Getting Past the First Layer

Claim Jumpers is probably one of my favorite restaurants in the entire world. Their potato soup - delicious! But one of the most rich and yummy things at Claim Jumpers, is their chocolate cake. It has about a million layers of chocolate cake and creamy chocolate frosting. For one person to eat this cake, it would be a miracle. My family of five can't even eat it all together! If the cake had about 999,999 less layers, it would be the perfect size. But it isn't, and as a result, it takes my family and I a very long time to eat through all the layers.

I know that right now, you don't quite understand why my Claim Jumpers story above is quite relevant, but I will heartily explain. I believe there are multiple layers to one's relationship with God, like the layers of the Claim Jumpers cake. For example, let's say the first bite is being brought to Christ. Fantastic! The first bite is just the beginning to happiness! The God of the Universe has sought you out and captured your heart. Congratulations! But what about from then on? What about after God has pursued you?

After the first bite, I believe there is layer number one. In layer number one, we scrape by it, because it's mostly frosting, and we want to get to the delicious, spongy cake, but the frosting makes it difficult. In this first "layer", that's when we read our bible every once and a while, and pray when we feel like it. We're doing the bare minimum to keep our heads above water. We live life almost exactly the same as it used to be, and it's hardly changed since we became a follower of Christ. We skirt by, too busy with the rest of our lives to spend time with our Father. Too busy with our first layer to even bother trying to get to the second layer. Yet how would we know what the second layer is like, if we're too busy being barely content with the first?

Ahhh, now here we get to the more exciting layers. The second layer, I believe, is where life really starts to get interesting. One becomes more serious about their faith. Suddenly reading their bible every so often, just going to church and praying every once and a while isn't enough. And out of the blue, we want more - more more more of God. We read our bibles every day, pray constantly, read books, search theology - we can't get enough of our relationship with the Lord. That, is the sweet spot - that is one of the places where we belong. In the second layer, that's when our relationship with the Creator becomes set in stone, and we feel His presence everywhere. It's layers like these where our hearts are set on fire to serve and to be a part of ministry; to find out the answers to our theological questions; to actually pray to God than talk at Him.

It's hard to break out of the first layer, and delve into the second. From the standby point of the "frosting", it seems like the cake looks too hard to get to, so you should just sit around and stick with your chocolate frosting, after all, it's pretty good - or so that's what Satan wants you to think. Stop enjoying your chocolate first layer, and break through to the second one. Satan's dream is to keep you as far away from God as possible, because you're more vulnerable there than you are without Him. The second layer holds so much more of a relationship with God then the first did. Serving and learning more about the Lord is exactly what God wanted us to do. He wants us to be committed to Him, as a husband is to his wife. God is too good just for frosting!

Here's a good verse talking about commitment to the Lord:

"Commit to the Lord whatever you do , and your plans will succeed." Proverbs 16:3

Breaking out of the first layer is one of the most wonderful things I've ever done. You get out of the sticky, overly sweetness of the frosting layer, and fall into the delicious and wonderful cake layer. And that's only the beginning. Just think...behind that simple frosting layer, is a whole world of Jesus Relationship Cake.

Testing the Mundane Tea Leaves

God tests your faith in all times, even in the times you don't realize. God tests us when life is hard - and this is when we most notice His tests. He tests us when we are sad and struggling to keep our heads above water. And here's the two most craziest tests of all: when we're happy and when faith seems boring. I know what you're thinking... "God tests us when we're happy or bored with Him? What? No! That's crazy." Actually, it's not as crazy as you may think.

I notice that when I'm happy, it's a lot easier for me to forget about God then when I'm going through a really hard time. I find that the happier I am, the less I feel like I need God. In hard times, God is my rock, but in happy times, when there's people around me and other things to distract me, I don't feel like I need God at all. At least, that's what I used to think. Think about this and compare it to your own life - do you fall away from God when life is good or do you cling to Him like when life is bad? Hayley DiMarco made an excellent point when she was talking about God and our happiness: "Because when you have all kinds of people to comfort you and everything you need to be soothed, then you don't really need God, do you?" What she's saying, is that when life is good and you have people to meet your needs, your God needs seem to fade away pretty quickly. The times that I fall away from God the most, are when I'm on cloud nine and life is happy-go-lucky. When it seems like nothing can go wrong, that's when I would pull away from God. I have had to learn this the hard way, instead of the easy way.

The same can be said about God being boring. How could we ever think that the God that created us, designed the Earth, painted rainbows in the sky and sent His son to die for us on the cross, be considered boring? He is exactly the opposite! But sometimes we go through dry seasons, and it feels like God isn't around and that He's not being bold enough with us, so therefore He is considered boring. But He's only considered boring because we make Him appear that way; if we built Him up on the towers we built up the people we admire, we would no longer look at Him and think He is dull.

So what exactly is it that can keep us tethered to God when we're testing the mundane tea leaves? Our handicap. Paul writes:

"Because of the extravagance of those revelations, and so I wouldn't get a big head, I was given the gift of a handicap to keep me in constant touch with my limitations. Satan's angel did his best to get me down; what he in fact did was push me to my knees. No danger then of walking around high and mighty! At first I didn't think of it as a gift, and begged God to remove it. Three times I did that, and then he told me,

   My grace is enough; it's all you need.
   My strength comes into its own in your weakness.

Once I heard that, I was glad to let it happen. I quit focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ's strength moving in on my weakness. Now I take limitations in stride, and with good cheer, these limitations that cut me down to size—abuse, accidents, opposition, bad breaks. I just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become." 2 Corinthians 12:7-10

The "handicap" Paul was given was the only thing that kept him tied to the Lord. In the first part of the verse, it talked about how so he wouldn't get a big head, he was given the gift of a handicap to keep him in touch with God. Because Paul was given a handicap, instead of it thrusting him away from God, it pushed him to his knees in front of the Holy Spirit.

When we are happy or bored with the Lord, we are actually weak instead of stronger. Our handicap was made to bring us closer to God when we were running away from Him. I want you to remember that even when you're happy, or bored out of your mind, you must worship God, take heart in your handicap and show the world just what kind of a Jesus Freak you are.

Stop Drinking Decaf

Praying is one of the hardest things for me to do. I feel like I never know quite what to say and how to say it. And I know how "un-Christian" this makes me sound, but sometimes I find praying boring. It feels like I'm praying to nothing, because I can't feel or see God and He doesn't always talk back. Plus, my prayers are kinda wimpy - they look something like:

Dear God,
Thank you for this day and all the people around me. I pray that tomorrow will be a good day and that everything goes well. Thank you for all the wonderful things around me. 

In Jesus's name, 
Amen.

And that would be my simple prayer. I prayed that prayer for a long time, and sometimes the words would change a little, but not much. Sometimes I would ask for something here or something there, but it was for silly, petty things. If this was all praying was, how could people spend hours doing it? I found it tedious and dull. And hard to do. As soon as I would start a prayer, my mind would wander and I would get distracted, thinking about other things, like what I had to do the next day and what homework I hadn't done yet. How could my divine God be so colorless to pray to?


That's when I realized, God is VERY uninteresting to pray at, but he's exciting to pray to. Instead of actually talking to God, I was praying at Him. I needed to take a step back, look at the Divine Creator in all of His splendor and talk to Him. Solomon encourages us not to rush into God's presence with words, which means instead of rushing ahead and praying a quick nothingness prayer, we need to come forth and talk to the Lord. When I first attempted to "pray", I failed because I was just running through my words. It took me a while to figure out what praying actually was. Now my prayers go longer then they used to, by quite a bit more time. I tell God everything, instead of just surface details. After all, He does know any and every detail about me and my life.

Talking to absolute silence and emptiness is hard, trust me I know. When I sit around and pray, it can be strenuous because I feel like I'm praying to nothing, even though I know the Lord is listening to me. My old youth pastor gave me a good idea when I told him I was struggling with praying. His advice was to find a chair and face it. Imagine there's God, in all His mighty, sitting in that chair. I find that when I'm actually talking at the chair that God is "sitting in", my prayers come easier. The words flow better when I'm talking to God and not praying at Him.

Sometimes praying seems tough, but when you really start talking to God about everything, it doesn't seem so tiring. Instead, it seems easy and good, like you're getting together with an old friend and talking about everything that had happened over the years you hadn't been together. So get up, and talk to the Lord; stop praying at Him and start talking to Him. In other words, stop drinking decaf, and bring out the caffeinated tea leaves.

Here's a good verse on prayer:

"Pray continually." - 1 Thessalonians 5:17

My challenge for you is to break out the caffeinated tea, set up your two chairs, face the Lord and have a long chat with the one who created you and knows the stars by name. Lastly? Pray continually.

Pursuing the Creator of the Universe

As females, we tend to want to be pursued. We want people to come after us, and seek us out. I want to be pursued by people, instead of doing the pursuing. We can say the same about our relationship with God. When we haven't been saved yet, but we feel this tugging in our hearts and souls, God is pursuing us. He is wrapping His arms around us and pulling us close to Him. There is no more beautiful thing then God pursuing us...or is there?

There are times in my life when I go through dry seasons, and I'm sure many of us have times like that. It feels like there's nothing left, because God suddenly fell off the face of the Earth. It feels like He's abandoned us; left us in the dark without His light. When this happened to me, I was so angry. I was mad at God because I couldn't feel His presence, mad because He wasn't speaking to me, mad at His aloofness and mad at how easy it was for Him to treat me like this. I was hurt, because I didn't understand why God had left me so stranded. I thought Him and I were "tea-time" buddies, but if He could leave me like that, then what did that make Him?

I went through this dry season for what felt like a million years. People tried to encourage me and tell me that it would pass and I just had to keep being obedient to God, but it was hard. Why would I want to be obedient to someone who seemed like they didn't even care or exist anymore? There was even a really dark time when I wanted to walk away from my faith. I didn't want anything to do with the being that just left me alone. To me, it felt like God had pulled away and left me exposed to Satan and all his demons. It took a really long time to realize this wasn't true.

After being in my starless, dry season "without" God for a year or two, I finally figured out my problem. Even though people had told me my conclusion countless numbers of time, it didn't make sense until I was on my knees in desperation. I finally realized I had to pursue the Creator of the Universe. I had spent all my time waiting and waiting for God to pursue me, that I ignored pursuing Him. It wasn't Him who abandoned me, it was I who abandoned Him. I was the one that had pulled away, and when I became more angry at God, I pulled away even further. I was wrong, and Satan had used that to try and take me away from God completely. I ran back to God at full speed, but it was hard to pursue Him when I had pushed Him so far away.

Pursing the Father doesn't mean running around your house screaming to God to come back. It doesn't mean looking in your closet and under your bed for Him because you lost Him. Pursuing Him means sitting down in a quiet place, opening up your bible and delving into His word. It means talking to Him, even if it's just small talk. He wants to hear everything you think and want - He wants a "penny for your thoughts" so to speak. So delve into your bible and drown yourself in conversation with the one who has spectacular plans for you. Read books about Him; do devotions; try reading through the entire bible. But most of all? Be disciplined. Coming to God wasn't easy, and when I tried it the first time, I failed. I had to come back over and over again, and discipline myself to read my devotional and bible daily. It was a challenge, but one well worth it. I still struggle with being disciplined sometimes.

Here's a verse I stumbled upon that showed me pursuing God is something that should be done to Him, not wanted from Him:

"You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." Jeremiah 29:13

That verse is God's decree - God's decree! Do you know what that means? It means that that is His official promise and law. So remember, in times when life seems veiled and God seems like He's skipping out on your tea party, you will find the Lord when you seek Him with all your heart.