Helping Others See

"I’m sorry God, but You don’t know what I’m talking about."

"I’m sorry God, but You don’t know what I’m talking about."

These were my words as I was driving down the highway, 7 weeks pregnant, experiencing all the lovelies of the first trimester from morning sickness (let’s be honest, there’s no reason to call it morning, let’s just call it sickness), nausea, food aversions, etc and there was no one to talk to about it.  We had not yet told our families and friends did not know.  My sweet husband could only support me as a male could, which was limited considering some genetic facts about men and women and pregnancy.  So, I start praying to God and then I realized, "He has NO clue what I’m talking about!" So, along with some tears, my prayer went something like this,

"God this is really hard, I have no one to talk to who understands, everyone says it is worth it, but this is really hard. Honestly God, You don’t know what I’m talking about either because although You went through a bunch of hard things on earth, You never went through this, on earth you were male."

After I got over myself I started to think about my honest prayer.  It made me realize that these types of prayers might be the types of prayers that women (or men) that do not know Jesus would express.  People who have been hurt by other people, people who have experienced and suffered through God’s silence, people who have been disappointed by life and there has been no one to talk to.  We (as Christians) know that God is there, but so many do not.  It doesn’t surprise me that a woman would reject a God who came to earth as male if she was hurt and abused by men.  It doesn’t surprise me that she would be drawn to another type of belief that she thought met her where she was at and understood her.  I think the reason why they would express these prayers is because they have never actually seen Jesus.

My wish is that we (again as Christians) would do a better job of showing the world Jesus.  I think if hurting people came across the true Jesus more often (not the one that is often depicted askew) then they would call out to God with anticipation of healing and grace, not with the expectation of silence and judgement.  If we did a better job of loving others as Jesus and showing them His ways rather than our ways that we call faith, but are really empty religion, more hurting and broken people would turn to Him. 

So, how can we as a community help others see the true Jesus?