ME AND GOD, GOD AND ME

Have you ever stopped to think how important God is in or lives? We’ve heard many times that without God we can do nothing, and we nod our heads and say “Sure”.  We know it’s true, of course, deep down inside us. But it often seems that we only acknowledge the important if God in our lives in times of crises.

Just let a child get sick or a loved one hurt or let there be a serious need somewhere and we almost immediately run to God expecting – sometimes demanding – that God help us. There is a problem we cannot solve and we want the Problem Solver to do something about it – and do it in the way we want it done.

Nothing wrong there. That’s human and, I dare say, Christian. In our entreaties to God we are certainly acknowledging the fact that God has something to do with the way the entire situation comes out. We are, let us not forget, in praying to God expressing our faith in God. How strong that faith is, for the moment, does not matter. What matters is that we do have faith in God. Without God there are some things we cannot do, that are beyond our abilities to reckon with.

But there is another side to this coin, another side to our relationship with and faith in God. On the one hand we can quite honestly say that without God’s intervention there are some things we want done that won’t get done: miracles – major, minor or in-between. These are up to God to do and ours to ask. The other side of the coin is the fact that without my asking, there are somethings God will not do.

You see, when we pray “thy will be done”, we are praying and saying that we not only want what we are praying for to be God’s will, we also want it to be done. God will not do anything for us that we do not want to be done. That may seem obvious or even heretical. It is neither. God does not force God’s will upon us. God only works in and with and through us. God wants and needs our cooperation. If we don’t give it, God won’t force it. But God demands it in order to be God in us. That is not to say that God does not work in our lives. God does. But it is to say that God is only as important to us as we allow God to be.

It follows, then, that the more we allow God to be a part of our life, the more God will be. The opposite is just as true. Perhaps what it all boils down to in our everyday lives is the fact that much of what happens to us is really dependent upon us because it is dependent upon our relationship with God. If we allow God into our lives, if we are constantly seeking God’s will for us, the more God’s blessing will abound.

But it is up to us. Without God there are a lot of thigs that we cannot do, But without me, without us, there are an equally large number of things God’s won’t do because God cannot because you and I won’t let God.