything all better.  A genie with a big lap and a James Earl Jones voice who has no qualms whatsoever about telling me how much He loves me.  Score!

Which...that's great.  God is that.  But He is so much more, too.

God wants more from me than just running to Him with my broken toy in a grubby outstretched hand to be fixed.  I'm not a toddler in the faith anymore.  He wants a relationship with me - a mutual, give and take, invested, reciprocal, adult relationship.  Except - score times infinity! - this is a relationship with the God who created me, loves me unconditionally, sent His Son to die for me, forgives all my sins, and knows every hair on my head and every step I should take to walk out His perfect plan for my life.

But in this relationship, I'm the one who needs to step up to the plate.

I need to learn how to listen to Him rather than just telling Him what needs fixing.  I need to spend time in worship rather than wailing.  I need to put the work that I so wilfully, selflessly, and persistently put into my other relationships into the Most Important One of all.

Good news is, the thing about me that anyone who knows me will tell you is that I will work at relationships.  When I invest in someone, by Heaven, I go all in.  I will clamp on with pit-bull faith and there is no shaking me.  That's because I learned from The Best.  Even with all of my taking Him for granted, my Abba, Daddy, Creator, and Lord is always here to be my Healer, my Guide, my Snuggie, and my Savior.  

And I'm taking myself to task to be better at reciprocating His investment in me from now on.

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." -Deuteronomy 6:5