Holy Veruca Salt, Batman.

If you’ve been following along for the last week, you’re probably wondering what the heck is wrong with me.

yeah.

me too.

My husband and a friend have both referred to it as me being “refined by fire.”

I should probably be happy about this.

I’m sure one day I will be.

Meanwhile.

You may be wondering. Where did this come from? Was there a trigger?

yes. yes there was.

two, actually.

AtypicalAtheist posed the following question to me in an email:

“If you didn’t believe that there was some higher being able to influence the course of events, of what possible value would prayer be?”

and immediately, I found myself asking the same question, but going deeper. Do I really believe prayer changes GOD? If God has a sovereign plan, why pray? If He already knows everything, why am I telling Him everything? He doesn’t need reminding. He doesn’t forget. And why do I pray like a widow?

The generic Christian reply is “We pray because Jesus prayed.”

thank you. thank you very much. that clears it right up for me. I’m better now.

not.

Thankfully, I know I’m not that unique. I know someone has asked themself these questions before. I was betting they had written about it.

It would seem I am in good company. Everybody from Pascal to C.S. Lewis to Yancy, to name just a few.

Philip Yancy in his book, “Prayer” said

“I envy, truly I envy, those people who pray in simple faith without fretting about how prayer works and how God governs this planet. For some reason I cannot avoid pondering these imponderables.”

solidarity, brother.

A second thing happened within a matter of days of receiving AtypicalAtheist’s email. God opened a door for someone I know. He provided a phenomenal opportunity. Out of nowhere. Total “God thing.”

And I remembered something I used to say all the time. “God can do ANYthing.” Beyond what we can ask or imagine.

I realized that I couldn’t see God’s hand in something I was pursuing. Tunnel vision pursuing. And none of what I was pursuing was beyond what I could ask or imagine. It was all “reasonable.”

and it was all me.

me. me. me. me. me. I wanted what I wanted. the way I wanted it.

and I wanted it now.

Holy Veruca Salt, batman.

The absolute LAST thing I want is to find myself in a “successful” situation and say, “Look at what I did!” instead of “Look what GOD did!”

but I saw it clearly. that’s exactly the direction I was headed.

Not a good look in the mirror for me.

I was a mess.

You combine my inability to reconcile praying petitionary prayers to a sovereign God with a sovereign plan and not seeing God’s hand in what I was pursuing and you’ve got someone who came face to face with hopeless selfishness.

not a good place.

I couldn’t pray.

What does faith look like when you can’t pray?

It’s not pretty.

it’s dark.

it’s a pit.

In my last post, I said that my husband had suggested I re-read Desiring God, Revised Edition: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist by John Piper and Decision Making and the Will of God: A Biblical Alternative to the Traditional View by Garry Friesen

I said they were both responsible for pivot points in my faith.

It appears I’m at another pivot point in my faith.

When I first read these books, the basic premise each of these guys set forth resonated with me.

In a teeny, tiny nutshell?

Piper – Serving God does not have to be sacrificial. It can be – sometimes it is – but it doesn’t have to be. There isn’t some sort of causal, yin and yang relationship between how much I sacrifice and how much God is pleased with my service. I can serve God by doing what I love and I can find joy in it. God wants me to find joy in serving him with my gifts. The passion I have for doing so was given to me by God. Sacrifice is not the marker of mature spirituality. Enjoying what I do does not mean I am selfish.

Friesen – God doesn’t have a predetermined, detailed individual plan for my life that I have to discover. A plan that is derailed if I make a wrong choice. (THANK GOD. Because if so, I veered off course a long time ago. multiple times.) Friesen’s premise is that the idea of God having a specific, detailed, individual will for each person’s life isn’t supported in scripture. That God has a sovereign will and it does not change. God has a moral will that we are to strive to stay within. Within His sovereign and moral will, God allows us to choose. He gives us the responsibility to choose. He gives us the wisdom to choose. When we have chosen what is moral and wise, we must trust Him to work it for His good. Within His sovereign plan.

again, I agree with Piper and Friesen’s basic premises. But some of what they say…

was seriously screwing me up.

I couldn’t reconcile the dichotomies in what I was finding.

Why is it that I can read C.S. Lewis and call him Jack when he gets all puffy and full of himself, but with these two guys I had trouble actually separating the wheat from the chaff?

And I see the chaff.

next time. this post is too long. I wouldn’t have read this far.

and like I said in my last post, if you know me IRL, don’t weird out when you see me. Like you’ve never seen a hot mess when you’ve looked into the mirror before.

[CLICK HERE to see a listing of all the blog posts in this series “the search for Joy.”]