God's Wake Up Service

“To be honest, though, I don’t know how much I like the idea of my spirituality being relational. I suppose I believe this is true, but formulas seem much better than God because the formulas offer control; and God, well, He is like a person, and people, as we all know, are complicated. The trouble with people is they do not always do what you tell them to do. Try it with your kids or your spouse or strangers at the grocery store, and you will see what I mean. The formulas propose that if you do this and this and this, God will respond.” – Donald Miller Searching for God Knows What

So I come across this situation recently: Somebody I know screwed up. Some people would say this person sinned. That might be fair to say but hey we all do it all the time. So then another person who was their friend noticed that there had been this mistake and wanted to go and talk to this person who had screwed up. Being nervous and scared to mention anything to this person the friend asked God for a sign to know if they should go and talk to this person about how things were. This friend asked god to wake them up at 2:22 am as sign that they should go and talk to this person. Know what happened? God woke this friend up at 2:22 am. Pretty amazing right!
Absolutely!
But the whole thing got me to thinking, not about whether or not God can do tricky stuff like that – cause I know he can. What I wondered was why this friend had to ask God for a sign to do something that they pretty much shoulda figured out was their job to do in the first place. I wonder if God isn’t kinda insulted when He has to perform magic tricks in order to convince us that he means what he says. Maybe he even gets mad. Maybe he just get so darn bummed out at us that he does what we ask him to do just because we’re so friggin pathetic.
I mean no insult to the person who got the personalized wake up call. I can totally understand being scared in that situation – I just wonder what it says about who we think God is…
I know that when my Dad asked me to clean up my room – I never bothered to ask him for sign that he really meant it. Gosh, if I woulda, he probably woulda pulled out his belt. That would have been his sign…
I guess this reminded me again how mixed up my idea of God might be. And it made get my head back into the obedience game.

On another note…

Hey just a big thanks to the guys who did BP’s on Monday night with me after youth. I missed a few of you there last night. I have to say it is quite something to have a group of friends like you all – I’m pretty fortunate. So 37 I guess it is now and it looks like my blood pressure is slowly starting to come down. Mind you when that sexy wife of mine walks in the room its all over the place. Peace out.