God can handle it

A friend was upset with another person and told me about it with great angst. I suggested that she tell God what she told me, seeking His face and His comfort. She replied, “I could never talk to God like that. It would be disrespectful.”

I gently reminded her of the psalms and how some of them expressed burdens to God in much stronger language than hers. I don’t know if she realized that her attitude demeaned the Lord. Does He not know our hearts? Isn’t He able to deal with our deepest woes and worries?

Tozer’s words today are worth repeating. He warns his readers to beware of reducing God to theory and intellect. He says when God appears to us as awesome, vast and incomprehensible, then the mind sinks into silence and the heart cries out “O Lord God!” This signifies the difference between theological knowledge and spiritual experience. He tells us to “watch lest we lose the ‘Oh’” from our hearts.”

Another Christian lady keeps telling me I’ve a super-sensitive heart when I pray or speak my burdens with the emotions that I feel. Maybe that sensitivity is the reason her words bother me, but doesn’t God have a burden for the lost, a broken heart for those struggling through life? Isn’t Jesus Christ sensitive and compassionate?

At times, I think I have a hard heart but then read Tozer’s words, “There is real danger that we fall victim to the prophets of poise and the purveyors of tranquility, and our Christianity be reduced to a mere evangelical humanism that is never disturbed about anything nor overcome . . .”

If nothing bothers me, if I cannot pray “Oh God” or express concern for the events in our world, then I am not like this psalmist:

“O God, do not keep silence; do not hold your peace or be still, O God! For behold, your enemies make an uproar; those who hate you have raised their heads. They lay crafty plans against your people; they consult together against your treasured ones. They say, ‘Come, let us wipe them out as a nation; let the name of Israel be remembered no more!’  . . . . Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek your name, O Lord. Let them be put to shame and dismayed forever; let them perish in disgrace, that they may know that you alone, whose name is the Lord, are the Most High over all the earth.” (Psalm 83:1-4; 16–18)

Who else can I share those concerns with? Who can do something about the hard stuff, the tragedies, the burdens that bother me?

I’ve noticed that whenever my interest in world affairs lags, or my concern for the well-being of others is turned off because I caring is hard on me, then my prayers become rote repetition, requests without any passion. Tozer puts it this way: When the calm listing of requests and the courteous giving of proper thanks take the place of the burdened prayer that finds utterance difficult we should beware the next step, for our direction is surely down whether we know it or not.

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Lord Jesus, faith in You means a relationship in which Your Spirit lives in me and affects how I think and live. It seems fitting that I should feel what You feel and converse with You as expressed by Your people, both in the OT and the New. May I never reduce You to a CEO where I bring my list of requests as if You are the boss. May I never think You are unapproachable if my words become a strong outpouring of my heart. May I never stop praying, “Oh God.”