Five Things I am Learning About God

Last decade was a decade of pulling down walls, and of unlearning and relearning realities and belief systems. I started the decade out as a Christian who believed in Jesus and the Bible and ended the decade as a Christian with a bruised and cracked faith who believes in Jesus and the Bible. The middle of that ten (10) year journey was filled with soaring faith and wrenching doubts, all culminating into a 2020 of starting over.

I unlearned and relearned a few things about who God is and here are five of them.

The only obligation God has to me is to make me more like Christ and he’d use whatever means available to accomplish that end. This is probably one of the biggest lessons I learned about God and one I had to come to terms with in the middle of the past decade. God is not obligated to answer all my prayers! Unanswered prayers, however painful or devastating, are not evidence of a loveless or dead God. I am learning to see them as evidence of a Father who knows what I need far more intimately than I know what I need. I see that truth in the prayers he answered and how he chooses to answer them. The faith journey is still one I’m wrapping my head around, and the way God operates is one I may never understand. Lately, I am learning to shift perspective and fix my eyes on the blessings and answered prayers instead of the places it seems like I may not be getting my way. Don’t get it twisted, I still have a semblance of a “love-hate” relationship with God and still want what I want when I want it….but that is not his sole obligation.

He is a good father is another huge lesson about God from the last decade. I have a friend who amazes me with how she communicates with God when she makes a bad choice. I couldn’t figure out what it was that was so different about her approach. I had always admired it about her, but I couldn’t quite replicate it. My go-to is usually to run off for months and then come back because my life has become a mess. We once had a conversation, and I shared how I felt terrible about a choice I had made, and it would take me a while to talk to God about it. She simply said, “He is your Father, and he is faithful to forgive.” It landed flat. I learned to seek forgiveness regardless of how I feel and to seek forgiveness immediately instead of taking a hike for 6 months. However, I knew I was…