For several posts, we've been exploring ways we get stuck in trying to relate with God. We have this desire to relate with our creator - especially because he has moved heaven and earth to relate with us.

We get stuck, though, when we make assumptions about the kind of God he is. We begin to function against those assumptions - they drive how we attempt to relate (or not) with God, but they don't give us a solid foundation because they don't match reality.

For instance, if I assume my wife is a major coffee drinker, I would function with that assumption by attempting to procure her favorite coffee. That wouldn't work very well, though, because in reality, she's not so much a coffee drinker aficionado after all.

It's not just the effort we put in. We can go for the gusto and pour our entire souls into trying to relate with God in a way that's just not going to be fruitful. As with any relationship, the way we relate has to be matched with the reality of the other person.

Level of zeal is also not a great barometer of spiritual health. I can be really excited about relating with God in ways that are not particularly healthy. That zeal may drive efforts to kill sin and live well, but if the underlying relationship isn't there, we have to question the value it brings to the soul.

So we looked at some of those assumptions we bring about God. We tie into particular points in Scripture and being to build an entire picture of God from little snippets. For instance, we can look at God in how he chose to interact with the nation of Israel, demonstrating his holiness by being (in many ways) separate. We can function as though, even in Christ, we can never be good enough for God and ought to keep our distance.

Or, we can assume that God interacts like he did during Jesus' earthly ministry - that he has a select few he's going to be close to, and I'm not one of them. I'll look for the vicarious blessings I can experience from other believers, but not really hold out for my own mountaintop experiences.

When we get stuck in some of these modes, we build an inertia about our spiritual lives. We can put our heads down to take on each day. Months or years later, we'll "wake up" to think wow, it's been a long time since I've heard God's voice.

So we spent some time considering what to do when we really want to break out of those assumptions. Sometimes it's a spiritual issue at the core, and we can make the adjustment. Other times, the assumptions are being driven by something far more core to our being, coming out of practiced pathways etched into our brains.

If the latter is the case, it's important to remember there are no shortcuts in godliness. We have the new creation, if we are in Christ. But we are still tied to a body of damaged creation, and we need to get help sometimes in walking through how that works. Having trusted friends helps, if they are gifted in patiently affirming what is true about the believer in Christ. Wise counselors can also be essential.

But how do we know if we're dealing with a spiritual issue or something more extensive? Remember some of our ending questions from the last few posts? We can get some clues there, so let's revisit them one at a time.

What will I do with open, ready access to God?

I think what I find incongruous is having that kind of access to God, but not being continually transformed in a radical way. There are teachers out there who read that kind of sentence and conclude I'm probably not saved - after all, if he's not Lord of all, he's not Lord at all, right?

And if we're going to be obsessive-compulsive about our Christianity, we can really get hung up there. How radical is radical enough to consider myself safe? I'll always be comparing myself to other believers. And I will not want to give myself the benefit of the doubt at all. Prayers will never be sincere enough. Bible reading will never be focused enough. I will never be compassionate enough.

That's a long way from very simple, humble submission to what God wants to do in me. Instead of running around like a chicken with my head cut off, trying to get in better position for closeness to God, I can realize that the path is already open. My effort is not needed. I can relax.

The good news is that the Spirit is still at work within us, whether we are functionally aware of our access to God or not. Where we have awareness, though, we also have some responsibility to put away the old patterns and build some new ones.

Sometimes, we have shame deeply engrained within our souls. That shame causes us to hide - to isolate. We let that shame drive some of our assumptions about God, because we cannot bring ourselves to believe he would really approach us in grace.

I have known people who struggle with assurance of salvation on this point, but that's not where I'd go with it. It may not be logically consistent to believe that Jesus would go so far as to die for our sins and bring us to life, but then want nothing to do with us because of our shame-based insides. And we probably wouldn't verbalize it that way, unless we're in a particularly vulnerable state - but we function as if that is the case.

No - we need to understand that true children of God are caught here. This is not a salvation from sin issue. At it's core, it's not even a lordship of Christ issue, though many teachers attempt to frame it in this way. Pushing shame on Christians who are already stuck in shame will deepen their fog and cause all manner of pathology.

Instead, we have a relational wellness issue. When Christ brings to life, for the first time, we have the spiritual ability to relate with and access God. But that doesn't mean we magically have healthy relational patterns to function well in that situation.

Pray for healthier relational hardware. Pray for yourself, and pray for others. Paul may not have been a psychologist, but he knew what he was doing when he wrote to the Ephesians about all of the spiritual blessings believers have. Meditating often on these things will increase your view of their reality.

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