I have shared the thought, in another article in the last Bulletin, that PRAYER must be an ENCOUNTER with God – must be an experience of the existence of the God. This experience, however, can only take place when we are willing to enter into a relationship with God.

All relationships require, however, that we recognize the other person as they are and not as we desire them to be. We experience this in our relationships with other humans. If we expect others to be who we want them to be and refuse to accept them as they are, we never establish a real relationship with them. (One of the reasons why there are so many divorces in our country is that people go into marriage wanting the other person to be who they want them to be and they really don’t know the real person with whom they enter into marriage). The same is true with God. If we expect Him to be who we want Him to be, we can never have a genuine relationship with Him – we can never come to know Him as He is. He is our fantasy God.

I find that one of the major mistakes in our modern religious world is that people try to make God “in their image and likeness” and don’t strive to become someone in His image and likeness. Think about it. Most Christians expect God to have the same values that they do. They refuse to accept the fact that God doesn’t act like us humans. Many Christians want to believe that they know exactly how God thinks and behaves. They want Him to hate the people they hate and judge the people they judge and, of course, punish the people they want punished. This only proves that the God they think they know is not real.

We are called to discover the God Who really is and Who is sharing Himself intimately with His creation. I always say, don’t try to put God in a box and dictate how He should be and act. Think about this!