I was about 5 years old when I saw a yo-yo exactly like this one. If I
remember correctly, I was at the grocery store with an extremely important
person in my life, and I asked this person if I could have the yo-yo. This
person reached into their pocket, held out a few coins, and said -- in what was
probably the first time I'd ever heard these words, but certainly not the last
-- "We can't afford it." I think the yo-yo only cost about a dollar.
But I went home that day without a yo-yo.
I think perhaps this extremely important person eventually had pity on
me, because the following Christmas, this yo-yo was wrapped under the tree for
me. I'm glad this approximately-one-dollar yo-yo was eventually purchased for
me, because I've kept it. Even though this dinky little plastic thing is
cracked in a couple of places and the little loop in its string is too teeny to
fit around my adult fingers now, it's become a teeny, simple decoration for me
almost every Christmas.
Another reason why this yo-yo is so important to me is because I think
perhaps that day, I accidentally learned a terrible lesson: The extremely
important people in your life who are supposed to provide for you are NOT
always able to provide for you. I wasn't initially told "I want to give
you this yo-yo, so keep asking Me for it" or "No, not yet" or
"No, this yo-yo will always be off-limits for you." I was told
"WE CAN'T." I think this lesson was so terrible because it
transferred over to how I saw God: I didn't think that He was able to provide
for me, either.
"So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and
you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks
receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. If a
son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if
he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish? Or if he
asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?" (This is Jesus talking in Luke 11:9-12.)
Reader, perhaps you've never overtly asked for a stone, a serpent, or a
scorpion, but perhaps you've had plenty of metaphorical stones, serpents, or
scorpions hurled at your face by people in your life who were extremely
important to you. Perhaps something inside you has gotten twisted and thinks
that God has dissed you like your extremely important people have because,
well, He's the Most Extremely Important Person who has ever existed, exists
now, and will ever exist. But if you think God is a stone/serpent/scorpion
hurler, I'm here to tell you that He is definitely NOT. He's a bread/fish/egg
provider. I think my not realizing that God is ABLE to provide and my not
knowing that God WANTS to provide has messed up how I think about Him, how I
interact with Him, and how I pray to Him.
A few months ago, my good friend Powerhouse challenged me with a
teaching that she heard. If I remember correctly, there was a slice of bread
nearby, and she basically asked me if I would ask for a tiny bit of bread or a
large piece of bread. Why couldn't I ask for more bread? Why not the entire
loaf? Of course, this teaching kind of bothered me at first, as any good word
probably should. Why the heck should I be asking for bread? I don't want bread.
Then I was reminded about how Jesus instructed us to ask Father God for our
daily bread (Matthew 6:11). At church, I learned that God wants us to ask Him for our daily needs --
basic things like literal bread or metaphorical bread. And technically, God
wants to provide whether we ask Him to or not. He provides for animals and
grass, and they don't spend time praying; why wouldn't He provide for His
children (Matthew 6:25-30)?
"Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. Every good gift and
every perfect gif is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with
whom there is no variation or shadow of turning." (James 1:16-17)
"For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord will give grace and
glory; no good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly."
(Psalm 84:11)
Since I have access to Father God through Jesus, and since my Father is
my Friend, and since He and I have been cultivating a friendship together, I
have a right as His child and His friend to speak to Him face to face just like
Moses did (Exodus 33:11), and He is welcome to get in my face whenever He
wants. So, lately, Father God has been doing a massively excruciating overhaul
of healing inside me that involves squeezing out and burning away tons of
garbage, cranking up the heat, and smoothing out some crooked places in some pretty
darn scary ways. It's a raw-basic process that has really messed with raw-basic
issues like grace/works. For example, in my loneliness/relationship/rejection/abandonment
issues, God has been getting in my face and asking, "Did you really think
that I would withhold people from you?" And He's asked it in a very loaded
challenging-a-friend way, almost as if He also could have been saying
simultaneously, "Come on, little girl, you know Me much better than that,
and you've hurt My feelings." And after He asked me that question a few
times, I finally began to answer Him, and I finally began to see what I really
thought about Him: "Yes. I'm sorry."
I've done some heinous things in my life. I've hurt a lot of people. As
a result, I think I had basically thought that I had messed up other people's
lives so badly that my Father would take beloved people away from me and that
I'd never see them again. I guess maybe I thought I'd have to serve some kind
of loneliness or wilderness sentence for every friendship mistake I'd ever
made. I guess maybe I thought my internal issues were so horrible that my
Father had to keep people away from me so I wouldn't contaminate them. And I'm
not saying that I don't reap what I sow. That is a very real law that my Father
has put in place for everybody (Galatians 6:7). But I am saying that my Father gives me good
things all the time that I don't deserve, like love and favor and even His
friendship and His time. He gave me Jesus, who is full of grace and truth. My
Father loves to provide and to give good gifts, and He's infinitely more
capable of doing so than I could ever fathom in my finite brain, and He wants
to provide bread and gifts and people in ways that I can barely begin to properly
give Him credit for on a teeny little blog post.
You see, reader, my God is NOT a father who will glare at me while I'm
talking to Him face to face and make me feel like an idiot because He knows
more than I do. My God is NOT a father who will detect when I've played a wrong
note on the piano and correct me by loudly singing the correct note from across
the other end of the house. My God is NOT a father who will reach into His
pocket, fish out a few coins, and declare, "I can't." Reader, please
let me tell you about my God.
My Father shows me who He is in the huge things, of course, like giving
me a job and a church and a car and food and a roof over my head and blood that
pulses through my fearfully-and-wonderfully-made hands. But He also likes to
show me who He is in the teeny-tiny details of my life -- details that probably
only a Best Friend would know about. If I ask my Father for a parking spot, He
won't hesitate to ensure that there will be about 5 available. If I ask my
Father for 2 washers and 2 dryers to use at the beautiful coin laundromat,
He'll make sure that there will be about 8 dryers and 12 washers available. And
yes, if I ask my Father to snuggle with me, He'll get so close that my skin
will nearly burn off.
My Father God is serious about providing for me, He's serious about
loving me, He's serious about cherishing me, He's serious about wanting me, and
He's serious about reinforcing all of the above to me all the time, and He
seriously won't freak out if I ask Him for something huge, crawl into His lap
with a majorly gaping need, or climb to the top of His head and dig my
fingernails into His hair in desperation. ("You won't pop My head
open," He explained.)
So, when I ask for bread, I also like to tell Him the raw-basic truth:
"I don't want bread. I want pizza. I want stromboli. I want pan
mexicano." If you've never tried pan mexicano (or "pan dulce" or
Mexican sweet bread), I would highly recommend it... except you may become
wildly addicted. I think it's better than doughnuts. Pan mexicano comes in a
huge variety of concoctions that all taste wonderful with a cup of coffee or a
tall glass of milk, satisfy the deepest craving in your belly and in your taste
buds, and make you more excited than a kid on Christmas morning when the
extremely important people in your life bring it to the kitchen table in a huge
bakery box.
I'm not saying that my God is a father who spoils me rotten, in a bad
way, by constantly giving me all the stupid stuff I ask for (James 4:3) and
doesn't change anything inside my heart for the better. I'm saying that my God
is THE most loving Father ever who provides for me exceedingly abundantly above
anything I could ever ask or think (Ephesians 3:20). I'm saying that my God wants
to fix my heart and make it more like His. I'm saying that my God is a
bread/fish/egg provider who loves to see the look on my face when He brings the
pan mexicano to His kitchen table, opens the huge box, and invites me to dig
in.
My Father isn't afraid of the words that come out of my mouth, because
He knows everything, and because He already knows my heart that the words are
coming from. Yes, of course I should treat Him reverently. (Why wouldn't I
respect Someone who's infinitely capable of burning my skin off?) But He's my
Father. He's my Friend. He's the One who gently pries my angry fingernails out
of His hair, pulls me into His embrace, and lets me soak my raw-basic tears
into His capable bosom.
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