Distorted Images of God, Part Two

“What in the WORLD were you thinking??!! Why would you ask God to do that?”

My brother in Christ was dumbfounded by what I had just told Him I’d asked the Lord a few days prior to our conversation.

“Well, I know now it was the wrong thing to ask, but it seemed totally reasonable at the time I asked it.” I replied sheepishly.

We were talking on the phone and I had just shared with him what I had asked the Lord in prayer and what happened right after that.

I had just started experiencing God’s manifest presence, though inconsistently. I was building several new fulfilling connections with other believers. Things were really starting to look up relationally - an area that had always been a genuine struggle in my life.

All those positive changes made me feel nervous.

Things were starting to go really well. So well in fact that it felt…wrong. 

That’s how accustomed I had become to the emotional bondage I was under.

I started hedging my bets. Planning for disappointment. Thinking through evasive maneuvers.

Then I had the bright idea to pray a totally faithless prayer to a totally faithful God.

“Dear God, can you not bless me too much? I don’t want things to go so well in my life that I end up turning away from you.”

The next morning, I felt nothing. No connection with God whatsoever. It was like I had dropped myself in a spiritual vacuum.

Puzzled by the sudden change. I wondered to myself, “Why didn’t I feel God’s presence today the way I have the past few weeks. What changed?”

I immediately started wondering if it had something to do with what I had asked Him the night before.

And that’s the story I was unfolding to my brother from another mother.

Except what I thought was totally reasonable, he knew was completely absurd.

“I can’t believe you asked that!” he exclaimed. He was genuinely puzzled that my reasoning could be so off target.

“Well, yeah. I kind of put two and two together after the fact that it was the wrong thing to ask Him. But, at the time I thought it was a great idea.”

And then I shared another truth. 

I’d been periodically watching YouTube videos of Christians describing their encounters with God. 

Some were pleasant. 

Others were…let’s say …corrective.

“You know, I’ve listened to and read about many different believers having Jesus show up in person in their homes. For a while, I was thinking how amazing it would be to have a personal visit from Him in my living room. But the truth is, I don’t want to see Him. Because if He told me that He was disappointed with me in any way, it would crush my soul. I don’t think I could ever recover from something like that.”

Before I finished speaking the last sentence, my voice cracked and I started crying profusely at the mere thought of it.

I continued, “The very first direct message I ever got from Jesus was through a younger Christian woman who’d had a powerful vision a few weeks ago. In it, He told her that He could use me if I ever got out of my own way.”

My heart twisted from the soul piercing memory. I had replayed that message in my mind so many times already. I thought of it obsessively. It wasn’t exactly the type of feedback any believer with a functioning brain would want to hear from the Creator.

My friend’s voice came across in a pleading tone. “Child, don’t you understand that I know how to get a message through to you the best way? I know you.”

Wait, what?

What my friend said next, floored us both.

“Uh…Dalila, that was NOT from me. That was God. All of a sudden, I felt profound sadness and these words spilled out of my mouth.” He was overcome with tears as he continued.

“These are definitely not my feelings.  I think God just allowed me to feel his heart for you, Dalila. He’s sorry that you were so wounded by what He shared through your other friend, but He had to wake you up. He doesn’t want you to feel this way.”

It was the very first time that God spoke to me through this brother, but it would certainly not be the last. 

We sat in silence, astonished at what had just transpired. 

I’d had God speak through me once before at the beginning of my shaking, so I didn’t find it hard to believe that it had happened to someone else.

It wasn’t the fact that God had chosen to speak through someone that shocked me. 

It was that He had chosen to speak TO me, indirectly addressing the distortion I had about what He was really like.

My friend and I ended our conversation a short time afterward. After that stunning experience, we didn’t have much else to say.

For days afterward, I mulled over what had happened in my mind.

“God cares about how I feel?” 

“He felt sadness about how I thought about Him. He was crying over me.”

I couldn’t reconcile the vulnerability, the empathy, or the compassion I’d sensed in God’s message to me with the distorted images I’d held of Him for so long.

My reactions had brought God deep grief. I could hardly believe it. 

Did that really happen?

Was God so concerned about how I felt that it actually affected His own emotions?

That realization settled something in my heart in a single moment.

Jesus had suffered enough already. I could not be a person that would break His heart further. 

Something was going to have to change.  

And that something was me.

It was that brief phone exchange that forced me out of my self-consumed world. A pivotal turning point in my journey into God’s heart. To know and experience Him as He truly is.

For the first time in a long time, I stopped thinking about myself and my own wounds. 

I started thinking about Him and how I’d made Him feel.

Totally clueless of how I’d overcome the many distortions about God I’d had for most of my life, I knew one thing was certain. 

I’d do whatever it took to avoid causing Him pain like that again. 

Not long afterward, God spoke directly into my heart about why I’d suddenly stopped feeling His manifest presence after that poorly thought out prayer.

God is generous. He is a giver by nature. 

Lavishing His children with love, grace, and blessings is at the center of who He is, and doing so brings Him tremendous pleasure and happiness.

I’d asked Him to go against His own character…and that was a request to which He would never consent. 

The sudden change in my ability to perceive His presence was His very effective way of getting me to draw attention to my misguided thinking.

He wanted me to believe, know, and walk in the truth.

From that day forward He began breaking down the lies I’d adopted from the enemy and replacing them by inviting me to experience directly what He is REALLY like.