The Nature of God: An Abusive Relationship
In this I am learning to trust, be patient, wait, rest and walk with Him rather than trying to drag Him along with me.
Many people live in an abusive relationship where one partner dominates another. They don’t even have to be related; it can be neighbours, work colleagues, or even a church pastor. It is also the case that it is necessarily deliberate or even recognised as such.
I was in an abusive relationship. I was abusing my relationship with God. I tried to control Him, get Him to do what I wanted. I put expectations on Him that He did not warrant. I quoted scripture at Him, I quoted prophetic words at Him, I used emotional blackmail: “if you really cared, loved me, you would….” I tried to do everything I could to earn rewards, to please and appease Him.
To be a good Dad, Husband, Christian, teacher, and so on. I read my Bible, I attended early morning prayer meetings, went to church, led home groups, did evangelism, tithed, almost everything that was expected of me. At the end of all that effort, I was no better off and envious of people who just lived their lives in ignorant bliss.
I had the smug conviction that at least I was going to heaven and they probably weren’t. It was not much comfort when they were enjoying life and I clearly was not. I was failing. The only option was to double down on my efforts, and that went well, not.
The funny thing was that it wasn’t all bad or disastrous; it just didn’t seem quite good enough. I wasn’t miserable; I was just exhausted and disappointed. I expected more, I was promised more. All the teaching I absorbed said things will go well for me if I do x, y, and z.
Some things went well; some things didn’t. This was not a straight line graph, it certainly wasn’t an exponential graph. It was more like a wavy, irregular one. I believed God was neater than that. It looked random, which undermined my concept of a God that wasn’t chaotic or random.
I was involved in healing rooms, as this was a perfect laboratory to demonstrate that God wanted to heal everyone. That miracles were meant to be normal. I was a tad disappointed when much of what was celebrated was nothing to write home about. I expected more. This was the best example of a powerful healing ministry in a church. It was very underwhelming.
Then I discovered soaking, or engaging Him quietly, which transformed my life. I wasn’t striving anymore, although I wasn’t entirely sure I was learning to rest. Yet I was still expecting great things to happen now that I had made a quantum leap in my understanding of the nature of my relationship with Him.
To cut a long story short, I was spending as much time as I could soaking in His presence. This was what I knew He wanted me to do. It was something that really connected me with Him in a meaningful way rather than in a performative way. What I didn’t realise was that it was still contractual.
I was still expecting His blessings now that I was shrugging off all the religious trappings. I thought the more time I spent with Him, the better things would get. I was going to be very disappointed. I did what I always did: lean in harder, tried to spend more time with Him, do it better.
I was hearing God; it was a conversational relationship. We would just chat and talk, mostly me listening and Him talking to be fair. But I was making the time. This became ritualistic, in a good way.
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I even tried to monetise it. I really did. This is when He started to reveal the nature of our relationship. He was instilling in me that His love is unconditional. I grasped it and applied it; nothing I did or didn’t do would affect His love for me. Hard concept, but I accepted it as fact; it also made sense looking back over my life.
The next concept was that His relationship with me was unconditional. It didn’t matter how good or bad I thought I was; He still wanted that relationship, there was no pressure from Him to perform or be a certain kind of person. I also started to accept this.
The next concept was His provision. His provision was also unconditional. This actually was harder. I always thought that His blessings, which were defined financially, were a reward. This was the main argument for tithes and offerings. This was the leverage that was made. If you didn’t, you were robbing God.
When He told me He really didn’t need my money, I was quite shocked, even though it made absolute sense. He said if He had my heart, then He had everything. He wasn’t poor; He didn’t need the money; people need the money; churches and organisations needed the money, but He didn’t.
Because your finances are tangible, you can look at your bank account and the amount of money in your pocket or how much you owe on your credit card statement; it is more challenging than a concept. Yet I have seen it happen with ourselves (a bit) and certainly with my eldest son.
When He turned the question or concept around, He said your relationship with Me is also unconditional. What He meant was I was treating it as a one-way street. If I saw examples of His unconditional love and provision, then I could consider my unconditional love for Him.
I was treating Him badly. I was reluctant to give Him my heart unconditionally. There had to be a trade-off, which meant it was contractual and therefore conditional. If I saw His blessing, then I would reciprocate.
That meant that I could hold Him hostage (not literally) in my heart; I could always cite where He wasn’t living up to my expectations. I accepted that, on His part, He would always open His heart unconditionally. Yet this relationship wasn’t really going to get deeper if I treated Him in this way.
I was abusing this relationship by expecting Him to meet my every need and whim. To respond to me at every turn. To promote me physically (health), financially (wealth), and recognisably (self-worth, ministry). He said that I was abusing our relationship and treating Him, God, abusively. He called it an abusive relationship.
I was shocked. Stunned. Once He asked me to forgive Him for where I felt He had let me down and abandoned me. That was a struggle, but I also realised that I was still nurturing some hurt. Yet I realised that my relationship was a definite work in progress.
I am not there, yet, if I ever will be, but that doesn’t matter. I want to trust Him completely, and to do that, I have to let go of all my preconceived ideas and ambitions. To allow my relationship with Him to grow in a way that it was meant to grow.
Even as I write this, I am acutely aware of my failings in this regard, but there is no condemnation. His judgement is that I am always forgiven. All He wants is the best for me, and that means trusting Him that He knows what He is doing and He knows the best time to do it.
Because there are recent events where I had really trusted Him and things didn’t work out as I hoped and believed, there are still a few grains of uncertainty. And that is the point. He is prepared for me to fail. That is hard when your expectation is that everything should get better and easier, not worse and harder.
In this, I am learning to trust, be patient, wait, rest, and walk with Him rather than trying to drag Him along to where I wanted to go. He said to follow Him, not the other way round, as we so often think. We want His blessing, His approval, and His help.
