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I wrote some time ago on the subject that God meets us where we are. That blog article has been among the most read articles on this site since I wrote it. It was heartfelt, part of my own journey of discovery, and I think it resonates with the longing and angst that seems always resident in the human heart. Certainly always in mine.

God stands at the door to our hearts knocking. He doesn’t break the door down, and He won’t continue to knock if we ignore Him. He doesn’t overpower us, and He doesn’t seek to compel us against our will.

Yet, He desires us so much that He left His glory behind to become one of us, to enter into our human, historical space, and to offer Himself up for us – to redeem us – and provide a way for us to connect with Him. He took on human form, and He offered Himself up in a human body to demonstrate His love for us. Amazing!

No one can say that God is not invested in our redemption and in our good. No one can show more love or commitment to another person than to lay down his own life for another, and God did that for us.

Yet, He is unwilling to violate our will to coerce us into relationship with Him or to require us to submit to Him – even if it is for our good. He desires a loving relationship with us. He loves us like a parent loves a child because He “gave birth” to us (knitting us together in our mothers’ wombs (Psalm 139)). His love is unwavering even if we ignore Him and go our own way.

Thus, God meets us where we are. We can go nowhere that God is not present and able to meet us – when we are ready to meet Him.

Where can I go from your Spirit?
    Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

psalm 139:7-8

God meets us where we are when we are ready and willing to meet Him. He was always there, but we are not always ready or willing. When we get to that “place”, though, God is ever ready to meet us.

Know, however, that “meeting” the God who is always there is not an end; it is just a beginning. It is the beginning of a relationship with your creator. It is just the beginning of God’s good intentions for you.

“‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,’ declares the Lord….”

Jeremiah 29:11-14a

God’s intentions for you are good – to prosper you and not to arm you. We have trouble sometimes trusting God’s goodness, but this is the essence of faith: for “whoever comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who diligently search for him.” (Hebrews 11:6) His promise for us is so good it is beyond our ability even to imagine! (1 Corinthians 2:9)

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If we truly want to meet God and be known by Him, we should understand what we are in for. Understanding what we are in for when we commit ourselves to God will save us some confusion and difficulty. We need to know that God is not content to leave us where we are.

God has a plan for you. God has a design for the universe He created and for your place in it. If you really want to keep going your own way, meeting God is likely the last thing you should attempt to do!

I love the honesty and candid way that CS Lewis describes our relationship with God. God’s desire and goal is to change you, to make you like Him, to conform you to His image.

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on… But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of… You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”

Mere Christianity, pp. 205-206

We are created in God’s image, but God gave us the ability to go our own way, and that is what mankind has done. Since Adam and Eve, people have gone their own way, and we have inherited that waywardness. We have been separated from God as a result, but His desire is to bring us back into right relationship with him.

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Only now, His plan is not to take us back to where we were (full of naivete and ignorant as Adam and Eve were). Now, He desires partnership, to take up residence within us – in a sense to establish his garden in us. He desires to transform us from the inside out to make us fit for eternal relationship with Him in the new heavens and earth that He has planned. (Revelation 21)

The process isn’t always comfortable. It can be downright painful. Somehow, a large segment of the Christian world has the mistaken idea that comfort and prosperity is the sign of God’s approval, and pain and difficulty must mean that God has abandoned us (because we do not have enough faith). Job would beg to differ! And, so would CS Lewis:

“We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

Problam of Pain, pp 91-92

The Bible says, “[T]he Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” (Hebrews 12:6) God is like a Father to us. God is not like a great genie in the sky who gives us whatever we want, regardless of its negative effects on us. God knows what we need, and He knows how to transform us so that we can stand in His presence one day – face to face – in an eternal loving relationship.

We may feel like we did the searching, and we chose God. The truth is the opposite: Jesus says of God the Father, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.” (John 15-16) Notice that He chose us to bear fruit – the fruit of His Holy Spirit, the fruit of eternal life, the fruit in keeping with His character.

No one understood these things better than Paul, perhaps. Paul says, “W]e are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Ephesians 2:10) Paul says that God “works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.” (Philippians 2:13)

But, we need to let Him do it. We need to get with His program and embrace it. He won’t change you or confirm you to His image without your consent and your willingness to be conformed.

We will suffer hardship either way. We will experience pain and difficulty either way. We can go through difficulties and pain with nothing to show for it, or we can submit our hearts to God and let Him work His character into us in the process. The choice is ours.

The promise we have from God is that He desires to walk with us through it all. He is right here, where you are, and He is accessible to you if you open your heart up to Him. He also promises not to leave you where you are.

“And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”

Philippians 1:6