Hey God it's me again,I'm struggling today, as always, with so many questions on my mind. I know my questions don't scare you, but do they ever make you mad? Make you turn away from me? Frustrate you? Make you laugh? Do I ask too many or too often?
Like, what qualifies as real worship? Is there a right way and a wrong way? Is there a way that brings me closer to you then others? Is it jumping up & down clapping in unison with the entire congregation to celebrate the life you've given? Is it singing a prayer, walking in circles around the chair, speaking in tongues, calling out your name in between stanzas with hands raised? Is it closing my eyes and weeping at the beauty of the words being sung too moved to speak? Or is it when I sit quietly in my studio and push papers around, slopping glue on my hands and getting it in my hair, and faintly hearing your answers to my questions as I begin to see the picture I am making form in front of me?
And do I have to pray out loud in order for my prayers to be more powerful and effective? To send the enemy on the run as he hears me calling to you and standing on your promises? Am I sinning if I start to falter and forget what your promises to me even are, let alone how to stand on them? How do I know which way to pray is right? If I'm not prophesying and don't pray in tongues am I missing the mark?
If I quietly lead my life & sometimes talk about you to people who don't know you, but sometimes not, am I hurting you? Grieving your Spirit? Lord did you put me on this earth to live a life of martyrdom like your servant John, eating locusts and wearing animal skins or the modern day equivalent to it?
How can I believe what some say about sacrifice when they talk to me from their big houses & drive their nice cars? How can anyone believe me when I talk about you when they see that I have so little or need so much? When I am dealing with broken relationships and have such a messy life?
Do I discredit you when I don't look like I have it all together and still claim to know you, to be known by you?
I cry and moan to you and ask for one thing and then the next day I contradict myself and ask you for the opposite. I waver and flounder and don't have a clue some days, but I am trying.
Clearly, Lord, I have a tough road ahead of me and I know that you are with me on it, but are you with me more if I pray to you out loud while posturing on my knees then you are if I sit squirming in my bed because the pillows aren't comfortable enough, while the cat sleeps in my lap and I journal my thoughts in the form of a prayer to you or if I am simply sorting through these scraps of paper?
Lord I know you are a big enough God to handle my questions. On the one hand I feel guilty for having the questions in the first place, for my waffling and unsteady emotional swings, but on the other hand I feel like you are the only place I can go with this. You understand me more then anyone.
One thing I know for sure is you are there. You allowed me to stray so far from you and when I was ready you opened your arms and welcomed me home. You answered every one of my questions when I needed to know if you were real. I am grateful I can come to you. Grateful you will be with me on my steady and secure days as much as you are on my most uncertain. Grateful that for as many questions I have, you have all the answers.
And I know that you hear me, even if all I am doing is writing to you in this journal and praying to you in my head & my heart, because there have been so many answered prayers. So many real & tangible answered prayers.
