What Next, God?

I admit it, I’ve been very hard on God the last few months. I’ve done way more than my usual share of grumbling and the money situation was down to the wire, and I told off God good.

Bad, bad idea.

Because just about right after I told the Lord off, we got a tenant in our old home (haven’t been able to sell it for a year). Next, we got a refund the dog from Chase, and not much later, got a refund from Chase on a very bad car deal. Things were going well, and a few extra jobs dropped into my lap.

Then I get a long term work opportunity, and since we are still in the hole, I jumped on it. I thought Ok, I can handle this.

But now, I’m reminded of the story in the Bible (Num 11:7-32). The Israelites were finally freed from slavery from the Egyptians, after 100s of years, and complained first about the journey, the food, how they were better off as slaves. So God sent manna – sweet, pastry-like bread. But after a long time of that, they complained AGAIN. They want meat, not stupid pastry. (Oh man, that sounds just like me.) So God gets PISSED. He says this:

Num 11:19 In fact, they will have meat day after day for a whole month–not just a few days, or even ten or twenty. They turned against me and wanted to return to Egypt. Now they will eat meat until they get sick of it.

Ouch. So I complained and complained. And now I have work on top of work (”I was looking for a job and then I found a job and heaven knows I’m miserable now”). A client I’ve been waiting on for months is ready to go, another just passed me ANOTHER project, and I answered someone’s ad a week ago. He contacted me – by then, I didn’t want anymore work, but he told me not to worry I could handle it. And someone else passed me a client – maybe.

I’m a little nervous, but ok, I get it. God provides and no matter how close it comes, I need to trust.

No one ever told me that trusting could be such hard, hard work.

In light of my last post, I’ve been thinking a lot, and it occurred to me that through valleys of doubt, my relationship with God nearly always improves. And while I am in a significant area of skepticism right now, it’s a different kind of doubt – my faith in God Himself is still strong, it’s just the method of being a spiritual person that is dogging me. I hunger for the Real Truth, and i know that it’s something none of us will ever know in this plane of existence, unless of course the Path to Perfection is true and we become perfect while living.

That is something I’m so far away from. And I realized this morning that doubt CAN lead to sin, but it doesn’t have to. While we are in times of doubt, we need to hold tightly to our principles and to the faith that we have retained. We need to embrace our doubt to grow, but if we embrace it too tightly then either our ourselves, or others, or the Enemy can get in and cause the doubt to eradicate our morals.

Then I thought that maybe this IS part of my calling: to write to those who are disenchanted with their religions, that have found their spiritual selves growing outside the box of truth they’ve been following and to encourage them to hold on to their values. Even in the worst storm, your soul does not lose the truth it knows.