Slipping back into the infant role . . . and growing up?

God the Trinity has been a pervasive part of my life in all three persons for my whole life, and for that I am so grateful! God-the-Father, God-as-the-resurrected-Jesus, and God-as-the-Holy-Spirit-Who-indwells-me-and-my-brothers-and-sisters-in-the-faith has been such an undeniable reality in my life that I truly cannot remember any time when my world was not filled with Him, and most of my spiritual challenge has been more to determine whether I am just severely deluded (as most materialists and atheists would say) or whether I can rest in Him and trust my senses. At this stage I am quite willing to say I have enough support intellectually to trust what I know as knowledge and not delusion or illusion.

To many in our world, that would be the end of a spiritual quest. To me, it isn't even the beginning. It is secondary. It is merely the kind of intellectual / philosophical pursuit that a sophomore engages in as he struggles with whether he is real or not, and what "real" might mean. A "spiritual quest" is what one engages in when one embraces a specific "higher power" or religion and lets it take one down whatever path it is capable of taking one. That may be a dead end, or insanity, or delusion, or a life that those around can testify to as a "good life", even as the one within the quest testifies to it as a "good life". (I believe that is what Paul was talking about in the last few chapters of Galatians.)

So I am walking with the Triune God daily. He is making me. But, just as an infant tries to manage its parents and care-givers, so I try to manage God. He is teaching me to let Him manage me, and I am growing in that, but it is not my innate nature, by any means! Even though I discipline myself to pray for His will and His purposes in all matters, it has been a discipline and not my nature.

So today I woke to Him, and told Him what I wanted Him to do for me today. And I returned from taking my boys to school and sat down to do more of the same. After all, when I was learning to embrace Him and know Him and follow Him -- that is, most of my life to today -- I was greeted by His love and generosity as I sat down to tell Him how I felt and what I wanted. But today He laughed at me, and asked if I didn't know Him better than that now, and didn't I know life and the journey better than that now?

And He is right. I do. I no longer need any discipline to ask Him to accomplish His purposes in me and through me, and in every situation. I'm not a baby anymore, and I see the world better than that these days. I will still use the Lord's prayer as my "agenda for the meeting" as I pray each morning, but the base "cry of my heart" is becoming different now. I no longer can believe that what I want and think I need will actually result in a satisfying life if He just gives it to me. (I still tell Him, of course, but as a confession of my limited perspective and not as a request. He's answered too many of those requests for me to want Him to be my tool to get me what I think I want anymore!)

So, this is becoming my deep cry:

Lord, right here and right now, make this day in my life what You see it needs to be to let me live truly under Your rule in Your kingdom today. In this moment, and all day today, accomplish in me and though me Your love and Your mercy and Your good will for everyone and everything I impact. Let me rest in You!