I was sitting with a women the other day providing a sounding board for all the very difficult situations she is in right now. I listened as she voiced her disappointment with God that her situation wasn’t improving. She is confused because the God she understood for most of her life is one that gives us good things and takes away all the pain. What do you say in those situations. Everything I could think of sounded like Christianese bologna smack in the middle of self-righteous bread. I did encourage her to hang in there with God. He was there. He is involved. It made me think of how we often see God. We see him as the Staples’ “Easy Button.” We think that when we find ourselves in a bad place we can just slap that easy button and God will show up and take it all away. We can blame a lot of that on bad theology. We have let this health and wealth thing, that Americans seem to be all about, infiltrate the relationship between us and God. God must be shaking his head as he watches his people continue to try to eliminate him from their daily lives when things are good only to try to execute the “Easy Button” maneuver when things are spiraling out of control.

There have been times in my life when I have wondered where God is. I can’t feel his presence in my life and it is in those times I have realized that maybe I can’t recognize his touch because I haven’t really let Him lead me in the good times of my life. When I let him lead the good, then I can recognize his role in leading me through the bad. It doesn’t mean I understand it. It doesn’t mean I don’t question the circumstances. It just means that I understand who is in charge.

Yesterday at Stuff Christians Like it was explained like this…

Here’s the thing, I think we serve an experiential God, not a consequential God. He wants to be present and involved with all of our experiences. With our financial options, our budgets our salaries etc. He doesn’t just want to lay dormant until there are consequences. He’s not like the Wolf character in the movie Pulp Fiction, a professional cleaner that comes in to fix our mistakes. He wants to be there beginning, middle and end of story.

We follow a hands-on God. Hands-on to the point of coming himself to save us from our mess. But, he is more. He is a God that wants to be a part of the decision making process in your life.