What does God want from us?

• God wants us to be faithful, like Him

O my son, give me your heart. May your eyes take delight in following My ways.
Proverbs 23:26 NLT

What God wants from us is in essence very simple. We complicate it and try to turn it into a religious system of rules and rituals and requirements, because we have a distrust of anything that appears too plain and simple.

It’s more satisfying, somehow, to have to work at it. The rest of life seems to operate that way. So we put God into a religious box and try to satisfy its requirements.

But He’s not in a box. The outstanding thing Jesus didn’t come to do, was to start a new religion. We did that part, but without Him. He still wants our hearts, wants a relationship, wants us to show ourselves a little bit loyal to Him, while He is utterly faithful to us.

If God has our heart, we listen to Him. If we hear something we don’t understand or don’t like, or things don’t work out the way we have asked Him, we will listen some more... and trust, because that’s what makes a relationship. Trust.

We don’t always delight in His ways immediately. Sometimes it feels as if our request prayers are going nowhere. A bit like those pictures of Royal Mail sorting offices at Christmas time, piled high with sacks of unsorted mail... it feels like ours are in the ‘Return to sender’ bag.

But God treasures every expression of ours towards Him. Even the ones that are not very polite. And He wants to know that He has our heart, so that if He seems to be saying ‘not yet’ or ‘trust Me in this this’, we will trust Him. Because we know everything about our Father is good.

And He always comes through for us -- in His own way and time.

////// 2020-12-23