Trying Harder

I had a check in my spirit yesterday right after I posted about "Now what?"  It was confirmed by a comment Nissa, my daughter, made about my post.

So many of us have been raised with the idea that our spirituality is up to us.  We have to make the effort to make God want to speak to us, to be with us and to teach us.  What we end up doing is carrying our spirituality on our own shoulders.  I once had a person tell me about someone I was trying to have a relationship with that I can't carry both sides of the relationship.

The same is true with God only he doesn't require me to carry both sides.  It's just that most of us have gotten used to being both sides of a friendship and we don't know how to let God love us without doing so much.

My parents raised me with the best of the tools they had at that point.  They ingrained me with the idea that I had to act so that everyone liked me.  Besides watering down who I am, it led me to collapse emotionally.  I was trying to please two sides of a congregational fence as their pastor and I got caught in the barbed wire.

I don't know when I came to the realization that God didn't require me to try harder.  I suppose I learned a lot about that while I was working with Theotherapy.  I remember once driving along listening to oldies from the 70's (not meditating on God's goodness) when he spoke and told me to turn off the radio.  He had something he wanted to tell me.

At that time in my life I had quit reading the scriptures, stopped praying (at least on Wed nights, before meals, etc) and was trying to give up all the religious things I had learned.  I discovered that the Father still wanted to communicate to me and didn't require that I try harder.

So many people that we worked with in receiving emotional healing had had the following formula crammed down their throats by their churches in response to their brokenness..."Just pray more, come to church more, tithe more, serve more...(try harder to be good).  They were worn out and had given up on the church.  They had also given up that they were ever going to measure up to God's (man's version of it) standard.

It was only when they began to experience the unconditional love of God that they realized that he is a friend who initiates friendship.  He wants to be in a relationship with us and he is pursuing us.  He wants us to stop trying harder...and just yield to his promptings.

Whew!  Was that ever a load off my shoulders when I realized it wasn't up to me to initiate it.  All I had to do was respond to his love.  His Holy Spirit was going to lead me into all truth.  He was going to deepen my spirituality as I spent time with him in whatever context I found myself.  He was going to lead me to repentance if I'd quit trying so hard on my own to be righteous.

Funny, the scriptures remind us that all our righteousness is as filthy rags...not just dirty ones, or soiled ones...but filthy.  We don't have enough Tide or Clorox to get our righteousness up to par.

As I walk out my daily relationship with the Father the interactions I have with others come out of the abundance of that love between us.  I don't have to try to be nice to others.  I just show the love I have been shown.  I don't have to remember to be polite.  I am just polite because I was loved first and now I can love.

I am enjoying my walk with God, my Father, my friend, my Savior as I yield to his loving attention to me.  I am enjoying the improvement in my relationships with others as I bask in His love.  I have given up trying harder.  It just wears me out.