Share your thoughts with Dr. Bill in 1Community

Question:
I have been seeking a relationship with God for quite a long time, but to no avail. I’ve even started Christian counseling to help me find faith. I’m desperate. I feel certain that if I don’t believe in Jesus as my Savior that I am doomed. But when I try to put my faith in Jesus and his promises it just doesn’t stick. The promises of God don’t seem to apply to me. I am full of fear and doubt and feel as though I am blind to the understanding that Christians have. What else can I do to find God?

Answer:
I think that you’re problem isn’t finding God. You found God the moment you hoped and started looking for Him. He’s been walking right beside you each step you’ve taken in your search for Him. Each promise in the Bible that you’ve read showed you something about God. Each prayer you offered connected with God. Every word and every tear you’ve shared with your counselor has moved your Heavenly Counselor. He hears your cry for faith. He feels your pain. He appreciates your efforts to find Him. He’s extending his love, joy, and peace to you every moment of every day on your faith journey.

Therein lies your problem - being found! Letting God inside your heart seems to be the issue for you. You’re trying so hard to find God, perhaps too hard. Let yourself be found. Tell God about your fears and doubts. Talk to him about your self-condemnation. Cry out to Him about each promise that doesn’t seem to apply to you. And then listen. Open your heart to Him. Hear God talking to you as you read the Bible and pray. See God smile at you in the sunshine and hear him sing over you in the songs of the birds. Sense God listening and caring for you through your counselor. God is all around you, loving you and blessing you. You’re just having difficulty taking it in.

Apparently, you have some deep wounds in your heart which have left you crippled with fear, doubt, and shame. Think of it this way. Faith is like a spiritual hand by which we grasp God and his love for us. Your hand has been badly wounded and each time you reach out for God, grasp with your hand, and try to hold onto his love, all you feel is excruciating pain and so you let go. To hold onto the God you’ve already found you need to tend to this wound.

I commend you for seeing a Christian counselor. If you’ve found a “good enough” counselor (no counselor is perfect!) and you keep working at getting help then you will be found by God’s love. Time and again I have observed in my own work with clients in psychotherapy that by the end of treatment they have a new understanding of who God is and how much he loves them. Why is this? Why do some people need to heal from their hurts and work through their struggles in counseling in order to grasp God’s love for them?

I believe that God finds people who are receiving care in a helping relationship because faith is based largely on our capacity to trust. We develop our trust, or lack of trust, in the first months and years of life. To the extent that a child feels safe, loved, and treasured by mother, or another mothering figure, then trust develops. But children who are abused, abandoned, neglected, or grow up with an alcoholic or mentally ill parent become damaged in their abilities to trust. The world feels unsafe. They’re afraid to need or to feel because it seems no one will be there to care for them. Deep inside they feel badly about themselves because either they were treated badly or they weren’t given patient attention, affection, and loving care. These hurts need healing. The defense mechanisms, character traits, and beliefs that developed around these hurts need changing. They need the experience of a new relationship in which they learn to trust and to receive care.

Therefore, I encourage you to talk to God, your counselor, and, perhaps, another “safe friend” about your difficulties trusting and how your trust may have been damaged. As the wound in your spiritual hand heals you will gain the strength to grasp. As you let your Christian counselor or safe friend care for you and take this care inside you will better understand God’s love for you. We all need a “God with skin on,” that’s why God sanctioned the church to be “the body of Christ” and charged Christians to go out as “ambassadors for God” in order to offer his appeal of love to all who are hurting or in need (2 Corinthians 5:20).

My prayer for you is that today you will hear the words of the risen Lord Jesus recorded in Revelation 3:20: “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.” (For additional help on finding God read my answer article, How Can I Find God’s Love?)

God loves you and so do we at New Hope!