“We can tell God the truth.” What does that even mean?
When I think of my daughter, I wouldn’t want her to give me a canned answer when she is scared or trying to find her way. I’d want to talk with her about it, so we could peel back the petals together.
I think this is what talking to God can look like, and in my mess of a journal from the past few weeks, you could see we had a lot to talk through.
So how do we tell God the truth? First, we come as we are. So if we are anxious, we don’t have to get ourselves all cleaned up and settled. We come, and we start talking.
For me, it can look like going outside in the stillness and whispering to God what my heart is feeling. “God, I’m scared,” and then just waiting. We might be surprised. He might respond. Maybe not in a booming burning bush voice, but over time I bet we will start to develop a pattern of identifying when it might be Him speaking.
So when I said, “God, I’m scared,” I assumed He would say, “You have Me. What do you need to fear?” While that is true, His response was, “I know.” And that opened authentic interaction with Him.
Next, we have to identify the thoughts and feelings and where they lead.
So I was thinking anxious thoughts, feeling fear, and then responding by putting up walls to keep myself safe and believing things that weren’t true.
As I followed through my journal with post-it after post-it, leaving a trail of what I was believing, God was inviting me closer, but I was going to have to spend some time with Him and work it through. He was inviting me to more, but I was going to have to step in.
This is where we bring it before God and trust Him to unwrap it, leaning in, listening, and then doing what He says, which may be as simple as, “Remain in me…stay close, my daughter.”
When we tell God the truth, we can begin to spend the days together, and as we live that way, we can be fed and nurtured, grown and tended to. We will find ourselves loved and cherished and seen. It’s the abundant life He promises, and my friends, it is close at hand.
HLLF,
