July 05, 2007
Advice to God
A life long Christian, my great-aunt normally offers sound Biblical advice. Recently when I called her to vent a frustration she listened patiently and then said, “I try not to get angry with God, but I do offer Him advice once in awhile.” Even though I chuckled at her matter-of-fact statement, I couldn’t help but wonder if God lets her get away with giving Him advice because she’s 87 years-old. I finally concluded that auntie’s advice giving is probably no different than the disciples trying to tell Jesus what he should do. Personally I relate better to those disciples who dared not ask Jesus any more questions, but secretly I’m jealous of people who can talk to the Lord about whatever crosses their mind.
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Gail;
-----I have often wondered that if the free will doctrine is correct, would God not be precluded from interjecting His involvement into the events of life. One might rebut the idea by pointing out that we all interject our actions into the stream of life, mostly in service to purposes necessary to our own lives. But note that we are all imperfect, which in a large part comes from our tampering with the flow of life for our own benefit or from our own will. Yet God must remain perfect. Even though He is love and His will operates towards the benefit of others, He gave man freedom to operate on their own wills. Any involvement of His operation in our steam of activities would represent interference. Our activities flow sinfully. His flows perfectly. They interfere with each other.
-----But He has interjected Himself into our stream of activities innumerable times. The Bible is the true stories of His involvement in our lives. If my proposition is correct, then, how could He have done that and remained perfect? Easy. By our invitation. There is no deviance in operating your will upon something over which your will has been given total free reign by invitation. We call our invitation for Him to move in the stream of life’s activities “prayer“.
-----But not all prayer is made to God without some restriction, limitation, or reservation placed upon the invite. Unfortunately, many of the conditions in my life clearly reflect the reservations I have made with my prayers. And in the same category as restrictions are the deals we make with God. My immediate thought goes to Abraham’s pleading with the Lord on His way to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot also plead a deal with the Lord to spare a small village for his residence, rather than the mountains, where he wound up anyway. Moses diverted God’s hot wrath against Israel a couple times. Even Jesus’ mother convinced Him to produce a little wine before His time. (Of course, mothers can do that.)
-----I can understand how we of tiny minds (compared to His) could actually think we are offering Him advice in the fine print of our prayers. In fact, any restriction or reservation on our prayers are in essence the same as giving God advice. Even any ambivalence we may have within our prayers is a statement of our opinion as to how God maybe ought to proceed on the matter. My guess is that He enjoys the advice, and maybe even finds some of it agreeable. Of course, of any advice He might find useful He knew beforehand. In fact, He tells us He knows our needs beforehand, so He most likely knows our advice and restrictions beforehand as well. I really suppose all that He is looking for is the simple invitation for Him to operate His will in our affairs.
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