MAKE BELIEVE

Many times I come before the Lord and all I want is silence…real silence. I want no noise. Not even His voice many times because it might intimidate. I want no sounds, not even His silence. I want no words, not even ‘the still small voice.’ But, wouldn’t you know, meditation is to move us as quickly as possible from our desires to His. What I really want is his presence and his patience will allow for all my Swiss-cheese thinking.

He moves us in many ways, but the fastest is to speak to us. “My sheep hear my voice” and when we hear we never ask if it was the Shepherd, because “He calls us by name.” He desires to speak and that leaves us to listen. Meditation is listening, not speaking.

One of the easiest things to do is to pretend to meditate, pretend to pray, and pretend to hear. We can pretend to know God a certain way and have to pretend to ourselves and others that we may believe what we say and do. When we pretend to believe, we believe nothing except the pretense. We can even learn to ‘make believe’ which is pretending to believe. When certain conditions exist we can pretend to be sad, and sometimes pretend to be happy. We can pretend to pray and pretend to worship, and most of the time others know little of our pretense because it is so commonly expected and accepted. If one does not know what is real then pretense is the only thing that is real; that is, make-believe. But the Father will accept make-believe until we believe.

“Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” Jesus