A Word from God

At the first Sunday after New Year 2015, each person in the church body chose a word from a bag that was passed around. We were each receiving this word from God, out pastor said. Whichever word you pulled out, was not just the luck of a draw, but appointed.

"Believe," that's what came up for me.

Believe what? It is a transitive verb, requiring an object.

And God's Holy Spirit did say to my heart, "Believe, that I do love you. Believe, that I am with you. Believe, that I am providing for you. Believe, that I will work all things out for your good."
My 9-year-old son turned to me with a happy smile and whispered, all excitement, "Mama! I got 'Faith.' " I remembered that more than a year ago, I led his four older siblings through our homeschool Bible lesson on Faith, in which we learned the word as an acronym, FAITH, for Forsaking All, I Trust Him. And I was touched by how appropriate, also, is Landon's word for him, in our present circumstances. How there are so many things, large and small, that Landon used to depend on and are no longer there for him. Now it is God he must trust, first and foremost, before even his mama, who would naturally seem to get the credit for being the firm constant in his upheaved life. But even Mama seems pretty changeable, nowadays. A little too weak one day, a little too emotional another, slow to decide one hour, full of directions the next. Through all of it, I wonder how I am to model trusting, resting, in God, if most of what I can do is just to say it.

Then, it turns out, more and more often, that childlike faith is the rescuer of mine. Landon himself is the one to tell me that God is doing things, that God is keeping us. He prays for me to have God's help "through this situation" even at the end of days that were peaceful ones, proving that "this situation" is never really pushed all the way to the back of his mind, either.
And that shows me something about childlike faith: while I sit here and hear a simple piece of truth from the Word, I add layers to it, to break it down theologically, to apply it figuratively and literally and compare it to my emotions and balance it against my rational mind....my son takes the Word he hears, and takes it without second guesses. He already knows what it is like to be loved (he has me). So when anyone tells him that God loves him, he understands that, and he doesn't need to figure it out any further.
I know, and have talked this over with my pastor, that believing God's love for me is personal, sits at the top of my list, due to a deficit in the expression of love by my parents. In childhood, as much of it as I can remember, this was totally missing. I was a child who loved words, and believed them; as a teenager/young woman I longed for words I never heard until I had my first boyfriend; I am now an adult who loves words and depends upon them. The first time I ever heard "I love you" from one of my parents, I was 43 years old this past Summer, and I had just poured out the whole story of what my marriage had become over the course of nearly 6 years, to my mom. And so it took me 43 years to even begin to learn that God has loved me with an everlasting love, from the Beginning.
I have been seeking to believe many things about God, and about His involvement in my daily living, and not daring to believe first and foremost and in the right order, that all of these things are evidence of God's love for me.

I thought it significant, that Jonathan, my now 6-year-old, also drew 'believe' from the bag. This child also needs to believe: that God loves him, that God is with him at all moments, that God is providing for his needs, that God is working on putting a happy home together for him. This child has never had a father figure who was consistently kind, accepting, and generous to him; what he had was a father who called him "high-maintenance" for being so much younger than the older ones and needing more watching and hands-on effort to care for. His father could rack up points by ordering in pizza or letting him watch t.v. late, but never knew what to make of a youngster who most of the time retreated to Mama's company and there imbibed every work of quality literature I could read to him, and then learned the vocabulary to go with it, and tried to ply the other parent with too-deep questions. What Jonathan has had is a father whose words hurt, and whose actions reinforced that they were meant. In the face of that, Mama's words and acts of love were not even always enough to counterweigh. I told him bravely at bedtimes, "Jesus loves you, baby, and so do I." From what I can see, now that we have come out of that place of torment, it is easier for Jonathan to believe in God's love for him, now that he doesn't have to compare God's love to his daddy's.

A distraught parent once knelt before Jesus, entreating him for healing for his child. "Lord, I do believe [to a point]; [but] help my unbelief." What have I learned, class? Unless I become like a little child in my understanding, unless I strip down to acceptance of the Truth at face value, I will not be able to perceive the kingdom of God right here in my life.