As I went down to the river to pray, studying about that good old way and who shall wear the robe and crown? Good Lord, show me the way!
[Alison Krauss, Down to the River to Pray]
Well we went to the river to pray, and to have church on Sunday. It was a treat for all of us to go out to a beautiful and quiet location to worship our Lord and King through singing, praying and praising Him. We had a time of reflection and just spending time with the King during our worship time. We shared what the Lord was speaking to us during this time. Sam shared that God was telling her, telling all of us, to go deeper.
I pondered this and wondered what this looked like in my life. I felt like this month in Thailand was one where I spent much of my time either journaling, reading the Word, praying, listening to worship music, listening to sermons from a variety of churches or just soaking up time with the Lord. However, I felt like I was at a standstill. I was not moving anywhere.
I have dreams of where I am swimming down. I am swimming deeper and deeper. I see the deep dark abyss, like the one on Finding Nemo, and I am just looking at it. I know that is where I want to go, I want to go explore and find out what is down there. However, logically, I know that with the water pressure, the diving equipment that I have and what diving skills I lack, I will not make it down there. I will not be able to make it down there. There is just no logic to how I will make it down there.
Let me tell you, God does not call me to know how I am going to get to where He is gently encouraging me to go with Him. He wants to go deep in the relationship that I share with Him. I want to go deep, I just don’t know how.
Well, if I was bright in my life, I would simply ask God, “How do I go deep with You?”
I was not aware of this until I was reading Habakkuk earlier this week. I was reading chapter 1 when I was looking at the notes that I wrote from a sermon that my church did sometime in the previous years. The note next to verses 1-4 (where Habakkuk is asking God questions) said: “Are we allowed to ask God questions? Every relationship MUST have questions. When you stop asking questions, the relationship stops growing. The relationship will not deepen.”
Oh. I have not been asking God questions. I have just accepted everything that happens and don’t think to question God for why things happen.
I have grown up just learning to accept things and if it doesn’t make sense, I just take it for how it is or find the logical and scientific approach to understanding why things happen. I don’t ever remember really ever questioning anything.
I wanted to fix this. I sat down and looked at my journal, trying to figure out a question to ask God. I did not know what to ask. I was stumped.
The next day I listened to a sermon, “Questions the Bible Asks (Part 1 of an 8 part series)” from my home church. It was really good because I learned that there are over 31,000 verses in the Bible where almost 3,300 verses are questions. The main part of the sermon was based on:
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.” Matthew 7:7-8
In Josh Fischer’s says book, True Believers Don’t Ask Why, he says:
“In the end the process is quite simple. I ask because I don’t know the answer, I seek because there is more to find, and I knock because this door goes someplace.”
I really like this because it is encouraging us to go deep. In Matthew 7:7, we are commanded to “ask,” why? Lloyd Alexander puts it best:
“In some cases, we learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it, than we do from learning the answer itself.”
We are commanded and encouraged to ask questions because they are necessary in a relationship; God wants a relationship with us! Questions make you vulnerable, but they also take the opportunity to make the relationship go deeper.
God already knows all that I am thinking, what I am going to say or how I am going to act (Matthew 6: 8) because He is all knowing. He is God. So then, why ask questions since He already knows what I am going to ask anyways? The asking and the receiving are only secondary as far as the Father is concerned. He simply wants to hear from me, from each one of us.
Asking, seeking and knocking are just ways to invite us in to a relationship in with God, who is already in perfect relationship with Himself in the Trinity. He doesn’t need anything that I can bring to the relationship, but because the relationship is so perfect. He desires for us to join in a relationship that He has enjoyed for all of eternity.
This was just what I needed to hear with what I was wrestling with this week. Quick side note: Israel, which means “Wrestle with God,” was not only a man in the Bible that really did wrestle with God, but is what we are referred to as in the Bible. We are Israel. We are to wrestle with God. A teammate shared this with me one night during team time when we were discussing what we wanted to challenge ourselves in. My challenge was to go deeper, to ask God a question a week.
So far, in this challenge, I have only come up with a question, and am seeking the time that I get to spend with the Father.
I want to go into the unknown, into the deep dark abyss with God.
Prayers: Pray for this time in my relationship with God, that I will continue to go deep. I am excited for this time in my life and I pray that I will see so much more of our Father.
Continue to pray for our team as we head to our mini debrief in Phuket on the 28th, then on to Malaysia on the 30th for our FOURTH month of ministry.
Also, 3 of my teammates need to reach the October 1st deadline, by October 1st. They need to have $11,000 in their account in order to stay on the Race. The 3 that are below this mark, right now but not for long, are Josi Presley (josipresley.theworldrace.org), Garrett Hammonds (garretthammonds.theworldrace.org) and Michael Clevenger (mikeclevenger.theworldrace.org). If you feel led to support them financially, please visit their blogs and click on the Support Me tab.
Thanks for all your continued prayers and support! I love you all so much!
Love, Kaitlyn Michele
