He just showed to me that you need to understand where I began to understand where I arrived. When Christ said we could become sons of God, to me that meant that God could be our Dad like He was Christ's Dad. I didn't have a bad Dad, or a mean Dad, but he wasn't always honest, and when kids were throwing rocks they said I did and I didn't, and he believed them and not me. I knew God is perfect and He knows everything and He can't make the mistakes Dad's make. Christ told Nicodemus to become as a child again and I signed up for that. That was what I wanted. For God to re-raise me like He raised Christ here. I didn't like to talk and my vocabulary was limited and terrible. I went through a very painful rough spot and I kept getting Bible passages to "Wait on the Lord"
I was a waitress at the time and I thought it meant serve and it was the only thing I truly did with all my heart. So I didn't 'get it'. God doesn't stoop to our colloquialisms just to be better understood and I had to learn what the word 'wait' meant. I always said, "Hang in there'. So there were some bumps in the road. But what 'I' understood the life of a child was, was total dependency upon the parents. No authority to even open the fridge much less grab food out of it. Whatever I had belonged to God and what He distributed to 'me'. Now I can see that differs little from what Christ meant by calling a man a 'steward'. One day God said to me, "The world is a mansion in the corner of My mind". Wow! I could tell He was very 'young'. At the end of all that He said I said, "Wow! You're so cool!! Preachers make you sound like an antiseptic cotton ball in the sky when they thunder, "God is SO holy He can't even LOOK upon sin!!" (God's own words in the Old T. refutes that) but the experience made me realize there is nothing God doesn't know and can't understand and nothing I couldn't talk to Him about. I then asked how come old Israel didn't get to 'see' Him the way I did? He said, "Daddy cool was not the will they could will then." A pivotal point for me was another hard spot when I was wishing Paul was around to talk to at the time. I saw myself something was very wrong with that picture since God was available all the time. Why would I prefer to talk to Paul?
God has greatly expanded my vocabulary since the gate with Him, and greatly enlarged my understanding of many things. But the one constant remains to be the total dependency. In the world we have a concept of growing up that should not be applied to our life with God. No matter how far I've come, there's still much further to go. I mean think about it. GOD , not a man, but GOD with His incomprehensible knowledge, wisdom, and power. We can't just easily grow into Christ's shoes as Christ now is. The greatest amount of time spent in the lives of most people is 'perfecting their obedience'. People are not allocated nearly enough time to grow to the stature Christ attained in the world. No matter who they are there are bumps in everyone's roads too. Bumps that God knows are not YOUR fault. God can do what I call plug His mind into ours and give us to understand perfectly as He understands a matter, in a flash. I LIKE that. But it's not the only way He teaches or reaches us. He's got an enormous job to undertake in a very anti-Christ world where w are raised to admire and taught to aspire to the very traits that thwart His progress with us. It's not a life of sacrifice and constant discipline when you love and enjoy God. There is a passage that reads, "Though shouldest BE content with what thou has." That describes a state of being, not a work of discipline. If I wasn't content I'd be asking Him 'why'? We can't make ourselves 'BE' what only God can form us to become. Christ is our bench mark. He is our measuring stick. Christ led a life of total submission and obedience to God. That is our whole duty. God orchestrates the rest of it. You do the first commandment and God does the rest. I often wonder if the other commandments were there as a way to see if you are where you're supposed to be. Nobody doing the first, and it has a two fold nature too, would even think about doing some of the other things on the list. Christ fulfilled the two fold nature of the commandments. He neither coveted nor caused or tempted another to covet. We can be led to do what pleases God by Christ. But it doesn't come naturally, easily, or even possibly to us to even be able to do the Golden Rule well. So don't be so hard on yourself either.
