Using God

God gets used for a lot of different things. He gets used to scare people. He gets used to prove people's points. He gets used as justification for lots of horrible things that people choose to do. Most of the time I use God to make me feel better. I am usually wanting him to solve all my problems. The thing is, it's really hard to use God. The times I look back and I just wanted God's presence as a salve for my wounds, I realize he really didn't take to it too swiftly.

Usually when I spend time with the Father, I have this agenda of things I want him to take care of, or there's something I definitely want to get from the time together. Then I think about how awful that is - if I treated any of my other friends like that, we probably wouldn't be friends anymore. God will not be used - and that's kind of good. If he just did everything we wanted him to do, we wouldn't be able to experience real relationship with him - the kind of relationship where he is exactly who he is and not just everything we want him to be, and the kind of relationship where it is enough just to be together.