Fresh Eyes

How do you begin your prayers?

Lord, Father, Holy Spirit, God?

Is it the same each time or does it tend to be different based on your circumstances?

I’m taking part in a spiritual direction course at the moment, and the theme for the day most recently was "images of God".

I hadn’t really spent much time thinking about it before - what images of God I have in my head as I pray or go about my day.

The question I hadn’t thought to ask myself

You’ve probably heard the famous line from Tozer -

What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.

And maybe you know C S Lewis’ follow up -

I read in a periodical the other day that the fundamental thing is how we think of God.

By God Himself, it is not! How God thinks of us is not only more important, but infinitely more important. Indeed, how we think of Him is of no importance except in so far as it is related to how He thinks of us.

In other words, what you think God thinks about when he thinks about you, is actually the most important thing about you.

I know both, yet I still hadn’t spent any considerable length of time considering the most consistent images of God I have in my mind.

What happened in 10 minutes of silence

We always open up days on the course together with reflective prayer time. 

On this day we opened with a hymn. I don’t know many hymns but I was aware of this one - Wesley’s Love Divine All Loves Excelling.

We were then invited into ten minutes of centering prayer. Centering prayer is a time of silence, where the goal is neither to talk to God or listen to him, but to experience His presence. To abide. 

During centering prayer, or any time of silence or prayer really, your mind tends to wander. So in this practice, it’s good to have a word, sometimes called a sacred word, to use to return to prayer.

So it might mean as you spend time in silence, abiding, your mind then wanders to what’s for your dinner, so you gently bring your word to mind and allow it to guide you back to experiencing God.

We were invited to choose a word or phrase from the hymn to use as our returning word.

This verse stood out to me as we were singing…

Breathe, O breathe thy loving Spirit

Into every troubled breast;

Let us all in thee inherit,

Let us find thy promised rest.

So my word was rest.

The silence started and off we went. It’s funny what you notice when there's around 30 people in a small beautiful chapel. Every noise is amplified, you pick up on people’s breathing, stomachs rumbling, chair squeaks.

I did a lot of mind wandering and returning.

Rest was a good word to choose. Although my body felt quite rested, my mind didn’t. I had a lot of people on my mind, their circumstances, some of my own worries and circumstances. 

And then around 5 minutes in, I felt God invite me to change the phrase from 'rest' to ‘rest, child’.

If you aren’t familiar with the idea of God speaking, then that last sentence might sound a bit odd. But all it was was a moment where I felt myself think the word rest, my word, and then out of nowhere came the word child. And it felt significant.

We don’t have to make it any bigger or more significant than that. Could it have been my own thought, yes, but I believe in a God who speaks to us, and this felt significant. That’s it.

And when I heard that extra word, it got me. It’s hard to cry in silence. I’m sure people would have understood but I didn’t want to disrupt them so I had to try to really control my breathing so I didn’t make a gasping sobbing noise.

I don’t know why it got me so much really but it did so there we go.

What the word Lord revealed about my prayers

Then we went into the seminar part of the day. After some tea and cake, which is a core part of the programme. 

We were invited to consider our images of God.

I realised I always start my prayers with “Lord”. Maybe sometimes God, but mostly Lord.

And I wondered what that meant about how I spent the rest of my time in prayer. I was relating to God’s authority and sovereignty. I’m happy to pray to Jesus as Lord because it means he has the victory, is above all things, and ultimately that I want to live surrendered to his will.

But then I thought back to the prayer time - rest, child.

And then I considered what it might look like if I started my prayers with Father. Now I know many of you probably do this, some of you might even open with a more intimate term like Abba, dad, or papa. 

That isn’t really me. Not that I don’t believe in the role of God as a father, but just because that isn’t the image of God I tend to relate to.

But then I considered all the different circumstances I find myself in, and the fact that I’m feeling the weight of those things, and thought actually I could do with knowing God as father at the moment.

I could do with knowing not just an empowering God, who gives me all I need to handle the day, but Father God, who takes the responsibility from me and says I’ll handle this one, leave it with me, I love them even more than you do. 

I think that’s for someone today. Hand off the burden to Father God, and let him carry the weight.

Matthew 11:28-30 (NIV) comes to mind:

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Your circumstances can point you to a truer picture of God

You may have noticed this is sounding a bit like a diary entry, and it kind of is. I wanted to invite you into some not yet formed thoughts, in the hope it may spark some new thoughts in you.

God is so big, the trinity is a mystery, each one is beyond our comprehension. And so it isn’t bad that we have these images of God.

I’m not saying Jesus is only Lord, I’m not saying that God is only father. I’m just acknowledging that in my humanness, I have to use a variety of words, lean on metaphors sometimes, use phrases that aren’t complete, just to bring to mind a small part of God. 

God knows that. I think that’s why he gave us so many metaphors and titles and descriptions of himself throughout scripture. None fully describe who He is, but each part adds to the picture that we have.

As part of the day we were invited to timeline our lives based on the image of God we had at the time.

When I first knew God, my images of Him were quite transactional - he was an empowerer, the one with a plan, a door opener. Then I encountered more intimate images of God - he became healer, restorer, comforter, friend. 

My images of God have shifted a lot over the years, mostly in response to what I needed at the time.

You don’t have to stick with the same image forever

Now, don’t hear what I’m not saying. I’m not saying my opinion of God changed based on my circumstances. It doesn’t mean when we’re struggling, we let our feelings define God as distant, or disappointed, or uncaring.

Our image of God needs to be true of God. It’s just that there are so many images, we can let our circumstances point us towards a true part of Him we maybe haven't leaned on before.

I wonder if you’ve found the same? 

When you needed healing, maybe your image of Jesus was of the healing Jesus we find throughout scripture. When he turned his compassionate gaze on the man with leprosy in Mark 1 and declared I am willing to heal you.

Or when you felt lonely or overlooked or ashamed, your image of Jesus might be the friend found by the well, seeing all the parts of the Samaritan woman and loving her fully.

This isn’t our feelings deciding what Jesus is like, it’s allowing our feelings to guide us towards a true aspect of God so that we can encounter Him.

When we encounter God with our hearts open, transformation happens.

What can close our hearts then?

Images of God that we feel like we’ve outgrown, or that have lost their significance to us. Maybe, if your faith feels a bit dry or lifeless at the moment, a fresh image of God will wake you back up.

You don’t have to stick with the same image of God forever, especially if it feels like it isn’t working for you anymore. There’s an invitation from God to know him in a new way.

Question

These thoughts might be a bit new to you today. So let’s end with a gentle question:

What image of God do you most need at the moment? Not what feels theologically correct, but what does your heart actually need today? Maybe it's Father. Or maybe it's shepherd, or healer, or friend.

Sit with that for a moment and let it be an invitation rather than just an answer.

Prayer

Father, we thank you for all that you are, although we can never quite grasp the fullness of that. Thank you that you are our good shepherd, mighty saviour, king of kings, father, friend, and healer. I pray for each person listening, that you would refresh their image of you, so they can meet with you more intimately today. In your precious name Jesus, amen.