He sees me... and I exist.

First few paragraphs are personal blurbs about "where I am with God/faith/life" right now, but it's disjointed and confused. Kinda like me right now, haha. If you don't wanna bother with that part, please skip to after the blocked off area.
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I recently discovered that I get to know God in the context of my problems. I have a very deep, solid relationship with God. But I don't relate to him on the basis of his love. I still fight against this belief that God loves me inasmuch as I am useful to his ultimate purposes. That I would be better to him as an empty, personality-less shell that could be moved and operated fully by him. read previous blogs on this topic. Cool insights in past entries.

Knowing now that this isn't true, I still find it easiest to relate to God by bringing him problems and/or by asking him to guide me into specific works for him. I don't know how to relate to him by just enjoying him and letting him delight in me. I have a close friend who really grasps God's love. If she doesn't understand his love or see his love on a given day, it shows. She really needs it to survive and to thrive. She knows what it is to know God's intimate love for her. So when she doesn't know/believe/trust it, she feels deprived and her day isn't "right". She knows something is off.

God is teaching me about his love for me. That he doesn't want me to come to him just for "marching orders" for how to deal with this or that. That he wants me to accept his love. I read a commentary on the Gospel of John and it spoke of how Judas was served by Jesus just as the other disciples were. Jesus washed his feet but he remained unclean. Jesus fed him the bread, but when he took it "Satan entered him". This commentator (Koester) said that Judas's issue lied in not accepting Jesus' love. Wow. That's a sobering thought.

God is teaching me how to accept his love. How to trust it, really. I have a deep love for God. But I often struggle to believe that He cares for me. So long as I "press right through", "tough it out", and take "marching orders", I can continue to serve and demonstrate my love for God without truly accepting or understanding his love for me. So God has not given me anything I can run forward with. In this season right now he is not telling me what I want to hear. He's not telling me how to serve, how to do this, how to deal with that. He's not letting me aggressively root up all these struggles I have.

He's been calling me to rest. He's given me images and words for what this season in my life is about right now. And it's about "playing" with God, resting with him, and coming away with him. This is all the intro to my actual blog.
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I was watching a movie the other day. It's winter break and I finally get to see movies I've been meaning to see since the summer. So I rented Super 8. I love the movie Stand By Me and I heard this one was similar. I still prefer Stand By Me, but Super 8 was pretty good.

I have been having a hard time hearing God lately. But out of the blue the main character Joe said a line that resounded. I knew God was speaking to me, reminding me of how he sees me. Any other time, the line would have been really amazing, but only within the context of the movie, not at all in relation to me. When I heard it, I almost began to cry. Not because of what was happening to Joe. But because of what Joe's words revealed to me about how God and I relate. Now that I've built sufficient suspense, here's the line:

She used to look at me... this way, like really look... and I just knew I was there... that I existed.

God reminded me that when he looks at me, he really looks. He sees me. His eyes level all the barriers I've put up. His eyes see past all the crap that the world heaps onto me. His eyes shine through the lies I've believed to reveal what is true about me. In that moment, when I see him seeing me... I know. I know that I am here. That I exist. Not I as I perceive myself to be. But the I I am in God's eyes, which is the truest me there is. I exist because he sees me, and because I know he sees me, I can exist as I truly am.

Is that too philosophical? Is it just making sense to me because it's what I needed to hear? Let me put it another way.

Last year I was praying, asking God which people of the Bible I am like. I believe it was that very night that God gave me a dream. In my dream, someone told me that I am like Hagar and that there are five other people in the Bible who share my way of faith (I didn't find out who yet).

Excited that God answered my prayer, I turned to Genesis to read about Hagar. And I was deeply offended. Here's the basic premise. Hagar was Abram and Sarai's slave. She was an Egyptian. She didn't share their ethnicity and almost definitely did not share their monotheistic beliefs in the True God.

Abram and Sarai had been promised by God that they would have many descendants (even though they were well past child-bearing ages). They started to doubt, and Sarai urged Abram, "Look, just have a baby with Hagar." She didn't have to tell him twice! So Hagar became pregnant. Now Sarai got jealous and felt like Hagar was being cruel to her since she had become pregnant. She freaked out and talked to Abe. He just said, "Deal with her how you will." And Sarai treated her so badly that Hagar ran away.

Hagar got to a spring in the desert and an "Angel of the Lord" (which in the Old Testament means God's very presence) came to her and spoke to her, telling her to go back to Sarai and Abram. He gave her a blessing and also made a blessing/promise/covenant with the unborn child. He even said, "You shall name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard of your misery."

She then names God as a result of her encounter with him. Genesis 16:13 says, "She gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me."

I thought to myself, "It's a cool story, God. But I'm still kinda offended. I mean, Hagar? What did she ever do that got you to see her?" With a patient response, he responded, "Nothing." I stopped short and asked, "What?!" He replied, "She didn't do anything to make me see her. I just saw her."

In an unexpected way, God overturned my entire way of thinking. I get caught up in the idea that I do things to make God see me. Some people think God turns away when they do things that aren't so good, since he supposedly can't bear to look on sin (which is untrue, by the way; it's a powerful lie the enemy uses against us, though). I tend to fall more on the side of the other false belief that God doesn't really see me unless I'm fighting for his attention. That he doesn't see me unless I'm willing to do the list of tasks he gives me. And all-too-often I think that once he "gives me a task", that I'm on my own and that I can only meet back up with him once it's completed.

In this comparison, God reminded me, No. No. He doesn't see me because of anything I do or don't do. Hagar didn't know God! She probably worshiped other gods! But God saw her and cared for her. In Genesis 21, another incident happens with Sarai and Hagar, and again Hagar ends up in a desert, but not near a spring this time. She was convinced that she and her little boy (who is a child at this point) would die. Ishmael cried and God heard him. He spoke to Hagar and formed a well of water for them to drink. He proved to be the One That Sees yet again.

Just like Joe in Super 8... It takes Hagar knowing that God is looking at her, that he really sees her, to know that she exists. For me, to know that I exist as God looks at me is to exist wholly within his love. Existence without God's love is empty. Sure, other people looked at Joe. But only his mom could really see him in a way that affirmed the truth about the essence of who he was. Other things and other people may see me and make me feel understood. But existing in God's love, knowing his eyes and his gaze... That affirms the truth about the essence of me as I learn the truth and essence about God. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing.

I'm glad God spoke to me through that movie. He's been surprising me by sneak-attacking me with little spurts of understanding of his love when I'm not looking for it. I love my God so much.