Seeking the God of Jacob

Some days I struggle heroically against the phrase "relationship with God". Other days I give up and go with it. Today is a day of the latter sort. I tell you this because I'm about to talk about my (ug) relationship with God, and I feel the need to apologize for this crime.

The thing about my relationship with God is that it's so different from any other relationship, because God is so incredibly different from anyone else with whom I relate. First of all - as anyone who reads this blog regularly should have drilled into their head by now - God has absolutely the world's worst communication skills. Which is my bitter, sarcastic way of saying he is silent and detatched. He doesn't tell me what he thinks, or how he feels, or what I'm doing wrong, or why he does what he does, or anything at all. In terms of two way communication, my relationship with God is on the same level as my relationship with William Shakespeare. At least with Will I have the excuse that he died before I was born. Which raises an interesting question... but I'll come back to that.

The second - perhaps the most significant - way in which my relationship with God is different is that He is God. Holy dang, that's crazy. I'm seeking (if indeed I am seeking) a relationship with God. The Lord. The one whose name is spelled in small caps in my Bible, the one whose personal pronouns are capitalized, the one who speaks in red ink. Get what I'm saying here?
These two points together make this relationship totally impossible. There is nothing I or any creature that ever lived can do to have a relationship with God if he is not willing to communicate. For this reason, several months ago I promised myself that I would stop seeking a relationship with God.

That's my mind speaking. I have a good mind - a mind that calculates and reasons and works things through. But I also have a heart - a heart that longs and yearns and desires. And for this reason, several days ago I broke my promise. I sought God.

I'm sorry, I need to interject here. I need to apologize, because as I write this I'm thinking about how to make it sound good, and how to convince you of stuff, and how I can maybe move you. This is my constant struggle - to know when to turn off writerman and just be as real as I possibly can. I don't want to manipulate you now, or push on you some kind of impression of God or myself. I hate that I feel sometimes like I'm taking God to court, and you're my jury. Like if I can convince you that God has wronged me somehow, he'll have to give me what I want. This is sick, but I can never totally overcome it. But I want to do my best here. I write this for myself as much as for you, to remind myself to keep my focus.

The other night my heart was longing for an encounter with God, and my head, which says this is stupid and counterproductive, conceded. And I cried out to God. I longed for him. I begged him to draw near to me. It makes me think of my favorite worship song, "Give us clean hands". It goes like this:

We bow our hearts, we bend our knees
O Spirit come make us humble
We turn our eyes from evil things
O Lord we cast down our idols

Give us clean hands give us pure hearts
Let us not lift our souls to another
Give us clean hands, give us pure hearts
Let us not lift our souls to another

O God let us be a generation that seeks
That seeks Your face, O God of Jacob
O God let us be a generation that seeks
That seeks Your face, O God of Jacob

This song is so powerful to me because it talks at the beginning about us doing the worshipy stuff - preparing our hearts and our bodies and turning our thoughts toward God. But then most of the song is this desperate plea for God to help us worship him. It acknowledges that we need God to help and guide and strengthen us, making us humble, washing our hands and our hearts, giving us the dedication and the strength to seek Him, and Him alone. This song rocks me. (Ya, and it's cool that it says "God of Jacob". Kind of personalizes it. Except of course that my real name isn't Jacob.)

So the other night I bowed my heart and bent my knees and begged God to draw near to me. I tried to come not on my own merit - my own humility or goodness - but with only a desperate need to encounter God, trusting him to do what I cannot to reconcile us. Shit, I hate that I'm writing this. Whatever I say, it's either bragging or whining or manipulating. It's selfish, because I don't know how it will affect some who will read it. (If any of this bothers you, I hope you'll talk to me about it, or to someone you trust.) And I feel like I should stop talking about this stuff, because my whole blog seems to be harping on this subject, and every attempt to get away from it has failed. Ok, let me try this again:

I'm discouraged and confused, because I really want to believe that there is a God who loves me and is near me. As much as I talk about being in a God-forsaken world, I can't just accept this analysis. I don't know if this is God's gift to me or if it's my greatest weakness, but I cannot truly forsake this hope that someday - even today - God will make himself known to me. (Please don't talk to me about heaven. I know about heaven, but it does me no good here and now. Unless you think I should kill myself.) I cannot forsake this hope, but neither can I embrace it. I live in limbo between hope and apostasy. Every now and then, the hope wins out and I fling myself at Gods feet again, trusting him, begging him once more. But with no result. And this is where I get depressed. The familiar hopeless fury hit me yesterday. But I decided I didn't want to do this phase in my cycle. I need to feel like I'm making progress somewhere.

I think about the people who will read this. I suppose that's you. There are two camps on this God-seeking issue: there are those that tell me to go for it, keep seeking, don't give up, and then there are those that say this is hopeless, a waste of my time and energy, and will only ever drag me down. I've tried to believe both, at one time or another, but I can never make it stick. As long as God turns me down, I will never be able to fully believe that he wants a relationship with me, and as long as I have this desire, I will never be able to fully believe that he will not fulfill it.

You know what drives me crazy? I've told you before, but it's gnawing at me, so I'll tell you again. What really drives me crazy is that it's my fault. Why is Jacob angry with God? Because he is imperfect. If I feel wronged by God, it's my fault. I want so badly to scream at Him, to tear a strip off God for this shit he puts me through, but I can't. I can't. Every time I try, the words die in my throat. I can never bring myself to really yell at God because I know that he is by definition good and just and loving, and everything he does to me is for my own good, and if there's anything that's truly wrong between us, it's my fault. Which leaves me with this maddening rage that I cannot release. And anyway, how can I be angry with someone who may not exist? The other thing is that whatever my problem is, he know it. He knows what prevents me from either having the relationship with him that I desire, or from killing that desire. He knows, but he won't tell me. He won't even tell those people he apparently speaks to, so that they can tell me. See, this is the part where I want to say "God is a jerk and I hate him", but I can't.

I think I've given up all hope of making this into a coherent, focused entry. But that's ok. I'll just keep jumping around. Next point: I'm trying to finally think through what it is I want from God. What am I actually asking when I pray that he would "meet with me", or a thousand other phrases? If I say I'm seeking a real relationship with God, what do I mean? I think what I'm looking for is an interaction - a divine parallel to the kinds of things that my friends do for me. Things like talking with me, showing that they're interested in me by looking into my eyes, showing their delight in me by smiling at me, or giving me a physical sense of their nearness by touching me. I think I want something like this with God. But as always, my desire is more complicated then that. I think part of it is just wanting assurance that I'm right to believe that God exists. Not that it would allow me to go out and convince people of his existence (I'm not really into that) but it would be nice to know for myself that there is a God out there who knows me and loves me and hears me. And then I think there's part of me that just wants a cool experience - something like being knocked to the floor, or seeing a flame above my head, or feeling some kind of crazy sensation. I don't do drugs, but I want to get high on something, so I go to God and ask him to give me a fix - to stimulate my senses in some amazing way.

Again, I don't know if it's right or profitable for me to seek this - that why it ruins me to think about it. Whether I'm feeding or fighting this urge I feel guilty, as if both are somehow shameful or wrong. There's no rest from this struggle. It's an ache that won't go away. I'm trying to remember how I was doing a few days ago, before this happened. Was I happy then? Was I doing the things God wants me too? Maybe. I think I though I was, for the most part. I can't remember. I can never remember emotions.

Where do I go from here? I really don't want to fall back into darkness, like I was in the summer. I don't want to be depressed again. But what can I do? I can't not care about this, and I can't do anything about it. What's the point of fighting the depression? I'll only be fooling myself, drugging myself, pretending to myself that it's all ok.

I hate this kind of existence. I hate always wondering if I'm lying to myself. I hate never knowing when I'm real. I hate this nagging suspicion that I've never been real.

God, if you exist, deliver me from this.