"Crouching God, Hidden Jesus"

Who's afraid of the big, bad wolf? I am; that is, if the wolf you refer to is God. For so long in my Christian walk, I've viewed God as the wolf, tiger, lion, whatever, in the sky. He crouches, waiting for his chance to pounce. Much of what I've done, or not done, out of self-proclaimed obedience, has been more out of fear, a fear that if I don't do what's right, God will get me! But I had it all wrong.

I've been struggling with some things lately--I add the "lately" only to underscore that I refer to my most recent issue, not to imply that I don't usually struggle with things because, indeed, I do. I'd been afraid to take the issue to God in prayer because I thought he was unhappy with me over the whole situation. I thought he was just waiting for me to ask him about it so he could put me face-to-face with my sin and disobedience. I thought that something I very much enjoyed was going to be taken from me, almost simply because I was enjoying it too much.

But last night as I was getting ready for bed, I began to pray. I realized how long it had been since I had a real conversation with God. So I stopped and just spent a few minutes reflecting on that. This was one of those rare moments where it seemed as if God actually initiated the conversation, like he just got my attention and walked me through my thoughts; so I tuned in. I realized that I had been avoiding God, avoiding having to surrender this issue to him. (Oh, and I'm being vague about "the issue" because it's really irrelevant to the point I'm making here; it would take too long to explain and would be more of a distraction than anything.)

My thought was, "I don't want to pray about this; I don't want to surrender it because I know what will happen next." Immediately after, another thought came to mind, "what if God isn't trying to take anything from you; what if he just wants you to pray about it because he wants to be involved, to help you along?" What a sobering thought! In that moment I did come face-to-face with sin, but my sin was in pretending that I could read God's mind and being deliberately disobedient. I had not stumbled by holding onto something he told me to let go of, but by leaving him out of it altogether. I had another series of thoughts afterward that were just such a blessing to me. (I might share those later.) But here's the main point:

Don't be afraid to keep God in the loop. First, you can't hide anything from him anyway. So you just wind up feeling guilty and looking foolish. Second, God is not "the big, bad wolf." He's not waiting for you to stumble so he can pounce. He wants to help you; he will help you; he will love you. And there is nothing scary about that!