I never knew the secret prayer. I never got the secret message early in life. The one about praying in your room behind your closed door.
But that’s where the transformation of my heart took place. On my bed. My back against propped up pillows. It’s where I meditated first thing in the morning.
Alone. Or so I thought.
The Door is the name of the chapter in my book where the powerful excerpt below was taken. I balled my eyes out writing it.
https://npaper-wehaa.com/beachcomber/2017/06/#?article=2929344
It’s difficult to trust God fully. We WANT to. We say we do when we feel challenged, but in our heart of hearts, we are afraid. We do not trust Him. We suspect He will somehow be angry with us, or won’t forgive us, or won’t let us in to heaven because of something we did, or failed to do.
Mea culpa. Mea culpa, Mea maxima culpa.
We beat our chests with our fists in the confiteor reminding ourselves of what idiots we are, how often we turn away from God, break His rules and, screw up.
We remember that He knows everything, omnipresent, omnipotent, all-knowing God who supposedly loves us no matter what. When we remember that He sees everything cumulatively since our earliest days, the weight of all those mean days, sinful days, taking-God’s-name-in-vain-days adds up to what seems an insurmountable wall. It sure is easy to see why we hesitate to trust.
Of course, we’re thinking of God in human terms when our thoughts limit God in our minds. He’s so far above our thoughts, but how can we fathom that? So we can trust Him? We can’t. Trust comes from faith. And faith is a gift from God, not something we can work to earn.
His longing for us echoes in our souls. Our souls long for Him as an echo. We want to know Him, to love Him, to fill that sense of longing. And when we desire it with all our hearts, God steps in with some quiet, or challenging shift that makes everything different.
In an instant.
Read more here.