Getting Closer to God: Talking to God

The scriptures referred to are noted in the text. Most of the quotations are from the NET.

There is a very common way in movies in which they denote the evil leader. His followers are afraid to contradict him or bring him bad news, lest he just up and kill the messenger. The good leader is usually approachable, and will tolerate a certain amount of questioning of his plan. He is usually open to suggestions and will at times change his mind and trust his team.

A lot of people talk to God as if he is the evil leader. They will fawn and praise him, not so much out of gratitude but out of fear. And they are afraid to question him or complain about what is happening to them. They do not get this idea from the Bible. In the story of Abraham, the father of our faith, God reveals that he is going to evaluate and possibly pass judgment on the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. And Abraham questions whether it is fair to punish the good people with the bad. And he gets concessions from God. The Lord will not destroy the towns if there are 50 godly people. The he gets him down to 45. Then 40. Then 30. Then 20. Then 10. (Genesis 18:16-33) It's a sad commentary that not 10 godly people could be found in 2 whole towns. Apparently Lot and his family were the closest thing. But this establishes a principle we see throughout the Bible. God can be reasoned with. He does relent from taking action against sinners if they repent or if someone intercedes for them, as Abraham does.

Last week we spoke about listening to God. This week we are discussing talking to God, or praying. And when we do, we need to be honest. Far from provoking God's wrath, God welcomes honesty. In the book named for him, Job wishes to debate God on the unfairness of the world. He says, “But I wish to speak to the Almighty, and I desire to argue my case with God.” (Job 13:3) His so-called “comforters” defend God, saying that bad things do not happen to good people, so Job must have deserved his misfortune. In the end God does speak to Job. And to his “comforters” God says, “My anger is stirred up against you and your two friends, because you have not spoken about me what is right, as my servant Job has. So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and offer a burnt offering for yourselves. And my servant Job will intercede for you and I will respect him, so that I do not deal with you according to your folly, because you have not spoken about me what is right, as my servant Job has. ” (Job 42:7-8) God values our honesty in speaking to him and about him.

You see this in the Psalms. The psalmists express their every emotion, good and bad, to God. They complain about the delay in God's justice. Psalm 13 begins, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?” (Psalm 13:1-2) The writer is feeling forsaken by God. Perhaps the most vivid example of this is Psalm 22, the first line of which Jesus quoted from the cross. “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? I groan in prayer, but help seems far away. My God, I cry out during the day, but you do not answer, and during the night my prayers do not let up...But I am a worm, not a man; people insult and despise me...My strength drains away like water; all my bones are dislocated; my heart is like wax; it melts away inside me. The roof of my mouth is as dry as a piece of pottery; my tongue sticks to my gums. You set me in the dust of death.” (Psalm 22:1-2, 6, 14-15) This is a person close to despair. They are not prettying up the language when talking to God. They are letting him know exactly how they feel.

In Psalm 137 the writer is very frank about his feelings during the exile: “By the rivers of Babylon we sit down and weep when we remember Zion. On the poplars in her midst we hang our harps, for there our captors ask us to compose songs; those who mock us demand that we be happy, saying: 'Sing for us a song about Zion!' How can we sing a song to the Lord in a foreign land?” (Psalm 137:1-3) You can feel the heartache and homesickness of the writer. But then it ends like this: “O daughter Babylon, soon to be devastated! How blessed will be the one who repays you for what you dished out to us! How blessed will be the one who grabs your babies and smashes them on a rock!” (Psalm 137:8-9) Shocking! Even when you consider what the Babylonians did to king Zedekiah when they conquered and burned Jerusalem. We are told: “They captured the king and brought him up to the king of Babylon at Riblah, where he passed sentence on him. Zedekiah's sons were executed while Zedekiah was forced to watch. The king of Babylon then had Zedekiah's eyes put out, bound him in bronze chains, and carried him off to Babylon.” (2 Kings 25:6-7) The writer of Psalm 137 may have been wishing for poetic justice, a child's life for a child's life. All I can say is that it is better to confess such feelings to God than to act on them.

Indeed, how can the Lord deal with our feelings if we are not honest with him and bring them before him? An inmate once said to me, “I know we are supposed to forgive everyone. But there is this one guy I can't forgive. He is a serial killer. He is in prison in California, and one of his victims was my sister.” I was stunned. I wasn't sure what to say. And then I remember what a little old Lutheran lady had pointed out to me: on the cross, Jesus doesn't say to the people in the process of executing him, “I forgive you.” He says, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” So I pointed this out to the man who lost his sister and said, “I am not going to ask you to forgive him now. I've never had anything like that happen to me and I don't know if I could at this point. So, like Jesus, ask God to forgive this man. And then ask God to help you get to the place where you can forgive him.”

Which brings us to the reason why we need to be honest with God. It is for our own good. How is this man to heal if he lets what the killer did to his sister torture him for the rest of his life? But at least this man was honest about his problem. In the TV series House M.D. the title character operated on the principle that “everyone lies.” Often the key to a diagnostic quandary lay in some truth the patient was reluctant to reveal. Once House discovered it, he could heal the person. In the same way, we need to tell God everything so that he can heal it. Make no mistake: he already knows what's wrong. But until we acknowledge it and invite him into the situation, it will continue to fester and make us sick, spiritually, psychologically and possibly even physically. The human being is a body/mind/spirit unity and a problem in one area tends to bleed over into the others.

Of course we can also share our good times with God when we talk to him, as you do with anyone you love and who loves you. When you get good news you can't wait to share it with those you are close to. In fact, sharing everything with someone can cut our sorrows by a bit and increase our joys tremendously. And with God, we can thank him for them as well.

And this leads to another principle to observe when talking to God. Remember who he is. That doesn't mean we have to drop into King James English or say “Lord” every other word. It means showing the proper respect for our creator and redeemer, while still remembering he loves you. Even when Job is angry with God, he is never disrespectful. That is a good thing to remember when talking to human beings, too. Never diminish or dismiss them, no matter what they do or say. And that is especially true with God because we often project onto him our failures and blame him for things we ourselves have done or neglected to do. Don't blame God for the car accident you had because you were texting or forgot to buckle your seatbelt. Instead, be grateful that you are still alive to complain to him about the aftermath.

Again as we compliment those we love (at least we do at first) we should also compliment God. When we praise someone we remember why we are with them. I heard a recording of an older couple, Danny and Annie, on Story Corps. Danny wrote a love letter to Annie every day they were married. For 27 years he did this until he died from cancer. I'm sure they had their problems. I'm sure they had arguments. But he wrote his love letters everyday just the same and you could hear their love for each other in their voices. (By the way, Danny died the day the story was broadcast on NPR. And listeners wrote Annie thousands of letters of condolence. She reads one each day in place of the one she would usually get from Danny.)

Saying that you love someone and why you love them reminds you what brought you together and keeps you together. We do not say these things enough to each other and we do not say them enough to God. We should correct that in both cases.

For an example of respectful but honest talk with God I submit Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. As he speaks with God about his wife and his daughters and his troubles, the Jewish milkman expresses his fears and his confusion over solving his problems, with both humor and respect, as if speaking to an older, wiser friend. And like an old friend, Tevye anticipates what God would say to him. In regards to his second daughter and a young man simply declaring that they will marry each other, Tevye says to God, “He loves her. Love. It's a new style...On the other hand, our old ways were once new, weren't they?...On the other hand, they decided without parents, without a matchmaker!...On the other hand, did Adam and Eve have a matchmaker?...Yes. They did. And it seems these two have the same Matchmaker!” Tevye knows God so well he knows how he would respond. And we should grow to become like that. Soren Kierkegaard said, “The function of prayer is not to influence God but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.” I think he understates our influence on God (remember Abraham bargaining for Sodom) but I do think that just as conversing with a friend influences your thinking, so should talking with God. If it is a true conversation, that is.

Since the purpose of following Jesus is to become more like him, to recover the image of God in us that has been marred by sin, talking with God is a part of the process. Which means sometimes trying to reconcile what you think or want with what God thinks or wants. If you never disagree with God, you are either perfect or you have remade God into your image. In which case, you are worshiping a false idol, a magnified version of yourself. Because even friends disagree. And if you are a flawed human being, you will definitely find yourself at odds with God at times. Jonah really did not want to follow God's call to go and preach repentance to Nineveh. Moses did not want to be God's spokesman to Israel. Peter did not want to preach to the Gentiles, like Cornelius. God had to persuade them.

That's why when talking to God we need to pause and wait for him to speak to us. As I said, last week it will not necessarily be audible. It can be a thought, a realization, a strong feeling pushing you in another direction. It can be in the form of a question that makes you think and search the scriptures and talk to other people who are spiritually wise. Jesus often answered questions with questions. When asked, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus answers “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” (Luke 10:25-28) When in the house of Simon the Pharisee, and a notorious woman washed Jesus' feet with her tears and hair, Jesus told the scandalized host about a moneylender who forgives 2 men their debts, one enormous and one relatively small, and then asks, “Now which of them will love him more?” (Luke 7:36-50) After being awakened in a boat about to be swamped by a storm, Jesus calms the winds and waves and asks, “You of little faith, why are you afraid?” (Matthew 8:23-27)

Why indeed are we afraid to talk to God? Because I think that is the reason we avoid it. And I think it is because we are afraid of what he will say or how we will feel in his presence, knowing we are not faithful servants to him, nor exemplars of love or courage or integrity. We are troubled by the contrast between him and us.

And that's where the Holy Spirit comes in. Paul writes, “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how we should pray, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with inexpressible groanings.” (Romans 8:26) Like a translator, like a vocal coach helping us express ourselves better, like an advocate putting forward our story, the Spirit helps us make our needs and fears and pain clear to God. 

And Jesus is also involved. In the same passage Paul says, “Who is the one who will condemn? Christ is the one who died (and more than that, he was raised), who is at the right hand of God, and who is interceding for us.” (Romans 8:34) Again it says in 1 John, “(My dear children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.) But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous one...” (1 John 2:1) And as it says in Hebrews, “For we do not have a high priest incapable of sympathizing with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way just as we are, yet without sin.” (Hebrews 4:15) So we have the Spirit inside us and Jesus next to the Father making our side heard. And altogether they make up our loving and forgiving God.

To get closer to God we must talk to him. God is loving and forgiving and is in us and beside us, helping us express ourselves and making us into the persons we were meant to be.

Another part of the process of getting closer to someone is entering into their life and them entering into yours. And part of that is sharing friends. Which we will talk about next week.