Our Relationship with God

Today I read Revelation 8 which is all about the calamities that will come in the last days and how the earth will be smitten. It got me thinking about how when bad things happen, people turn to religion and subsequently, to God. And I had to wonder, why is that? Why do people turn to God when things are going wrong and not when things are going well? I know personally with my earthly father I'm probably more excited to talk to him when I have good news than when I have bad news. I think that is the norm, so why do we treat our Heavenly Father differently?

Why is it that when we are scared or need His help, we run to Him but when things are ok or even going great, we shun Him and take all the credit for ourselves? Perhaps it is human nature. The natural man surely enjoys the attention and is a glory hog for the praise of man. But it doesn't really account for why people don't turn to Him when things are going well and only during times of calamity.

I think it has to do with the fact that most of the world doesn't view God as their Spiritual Father. They view Him as some all powerful being that is out there somewhere and causes things, be they good or bad, to happen to them. But when you view God in that light, you are missing out on so much. You fall into that trap that pattern that we talked about above where we don't care about Him, we don't care what He can help us do, we only need Him in times of trouble. He essentially becomes the Ghostbuster, you only call Him when your in trouble, just like the 80's movie themesong says.

But if we can break through that and view Him as our Father, as someone who cares about us and wants to know how we are doing, then we find that we have a relationship with God that is amazing. My daughter loves to watch Veggietales. We like them too because they teach good principles and help re-enforce what we are trying to teach my daughter. I was watching one of the commentaries yesterday of a new video we picked up for her and on it one of the voice actors stated that she wrote a song for one of the characters that is a prayer he is singing to God. She said she wrote it the way she did because it is how she wants her relationship with God to be. She wants to be able to just tell God all about her day and be very innocent, like a child. I thought that was a wonderful ideal to strive for.

I think we should all strive to have that kind of a relationship with our Heavenly Father. We need to be respectful because He is God, but we need to talk with Him as we would our Father. He cares about what we are up to and what we are doing. He wants to hear all about it from us. Sure He is God and knows what we have to say already, but He wants to hear from us. And we should want to hear from Him too, and to talk to Him. That is the goal. That is what we should be striving for. If you don't have that kind of a relationship with God, work towards it. He really does want us to come back to Him but we will only be comfortable doing that if we come to understand Him as best we can in this life. That only happens through conversation, or prayer in this case. The ball is in our court. Make sure you do something with it. Until tomorrow.