Redirecting Prayer

"For if he ever comes to make the distinction, if he ever consciously directs his prayers 'Not to what I think thou art but to what thou knowest thyself to be', our situation is, for the moment, desperate.  Once all his thoughts and images have been flung aside or, if retained, retained with a full recognition of the merely subjective nature, and the man trusts himself to the completely, real, external, invisible Presence, there with him in the room and never knowable by him as he is known by it - why, then it is that the incalculable may occur.  In avoiding this situation - the real nakedness of the soul in prayer - you will be helped by the fact that the humans themselves do not desire it as much as they suppose."
   -- C.S. Lewis; The Screwtape Letters

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God is God.  He is I Am.  He is beyond our capacity to understand - yet, we place Him in our box to serve our needs.  We claim to understand His ways.  We claim to have authority and knowledge of how he molded the universe.  We continually claim to be reaching for God, yet often re-enact the part of Lucifer.  We, as C.S. Lewis said, avoid the real nakedness of soul prayer and instead of prostrating ourselves before the Creator of All, we offer our wish list to a self-created deity.

I have been working on opening myself up - on admitting that I cannot through the force of my effort pray to God as He is because I cannot grasp Him.  I work to acknowledge that He is beyond me - He is greater than my thoughts can comprehend.  He has no need of me - He is beyond complete.  My services are not needed by Him.  I am not a necessity. 

Yet, for some reason, He loves me.  He wants me to be naked before Him because in this nakedness, I am closer to what He wishes for me than when I attempt to be that on my own.  For reasons that only He can understand, He made Himself weak.  He subjugated himself to ridicule and pain so that we might have a chance to know Him.  His love for each of us is beyond us.  It is a love that surpasses our understanding.

I cling to this Love.  I cling to the hope that I will be allowed to praise Him for Him for eternity.  I am coming to realize that He is worthy of my praise, not because of what He did, but because He is.  Greatness beyond measure.  Power beyond thought. 

He is I Am - Hallelujah!!