A Personal God

Faith, God, Guidance 0

It is the idea of God “being involved” that is often the sticking point. Many of us prefer to think of our relationship with God as being unrequited. Most of us are not really comfortable with the idea of a personal God, one interested in all our affairs. We think that there are areas beneath God’s concern, and those are the areas, particularly finance and romance, that we tend to try to run ourselves. Very often it is the area that we declare beneath God’s interest where we could use the most divine help. Stubbornly isolationist, often more than a little self-pitying, rather than open our eyes to the help all around us, help that has been divinely sent, we try to go it alone. In so doing, we shut out many of the intended helpers sent in our direction.

When a gift horse is sent our way, we not only look it in the mouth, we slap it on the rump to get it out of our vicinity as soon as possible. “It’s just a coincidence,” we say when something transpires that seems an answered prayer.

— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 78

A Sense of Direction

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So often faith comes down to having a sense of direction. Faith requires believing that we are headed in the right direction for our lives. When we feel lost and abandoned, when we feel that God is not beside us, we are always mistaken. God is with us every moment, in every circumstance, in all places. We may lose touch with God, but God never loses touch with us. God is the Great Creator. We are the beloved creative children, never out of sight and out of mind, watched over and cared for at every instant. All that is required is for us to one more time avail ourselves of God. “Lord, I believe; help my disbelief,” we must again pray. We must claim that God is with us always. We must seek to touch God and to allow God to touch us right where we are.

— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 66

God’s Orchestration

Faith, God, Growth, Guidance, Waiting 0

“Thy will be done, God,” we pray, “but in the meanwhile, let me try this.” It is difficult to allow the timing of God, the moving of other gears into play. We forget that God is orchestrating a much larger whole, and we tend to think of and want God’s will for us to be an instantaneous release from all that troubles us. We want our spiritual life to be a product, not a process. We want to be finished, solved, soothed — and sometimes it is our discomfort that is drawing us toward God.

— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 60-61

Giving

Faith, God, Gratitude, Trust 0

The act of giving best reminds me of my place on earth. All of us live here by the goodness and grace of God — like the birds of the air and the flowers of the field, Jesus said. Those creations do not worry about future security and safety; neither should we. Giving offers me a way to express my faith and confidence that God will care for me just as God cares for the sparrow and lily.

— Philip Yancey, Grace Notes, p. 359

Outward Forms

Compassion, Faith, Growth 0

We dare not forget G. K. Chesterton’s aphorism: while a coziness between church and state may be good for the state, it is bad for the church. Herein lies the chief danger to grace: the state, which runs by the rules of ungrace, gradually drowns out the church’s sublime message of grace….

A state government can shut down stores and theaters on Sunday, but it cannot compel worship. It can arrest and punish KKK murderers but cannot cure their hatred, much less teach them love. It can pass laws making divorce more difficult but it cannot force husbands to love their wives and wives their husbands. It can give subsidies to the poor but cannot force the rich to show them compassion and justice. It can ban adultery but not lust, theft but not covetousness, cheating but not pride. It can encourage virtue but not holiness.

— Philip Yancey, Glimpses of Grace, p. 357

Tests of Faith

Faith, God, Trials 0

Often when we face a test of faith, it is because God’s will may run counter to our wishes. We want what we want, and we are unable to take the longer view that God’s will entails — for that matter, we may be unable to see the longer view. This is when we are being asked to demonstrate blind faith, that is, a faith in a larger benevolence, even though we ourselves are unable to see the higher wisdom at hand.

“God, I believe; help my disbelief” is the prayer for times of blind faith. We are asking for the grace to go along with the joke, and the joke may seem to us to have a very harsh punchline. We are asking, often, to accept an untimely death or the shattering of a cherished dream. We are asking for the courage to believe, in the face of our own human disappointment, that a silver lining might just exist and that if we stay faithful we might eventually come to see it. So much of what happens to us seems in cozy retrospect to have been designed for our best good. So little of what happens to us feels that way at the time.

— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 59

Sharing the Burden

Faith, God, Trials 0

Faith makes the unbearable bearable. It renders the burden that is too heavy to be borne alone a burden that is shared. It brings the help of God to our side, and once it is there, that help becomes the walking stick by which we move forward.

— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 57

Where God Is Wanted

Faith, God 0

According to some estimates, Christians in developed Western countries now represent only 37 percent of believers worldwide. As I travel and also read church history, I have observed a pattern, a strange historical phenomenon of God “moving” geographically from place to place: from the Middle East to Europe to North America to the developing world. My theory is this: God goes where he’s wanted.

That’s a scary thought in a country like the United States, home to five hundred satellite TV channels for diversion and entertainment.

— Philip Yancey, Grace Notes, p. 349