Thursday 17 December 2009

Trying to make me something I'm not...

There are a great many Christian books - biographies, stories or testimonies of Christians who experienced 'great things' - which pander to the desire to experience God in a deep way.

They nearly always give one the impression that these people had a special hotline to God, that they were a cut above everyone else and that these sort of experiences ought to be the norm. At least, that's the impression that I almost always came away with after reading them.
For years I wanted to be another Hudson Taylor or Praying Hyde or Amy Carmichael - it's taken me a long, long time to realise that I'm just me.

And these books don't seem to talk about the boring, long periods when these people lived dreary times of day to day drudgery when God seemed far away. Did they really have such times too? Or wouldn't it go down too well? Maybe the books wouldn't sell too well, if everyone realised that these were people with feet of clay, just like me. Or maybe in some ways, these so-called spiritual giants were people who were just as infected with religiosity and institutional thinking too? Maybe the picture we're given in these books is totally squewed?

When we left IC, I started to become normal and to realise that I was OK as I was without my spiritual wishful thinking.
Since then, I have battled secretly with my apparent lack of faith, the fact that I don't see miracles all the time, that I don't hear God speaking to me in an audible voice, that for months, I don't seem to hear Him speaking at all ... Is this OK?

I do experience God - but not in the way that others say they do - I suppose the way that each one experiences Him is unique to them - but we have been given a 'one-size-fits-all' mentality through IC, and compare ourselves unfavourably with others when we obviously don't look too good in the spiritual jacket we're supposed to put on.

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