On Picking a Fight with God

You lose. Always. I can't think of one time when I picked a fight with him and actually left with the trophy.

The last time I tried was in Austria. I hiked halfway up the Planai to my special spot and I literally shook my fist at God and cried and yelled and told him he was screwing up on a royal scale and I wasn't sure I wanted to play by his rules anymore. The fight was over before it even began. It was a beautiful night, clear and crisp and full of stars. The view directly accross from me was the outline of the Dauchstein mountains, snowcapped and set againist a midnight sky. Not one cloud, just moon and stars. When I finally shut up and let God speak he simply said, "Look up." I did and saw a shooting star (a little love note from God that is a whole other story in and of itself). I started crying even harder because of the weight of God's unrelenting, unfailing, forgiving and accepting love. That He could love such a brat was beyond me and all the anger and frustration and hurt and pain started to come into focus. It was legit, but it wasn't God's fault. It astounds me how God can win over my heart time and time again with the simplest of things and far greater than that, that he can silence me so quickly and in the stillness the magnitude of which the Spirit ministers to my soul is something I don't even have words to explain!

All this came back to me because I'm thinking of picking another fight with God. A hopeless endevor I know, for I know all too clearly that I will lose in a crushing way. But the strength in which God wins is comforting; its alluring and its beautiful. I want God to speak powerfully to me. I don't care if its rebuke or words of love, I just want to feel the power of Him--I want to be tremble and be still. But I want to fight. Its like when Jacob wrestled with God and wrestled all night but refused to let up until God blessed him. I want to fight with God until he speaks to me, until he blesses me with his felt presence... That's what I want right now. I want an anchor. I want to follow and to be led. And I will pick my fight, and I will lose. But I will be blessed, perhaps not in the way I desire on this superficial and selfish level, but on a deeper, spiritual level. Because I believe with every fight I pick, I dive deeper into an intimate relationship with God. For I lay before him my heart, my dreams, my desires and my fears--I let down my gaurd and I am vulnerable before the God of the universe, the God of wrath and love, and I give him free reign to do whatsoever pleases with my heart--to crush it or cradle it.

Perhaps its not so hopeless as I thought...