Category Archives: Spirituality

Creating an Opening for God

Among those who believe in the power of prayer, some seem to have better results than others. Why is that? No formula exists that can force God to do what we want. God is not manipulated. But we can take steps to make us more receptive to His generosity.

Preparation and Positioning

When God is dispensing grace, we can prepare ourselves to receive it. In medieval times, during some papal processions, the pope or his officials would throw coins to the spectators, similar to favors being thrown during Mardi-Gras parades. Those who stood at the front would be in the best position to receive a coin, whereas those who lingered at the rear would be less likely to receive. I use this example to illustrate that we can determine our receptivity by how we position ourselves in relation to God. God can and does bless us, but our ability to receive and retain the blessing is up to us.

If we find ourselves in a time of spiritual drought, we believe that the drought will end and that God will eventually send rain to our souls. When the rains come, we will gladly soak up what we can, but the wise person will build a cistern to catch the rainwater. That person will have prepared for the rains and be able to receive a greater measure of blessing. The spiritual equivalent of building a cistern is to create a wide space or opening within our souls for God to fill. We can’t predict God’s timing, but we can make ourselves ready and open for when the time does come.

A Story of Healing

When I lived in San Luis Obispo, California, I met a lady, Alice, who had MCS (Multiple Chemical Sensitivity). She had just moved from Los Angeles because her environment was making her sick. She needed to move to a more chemical-free setting. Her body had lost its ability to expel toxins, so they had accumulated in her system. The level of arsenic in her hair was fifty times the acceptable limit.

The change in setting helped her somewhat, but over time she because extremely ill, confined to a wheelchair, and hooked up to oxygen. In those days, the doctors didn’t believe in MCS and thought she was making it up. A friend relayed to me that Alice had attended a healing service. The minister prayed for her and she was miraculously healed, threw off her oxygen, and got out of her wheelchair. She now travels to educate others about MCS and works as an advocate for those with the disease.

I find this story interesting for three reasons. First, God waited until Alice was at her weakest state before He healed her. Second, God chose to heal her when so many others struggle with MCS for the remainder of their lives. Third, if Alice hadn’t attended the healing service, would God have healed her anyway? From my perspective, I consider her attendance at the service as an act of faith. Perhaps she thought that if God could heal or would heal, she wanted to be in the front row to receive it—as wheelchairs often are. She had positioned herself to receive, both spiritually and physically.

Receptivity

Each of us has a unique receptivity to God. If you volunteered at a hospital ward and went from room to room to cheer up the patients, you would meet all types of people. Some people are suspicious or apathetic or resistant or simply closed down. We can be the same way with God. If God were intending to give us something, we would do well to be as receptive as we can. I can think of five attitudes that make us more receptive to God: trust, surrender, openness, thankfulness, and anticipation.

I left out faith on purpose. I believe that most of the time, faith trips us up, primarily because we don’t understand it. We get in trouble when we confuse faith with expectation. If we expect God to do something for us, then we have shifted our faith from God onto the thing expected, a precarious situation where God is on the line to deliver and at risk of failing us. The faith of many has been destroyed because of unmet and wrongly-placed expectations on God. Our faith is best placed in God alone, not in hoped-for outcomes. Our faith and trust is in God and in His love for us. Period. That ought to cover everything else.

Trust

Let’s examine the five attitudes that make us more receptive to God. The first is trust. Trust is a confidence we place in God to carry us through the challenges of life. We rely on His mercy and goodness, knowing that life is unpredictable. Trust makes us open to God because we are “leaning” on Him to prop us up, especially when life knocks us down. Trust is a reliance on God that surpasses a reliance on oneself. It is a conscious dependence on God. We choose to entrust our lives to God’s care.

Surrender

Surrender is second and more difficult. Surrender is letting go of one’s ego and personal demands in exchange for reliance on God. We give up control over our own lives. We divest ourselves of everything we are holding on to and hand those things to God, allowing Him to do with them as He wills. Some things He returns to us. Some things He purges. In all things, He acts according to what best serves us in the long term. We learn to have a loose grip on everything. Surrender is our will “bowing” to His will. We choose to entrust our lives to God’s will.

Openness

Openness is third. Openness is a non-resistant posture toward God. We make ourselves open to whatever God has for us, whether pleasant or painful. We choose to not filter or resist what God sends our way, but give Him permission to be active in our lives in any way He sees fit. It’s an “openhandedness” toward God, a willingness to say “yes” to God no matter what. Surrender is releasing one’s ego to create a space for God. Openness is an attitude of keeping that space continually open for God to fill. We choose to entrust our lives to God’s activity.

Gratitude

Gratitude is fourth. Thankfulness keeps us positive by encouraging us to look for and recognize the good in our lives. It turns our focus off of our problems and onto God. It also keeps us humble. It’s a spiritual posture of “kneeling” where we acknowledge our dependence on God and we express our gratitude for His blessings, whether abundant or sparse. We recognize that any good in our lives comes from God and is due to His kindness toward us. It makes us open to God because it keeps our focus on Him when life’s problems beset us. As we cultivate gratitude, we learn that we can even be thankful for challenges in our lives because we see them as opportunities to grow in spiritual maturity and as lessons to teach us about God or ourselves. We choose to be thankful for what our lives contain.

Anticipation

Last is anticipation. This is an attitude of eagerness and excitement about the future, believing that God has blessings in store for us. I envision a child standing in line waiting to meet Santa at the mall, full of excitement and anticipation. This would be a spiritual posture of “upraised hands.” It’s a childlike attitude of expectancy, believing that good will come our way, that God will bless us, that the best of what God has to offer is yet to come. This anticipation is untainted and untethered from our current circumstances and tied to a belief in God’s unconditional goodness toward us. It’s not the same as expectation where we have a certain outcome in mind. Instead, it is an attitude of hopefulness in God and not in a specific result or timeframe. We choose to entrust our futures to God.

The Widest Opening

These five attitudes create the widest opening possible for us to receive from God. They make us the most receptive so that when the time is right, we are in the best position to receive the fullness of what God might give us. Our spiritual posture before God is important. To review, the spiritual postures of leaning, bowing, kneeling, openhandedness, and upraised hands all convey openness and humility toward God. A closed posture will diminish our capacity to receive. God’s timing is unpredictable, so we always maintain an open posture so we don’t miss the opportunity when it comes our way. God wants to bless us and He wants us to receive the fullness of those blessings. It pains Him when we aren’t in a position to receive them because of our pride, unbelief, or negativity.

Questions for Reflection:

  1. On a scale of zero to ten, how would you rate your level of receptivity to God? Do you believe it’s possible for you to be more receptive? If not, why do you believe you are stuck?
  2. Which of the five attitudes do you struggle with most? Why?
  3. What spiritual practice would help you most to cultivate a greater openness to God?
  4. What thought patterns make it hardest for you to be open to God? What thoughts would be a good replacement for those?

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Rick Hocker is a game programmer, artist, and author. In 2004, he sustained a back injury that left him bed-ridden in excruciating pain for six months, followed by a long recovery. He faced the challenges of disability, loss of income, and mounting debt. After emerging from this dark time, he discovered that profound growth had occurred. Three years later, he had a dream that inspired him to write his award-winning book, Four in the Garden. His goal was to help people have a close relationship with God and to share the insights he gained from the personal transformation that resulted from his back injury. He lives in Martinez, California.

For more articles, visit http://www.rickhocker.com/articles.html
Website: http://www.rickhocker.com
Email: mail@rickhocker.com

A Deeper Relationship

A “relationship with God” sounds like a lovely thought. But what does it look like? Has anyone defined it for you? How does one have a relationship with a being whom we can’t see or touch? Seems ridiculous, doesn’t it?

A healthy relationship is interactive. Giving and receiving must be present. So what do we give to God? What do we receive from God? I will answer these questions by the end of this article. First, I plan to describe one’s relationship with God by defining stages of increasing depth.

Trust

In my book, Four in the Garden, Cherished asks, “Why should I trust Creator if I don’t know Him?” The answer given him is, “You come to know Him by trusting in Him.” This is a paradox, yet we start the journey toward God by trusting Him. We trust in something we can’t see in the hope that the invisible will make itself known. Hebrews 11:6 says, “Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.” So we start with a simple belief in God, even though we don’t know or understand God.

Humility

Humility is the first step in one’s relationship with God. We set aside our ego and our ego’s demands when we approach God. We acknowledge that we aren’t as smart or powerful as God. In truth, we know little when it comes to God’s inscrutable ways, and what we think we know may be inaccurate. Humility requires a willingness to be wrong and an openness to correction. A relationship with God is not based on doctrinal certainty, but a readiness to engage mystery as this relationship is mutable and dynamic. No real relationship starts with certainty or expects fixed responses. James 4:6 says that God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble. Humility opens the door to relationship, but if we are proud before God, the door remains closed.

Authenticity

When we approach God, the masks must come off. We can’t have lasting relationship with anyone if we pretend to be something we are not. Authenticity means we are honest with God about who we are, how we think, and what we do. No excuses, but brutal honesty. I think God can handle it. We come as we are, not hiding anything or making ourselves more presentable. We bring everything into God’s light: our shame, guilt, despair, self-hatred, and doubt. The important thing is that we come, regardless, instead of staying away because we have judged ourselves unworthy. If we have soiled our diapers, then we come to God with stinky diapers believing He will clean us up as any loving parent would.

The goal here is to be real and authentic before God. We are not putting our best face forward, but putting our real face forward, warts and all. When we are real before God, then God makes Himself real to us. Said another way: if you want God to be real to you, then strive to be as real as possible with God. As we drop our masks and defenses, then we remove one more barrier between God and us.

Mutuality

Psalm 18:25-26 says this about God, “With the kind You show Yourself kind; With the blameless You show Yourself blameless; With the pure You show Yourself pure, and with the crooked You show Yourself contrary.” This suggests a mutuality that describes our relationship with God. This same mutuality is reflected in the verse (James 4:8) that says, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.” This is a dynamic relational dance with God. We bow and He bows in return. We approach and He approaches. We withdraw and He withdraws. He meets us according to our invitation and posture, reflecting back to us a corresponding posture and spirit in response. So it’s up to us how we want to dance with God, but realize that you lead and He follows. God waits for us to make the first move, to draw near before He draws near.

Transparency

Transparency is similar to authenticity, but it goes further. Transparency is more than dropping our masks and defenses; it is an intentional disclosure of our secret selves. It’s noble to be honest in a relationship. It’s far harder and riskier to divulge our deeper selves. We’re bringing out the monsters from our basement, the critters we don’t want others to see or know about. Of course, God knows all about them, but He waits for us to be ready to bring them out into His presence. He waits for us to trust Him with our secret shadow selves. In essence, our relationship with God is all about stripping away the layers that exist between God and us. God doesn’t do it. It is our task. I liken transparency to nakedness before God. Even though God can see us, we invite Him to do so. We invite Him to peer as deep as we can tolerate. When we allow ourselves to be seen, we also allow ourselves to be loved at a deeper level.

When I invite God to see me, I feel exposed and naked. It takes effort to stay still and not retreat. In some ways, I feel like a vampire being burned by the sunlight. But I know if I stay put, then what can’t be burned away will remain. So I allow God to burn off my shame, guilt, and self-judgment. After the ashes, I find my heart malleable again and a renewed tenderness in my relationship with God.

Intimacy

Mutual self-disclosure is the definition of intimacy. When we disclose ourselves to God, God does the same with us. This sharing of selves creates closeness, trust, and affection. God discloses His nature or character to us, some aspect of Himself we can lay hold of. He chooses how and when. His disclosure usually reveals an aspect of Himself that will enable us to become closer to him and to trust Him more. God doesn’t rely on formulas and no two people have identical experiences of God. So be open to anything and everything in your interactions with God. I see no limits in our relationship with God as Christ has removed any barriers on God’s side. The only barriers are on our side. So, we can draw as near to God as we dare. Ephesians 3:11-12 says, “In Christ and through faith in Christ, we may enter God’s presence with boldness and confidence.”

Self-Relating

Our relationship with ourselves has much to do with how we relate to God. If we don’t know how to relate to our inner selves, it will be hard to relate to God. If we don’t know how to nurture our inner selves, then it will be difficult for us to receive nurture from God. It’s within our interior space that God interacts with us. This inner realm serves as a landing pad for God. If we have cultivated an inner life, then we give God an ample place to land. Take time to discover and explore your inner person and learn how to relate to, listen to, and love that person. As you do so, you will develop the capacity to receive those same things from God. Refer to my article on Cultivating an Inner Life.

Deep Calls to Deep

In Psalm 42:6, David says, “Deep calls to deep in the roar of Your waterfalls, all Your waves and breakers have swept over me.” David is downcast and disturbed in this psalm, yet he expresses his earnest desire and thirst for God by beginning with, “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God.” He feels overwhelmed as if about to drown in the waters that inundate him, yet he calls out to God from the deepest place of his soul. In another illustration of mutuality, he expects that by offering his deepest self, he will be met by God’s deepest self. This is an accurate description of our relationship with God: we give ourselves to God and God gives Himself to us. We give our very being to God as a gift, a love offering, a willing sacrifice. In return, God gives us His being, His presence, His manifest love. God’s love is often preemptive and always unearned, but in a show of intimacy when we drop our guard, He sometimes embraces us with a palpable expression of His tenderness. We give God our lives, our spirits, our bodies, our love, our everything. In response, God gives as much to us, if not more.

Some of you are looking for guidance, assurance, security, or comfort. These things may result from a relationship with God, but aren’t the basis of a relationship, even human relationships. Relationship is based on the sharing of selves, mutual disclosure and commitment, and quality time spent together. When a vibrant relationship exists, then these other things often flow out of that. So, we seek relationship as the priority, not these other things that will elude us, otherwise.

The only thing that will last forever is your relationship with God. Everything else will fade away. The best description of eternal life was given by Jesus who prayed, “Now this is eternal life: that they know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent.” Eternal life isn’t living forever, but having a relationship with God, a personal experience of knowing God (not just knowing about God). This life is eternal because God is eternal and in knowing Him, there is no end.

Questions for Reflection:

  1. What is your greatest barrier in your present relationship with God? Why do you think it continues to be a barrier for you? What might it take to dismantle it?
  2. Describe your relational position with God. How does this position enhance or hinder God’s ability to relate to you? What new position would you like to try?
  3. How does your relationship with God compare to what you imagine it could be? Describe one particular way in which it falls short. Name one strategy you can try to fix that shortfall.

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Rick Hocker is a game programmer, artist, and author. In 2004, he sustained a back injury that left him bed-ridden in excruciating pain for six months, followed by a long recovery. He faced the challenges of disability, loss of income, and mounting debt. After emerging from this dark time, he discovered that profound growth had occurred. Three years later, he had a dream that inspired him to write his award-winning book, Four in the Garden. His goal was to help people have a close relationship with God and to share the insights he gained from the personal transformation that resulted from his back injury. He lives in Martinez, California.

For more articles, visit http://www.rickhocker.com/articles.html
Website: http://www.rickhocker.com
Email: mail@rickhocker.com

The Simplicity of Death

To understand death, we can observe nature as in the lifespan of insects or the hierarchy of the food chain. Death is an integral part of the cycle of life. Death is necessary, inevitable, and unavoidable. I doubt that insects or animals contemplate their mortality as humans do. Yet, what we have in common with all creation is our need to survive. The survival instinct is driven by an innate need for continuity, but for some humans it’s confused with one’s fear of death. We humans have turned death into a terrifying phantom that sneaks in the shadows and steals our precious lives as a thief.

In my book, Four in the Garden, Cherished came upon a dead mole that disturbed him because it didn’t behave like all the other animals he had encountered thus far. He found it stiff, cold, and unresponsive. When he asked, “Where did the mole’s life go?” the Teachers explained that its life left its body and rejoined the One Life in which all living things share, the One Life that is Creator. God is the source and embodiment of Life, and all living things manifest God’s Life. When a living thing dies, its life returns to God.

The Balance of Life

In college, I used to pray atop a hill behind the dorms. Each time I ascended the hill, I passed a small pond full of many dozen polliwogs. I would always stop and watch them wriggle along the edges of the pond as if eager to climb onto the land. Over time, they grew large and began to sprout limbs. One day, when I visited the pond, the water had dried up and all the polliwogs had died. This event devastated me because I had grown attached to those little guys. For years, it bothered me because I could never understand what lesson could be gained by observing this catastrophe.

Looking back at that event now, I take heart because of the laws of physics. Energy is being transformed all the time. Matter converts into energy according to Einstein’s famous equation. We now know that energy and matter are interchangeable. Everything transforms. Nothing is wasted. The life energy of those polliwogs wasn’t extinguished, but released to the universe. Death is not a destructive end, but a transformation of energy from one state to another.

I see Life as a dynamic constant, where creatures come and go, but the totality of Life is a vast fabric that God infuses with His Life. All creatures are alive with the spark of God’s Life, and the spark returns to God when they die. In this sense, death is but the shedding of the body. Life continues. Spirit continues. Even for us, death means that we shed our bodies and continue in a new form. Think of it as shedding a skin like a reptile or crustacean sheds its skin or shell as it grows.

God’s View of Death

I believe that God views death from a wider perspective that isn’t tied to a material point of view, given that God Himself is Spirit and not tethered to a body. Most people are confounded when they read passages in the Bible about God slaughtering people. From God’s point of view, He is simply terminating bodies, not souls. I don’t mean to make light of murder (it is one of the ten commandments), but God takes a more casual and neutral view of death when taking lives, as they are His to take. We’re comfortable telling children the story of Noah’s ark, even though the tale includes the worldwide intentional slaughter of the entire human race save one family. Bodies serve as temporary housings for our souls, nothing more. We regard our human lives as only the short time we inhabit our bodies, when our existence actually extends far beyond that. “What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes,” says James 4:14. Psalm 90:4 says, “In God’s sight a thousand years is but a day.” Whether we live a day or ninety years, our human lives are a momentary flash from God’s point of view.

We consider it tragic when people die “before their time.” Who decides what my time should be? It may be much shorter than yours. I think everyone’s time is too short. God, on the other hand, doesn’t hold a tragic view of death. Psalm 116:15 says, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His godly ones (saints).” Those mentioned are God’s favorites, I assume, but their death is deemed precious to God, not tragic. Contrast this with the feelings we have when those dear to us die. We consider it extra grievous if the deceased was a good or godly person, somehow less deserving of death, as if death is based on merit.

Why We Fear Death

Death is natural and not to be feared. The reason we fear it is because our ego is unwilling to suffer loss. Ego clings to security and substance. Ego refuses to let go. Death is the enemy of ego. The best way to address our fear of death is to stop clinging to life so tightly, to release our grip, to let go of control. In its place, we choose to trust in God, to trust in Life and Death. Death is not genuine loss, but only the shedding of our temporary bodies. I find comfort in this, seeing the shedding of my body as liberating and freeing me to experience God without the distraction of my body.

One thing that terrifies us about death is the loss of ego and identity. In this world, we are known by our outward personality and accomplishments. Those personal attributes cease to define our non-material being after death. The quality and nature of our souls is what remains. Ego and self are baggage meant to be discarded anyway along the path toward fulfillment in God. The supremacy of self runs counter to the spiritual life and to the nature of God. Ego, as self-focused, opposes the open, outward essence of God who desires Oneness with all. After death, ego and identity have no place or function. They only thrive where separateness causes one to define a distinct self in relation to and in opposition to all others. For those who experience Oneness with God, separateness ceases to be a marked reality, and our need for ego and identity fades because God’s embrace supplies the security that ego tried to provide and our new identity of being one with God replaces our old fragile identity of “I alone”. On our journey toward death, we must “die” to our sources of false security and find fulfillment in our relationship with God.

The Issue of Decay

Before death comes decay. Here in the United States with our emphasis on youthfulness and newness, decay and deterioration repulses us. I admit I join the crowd on this issue. I don’t look forward to the slow loss of physical and mental capacity or the frightful challenges that tend to strike older people. Yet, deterioration is a natural consequence as we transition toward death and it ought to be accepted. Through all of life’s circumstances, we learn to adjust and adapt in the hope that in our latter years we have gained resilience and calm acceptance of what is. If I have learned these things, I can then apply them to the upcoming challenges of aging. I will adjust and adapt to the deterioration happening to my body with humor and patience and compassion. If we haven’t yet learned to release our stubborn egos, then these final humiliations will give us ample opportunity. When we accept our limitations instead of resisting them, we are best prepared for change as it comes. We trust in God, believing He will guide us through all the stages of life and will give us what we need along the way.

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Rick Hocker is a game programmer, artist, and author. In 2004, he sustained a back injury that left him bed-ridden in excruciating pain for six months, followed by a long recovery. He faced the challenges of disability, loss of income, and mounting debt. After emerging from this dark time, he discovered that profound growth had occurred. Three years later, he had a dream that inspired him to write his award-winning book, Four in the Garden. His goal was to help people have a close relationship with God and to share the insights he gained from the personal transformation that resulted from his back injury. He lives in Martinez, California.

For more articles, visit http://www.rickhocker.com/articles.html
Website: http://www.rickhocker.com
Email: mail@rickhocker.com

The Indwelling Spirit of Christ

Our identity as Christians is based on our relationship to Christ. A common phrase to describe this identity is “who we are in Christ.” Our relationship to Christ as our savior gains us favored status with God, imparts Christ’s purity and righteousness to cover over our sinfulness, and grants us unrestricted access to God so we can have intimate relationship with Him. It takes a lifetime to fully understand these deep truths, but we cannot stop there. If we want to lay hold of God, we must explore a second stage. After we have laid the foundation of who we are in Christ, we must then discover “who Christ is in us.”

All things start with a focus on ourselves. Who am I? Why am I here? What do I want? As we mature, the focus ought to shift off of ourselves. The same holds true with our identity in Christ. After we have established who we are in Christ and have arrived at a comfortable level of security in our standing with God, it’s essential to move to a more Christ-centered focus. This shift in focus causes us to ask who Christ is in us. What can we know about the Spirit of Christ who inhabits us? What does it mean that Christ indwells me? How do I live my life to give space and freedom to this indwelling Spirit? I doubt I can answer these questions with great accuracy, but I hope I can inspire you to think differently about Christ.

Christ in Us

Christ said He had to leave the Earth so He could send another, a Comforter, to be with us (John 14). Christ knew He could only be in one place at a time, so He devised a way to be with many people at one time by sending His Spirit to dwell inside those who receive Him. This isn’t some second-rate, inferior replacement for Christ. This is the full package. Everything you believe about Christ is bundled in this package because the package IS Christ. He Himself dwells inside you, not a watered-down version. Because our lives still feel unremarkable, we tend to think that the package is more like a Jesus action figure that sits on our dashboard inspiring us on our journey, but not offering much practical use. The problem is not with the package, but with us not knowing what to do with it. It’s like having an Amazon Echo device sitting on our counter, but we don’t know how to engage it, so it sits there unused and ineffective.

In Ephesians 3:8, Paul refers to the boundless riches of Christ. Other translations use adjectives such as unfathomable, immeasurable, or infinite. The New Living version translates Paul’s words to say “the endless treasures available in Christ.” That phrase inspires me to imagine a treasure room filled to the ceiling with golden riches, all available to us in Christ. Why do we not utilize this treasure? We often neglect spiritual gifts because we feel unworthy or cannot believe they are ours to use. So our treasure room remains closed even though we’ve been given the key. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3:22-23, “Everything belongs to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.” The treasure IS Christ. His boundless riches are found in us because He dwells in us.

Christ by Faith

If Christ and all He possesses are found in us, then our first response ought to be gratitude. Let us be cognizant of what a great treasure we have, Christ in us. So how do we tap into this resource? We apprehend Christ by faith, believing that Christ’s fullness is available to us, believing we are worthy of such a gift, and believing Christ will manifest in our lives in response to our faith. God wants the Spirit of Christ to be a real and active force in our lives. That’s why Christ gave us His Spirit.

Let us exert more faith in Christ, not only the Christ who sits in Heaven, but the Christ who sits on the throne of our hearts. Let us depend more on the Spirit of Christ who inhabits us. We need to give God more opportunity to express Himself in our lives. The Spirit of Christ can only dwell where He is invited. Therefore, let us invite Him into our daily interactions, into our thoughts, and into our words. By compartmentalizing our lives, we limit God’s reach. God wants to infiltrate our lives in every aspect, but we get in the way. The older I get, the more I see how much I restrict God by my own fears and insecurities.

Christ to the World

I visualize myself as a portal or doorway between God and the world. Christ is inside me, and the world is outside me. Christ yearns to reach through this opening and touch the world He loves so much. But it’s up to me how wide an opening I give God to do so. How much will I open up my heart and life to God? I believe that my experience of the reality of God is directly proportional to the size of the opening I give Him. We create an opening for God by clearing a way that’s devoid of self and ego. It is an empty space that God can fill with Himself. It is a setting aside of my agenda and attachments.

In its ultimate expression, Christ in us becomes Christ in the world. Christ inhabits us to such an extent that we become His hands and feet in this world. I believe that is what Paul meant when he prayed that we “become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13). In this state, Christ inhabits us fully, filling every part of our lives. This fullness overflows our lives as the character and activity of Christ is made manifest to the world for others to experience. I often wonder if such a thing is possible for someone like me, but when I consider what an amazing resource I have in the indwelling Spirit of Christ, I’m reminded that all things are possible with Christ (Matthew 19:26).

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Rick Hocker is a game programmer, artist, and author. In 2004, he sustained a back injury that left him bed-ridden in excruciating pain for six months, followed by a long recovery. He faced the challenges of disability, loss of income, and mounting debt. After emerging from this dark time, he discovered that profound growth had occurred. Three years later, he had a dream that inspired him to write his award-winning book, Four in the Garden. His goal was to help people have a close relationship with God and to share the insights he gained from the personal transformation that resulted from his back injury. He lives in Martinez, California.

For more articles, visit http://www.rickhocker.com/articles.html
Website: http://www.rickhocker.com
Email: mail@rickhocker.com

The God Particle

“I believe that God is in me as the sun is in the colour and fragrance of a flower ­– the Light in my darkness, the Voice in my silence.” —Helen Keller.

Most of us think of God as being outside, up there, or elsewhere. “He is high and lifted up,” said the prophet Isaiah. And shouldn’t He be since He is so holy? What’s remarkable is that the God who dwells in unapproachable light (1 Timothy 6:16) can also dwell in us feeble and broken humans and is willing to do so. “Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16).

One of my most life-changing insights was when God showed me what resided at my spiritual center. I had expected something dark or sinister, but what I beheld at my deepest core blew me away. It was God Himself. I already believed that God’s Spirit dwelt inside me, but I’d been taught that the Spirit ebbed and I needed to ask to be refilled every day as if my spiritual tank would run dry if I didn’t. It had never occurred to me that God was an enduring and integral part of my spiritual makeup. God is the foundation onto which my soul is built.

God Within Us

Water drops in the atmosphere, such as those in clouds, are created when water vapor condenses on tiny particles of dust. At the center of every water drop is a tiny particle. I now see my soul in the same way. My soul is wrapped around a tiny particle of God, but this particle is infinite, boundless. If I were to plunge into my innermost center, I would find God in His fullness. The deeper I descend into the ever-tighter center-point, the more spacious the view.

When shopping yesterday, I became awestruck on realizing that everyone around me was also a God particle wrapped in a soul. People have inestimable value because they carry God within them. Each of us contains a “drop of glory.”1

St. Teresa of Avila was a sixteenth-century nun and mystic who wrote Interior Castle. In her book, she described the soul as a castle with a series of mansions though which one journeys toward the central mansion. She wrote that God’s mansion “is the centre of the soul itself.”2 I interpret her statement to mean that God Himself dwells at our innermost center.

Flow From Within

In my book, Four in the Garden, Cherished learned that he could connect to Creator via a special connection found at his innermost center. This divine connection was called an umbilicore. It functioned as a spiritual umbilical cord from which he received nourishment from Creator. As in the story, God dwells inside us at our center, and His Life flows outward to nourish our souls.

God’s Spirit or God’s Life is often described as a spring of water that wells up inside us. In John 7:37, Jesus said, “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’” The flow of living water comes from our innermost center because that’s where God dwells.

God’s Accessibility

Having God at my center implies that God is always accessible to me. I used to view God like a switch that would get turned off if I felt unworthy or guilty. I pictured Him as moving further away depending on my behavior. Then I would have to work to close the gap between us. But, now, I only need to find God at my center, and my experience of God is almost immediate. It sounds too easy.

Believing that I’m connected to God enables my connection. Feelings of doubt will shut it down. If I don’t believe that I can connect to God, then I don’t. Unworthiness or guilt still interfere, but the best cure for those things is connecting to God. So I push past those feelings, find God, and connect to Him, then those feelings fade away.

I realize that what I’m describing is not most people’s experience of God. God is elusive or distant for most. My intent in writing this is to declare that God is not far away from you. He is closer than you think, closer than your own breath. He is at your innermost center and available to you. We haven’t been taught how to look for God. We don’t know how to look inward, but that’s where God is found. It’s also where your soul is found. Navigating the soul’s treacherous terrain requires courage. To find God, we much deal with the stuff in our souls because that stuff gets in the way.

Press in. Dig deep. Gaze into your soul. Deal with your stuff. If you persevere, you will encounter God. The goal isn’t to encounter God or to connect to God although those experiences can be fulfilling. The true goal is to fall in love with God and to nurture a relationship with Him. In the context of relationship we come to know God in a way that transcends what we read in a book. God becomes real to us, and we become a conduit as He flows out from our innermost being into the lives of others.

1 Rick Hocker, Four in the Garden, page 185
2 St. Theresa of Avila, Interior Castle, page 154

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Rick Hocker is a game programmer, artist, and author. In 2004, he sustained a back injury that left him bed-ridden in excruciating pain for six months, followed by a long recovery. He faced the challenges of disability, loss of income, and mounting debt. After emerging from this dark time, he discovered that profound growth had occurred. Three years later, he had a dream that inspired him to write his award-winning book, Four in the Garden. His goal was to help people have a close relationship with God and to share the insights he gained from the personal transformation that resulted from his back injury. He lives in Martinez, California.

For more articles, visit http://www.rickhocker.com/articles.html
Website: http://www.rickhocker.com
Email: mail@rickhocker.com

The Purpose of Pain

I’ve noticed a growing trend in our society marked by an aversion to pain. I suspect this trend is due to the easy availability of drugs that mask pain. It seems as if pain is another malady to be conquered by science, along with cancer and heart disease. But pain is not a disease. We forget that pain is a natural and helpful mechanism meant to inform us when something is wrong. We tend to not listen to our bodies and, thus, not listen to our pain. Pain is a symptom, not a problem. When we mask our pain, we stifle the messages our bodies are trying to give us. We need to learn to listen.

I don’t intend to take on the drug companies or to convince you to not take pain medications. Instead, I want to explore the workings of pain in our lives and what we can learn from it. I believe pain can be our teacher.

Learning from Pain

At its most basic level, pain is a warning. It triggers when we touch something hot or when we injure ourselves. We feel pain when something is wrong inside us, such as a stomachache or headache. From the pain messages, we learn what behaviors to avoid, such as not touching the hot stovetop. We also learn new behaviors, such as wearing sunglasses when spending hours in the bright sun. If pain is repetitive, then we need to change our behaviors to mitigate the pain, such as not eating foods that give us heartburn. Listen to the messages your body is giving you and try to learn from them.

These principles also apply to emotional pain. Can we learn from our pain to change our behaviors so we aren’t inflicting pain on ourselves or allowing others to inflict pain on us? What is your pain telling you? If you’re experiencing emotional pain, you’ll be tempted to mask or medicate it. But sit with it long enough to understand it and to learn what you need to do to remedy it. If you medicate your pain, then you’re only treating the symptom and remain in the dark as to its cause. Seek to understand its cause so you can correct it.

Transformed by Pain

In my book, Four in the Garden, Creator said, “The soul attains full maturation when transformed by life of which pain is an integral component.” Pain has value if we allow it to transform us. Pain has spiritual purpose. The apostle, Paul, understood this and sought to partake in Christ’s sufferings as a way to know Christ better and to become more like Him. “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.” (Philippians 3:10). I admit this concept is far beyond me, but I recognize that Paul’s attitude toward suffering is rare when compared to the importance placed on minimizing pain these days. This is evident in advertisements that promote weight loss or great abs without exercising. What happened to “no pain, no gain?”

Paul believed that suffering had the power to raise us to a higher spiritual state. “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.” (2 Corinthians 4:17). This power isn’t found in the suffering itself, but in God’s ability to use the suffering to our benefit when we trust Him to do so. God can only transform what we hand over to Him. During my back injury, I believed there was some spiritual purpose in it, although I couldn’t see it at the time. Nevertheless, I trusted God during that dark time and entrusted my body and soul to Him, believing He could use the situation to bring about spiritual growth in me. Had I not done so, I doubt I would have learned or grown as much as I had.

Paul saw benefits to suffering. “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” (Romans 5:3-4). Paul lists three areas that can develop from suffering: perseverance, character, and hope. Learning to endure pain develops perseverance that helps us stick it out during long or tough challenges in life. Perseverance produces character that is more focused on others than on our own comfort. And character leads to hope that, in this context, means an abiding trust in God during times of trial where reward and gratification are delayed, but still believed in.

God’s Intention

If, during our suffering, we focus on our misery and complain, I believe we can sabotage God’s intention to use it to transform us. Even of Jesus, it is said that He was made perfect through suffering (Hebrews 2:10). If Jesus, our example, needed to suffer to be made perfect, then much more do we need to be perfected through life’s experiences. An attitude of trust is important. Can you entrust your painful circumstances to God so He can use it to deepen your character? Our transformation has paramount importance to God, more than our comfort. Our bodies and circumstances don’t last forever, but our souls do, so God is invested in developing our souls, making them ready for eternity.

I believe we will continue to grow in the next life, but this life is about developing an elasticity and humility that fosters the greatest capacity for future growth. Through life’s experiences, we can develop a spiritual capacity for partaking in God’s abundant and overflowing Life and Spirit. Without the necessary transformation to our souls, we won’t be able to contain the immensity of such abundance and Presence.

Benefits of Pain

One lesson I learned from pain is a deeper acceptance and trust. It’s natural to resist pain and discomfort. I resisted the thought that I would be permanently disabled. But God was saying to me, “What if you don’t get better? Will you trust Me anyway?” I wrestled with that question for some time. In the end, the question boiled down to, “Is God trustworthy or not?” I decided He was trustworthy and would be no less able to care for me if I were permanently disabled. What helped me was meeting a lady named Marcy ten years earlier. When I met her, she was still confined to bed because of a back injury five years prior. She radiated joy and gratitude in spite of her disability and had tremendous trust in God.

Another lesson I learned during that time was to live in the present moment. During my injury, I kept dreading the future, seeing it as an unmanageable burden. I also looked back at the many months of immobility and debt, and got depressed about the unproductive time of being confined to bed and not making income. God taught me to focus on Him in the moment and to not dwell on the past or future. He reminded me that He doesn’t inhabit the past or future. Those things are abstract and have no present reality. But God dwells in the present and we can experience Him there. When we focus on the past or future, we sever our active connection to God because we jump into our minds to obsess on past events or future worries.

One surprising benefit I discovered was that focusing on the present moment made my pain more manageable. The thought of an entire day of pain was crushing, but I found I could manage the current moment of pain I was experiencing. And I would manage the next moment of pain, and then the next. I didn’t worry about how I would get through the day or week or month. Instead, I stayed in the moment and managed that moment. This is a great way to tackle life when it feels overwhelming. Also, it keeps us centered on God who inhabits the present moment and makes Himself available to us in that moment.

Character and Maturity

Today’s society is accustomed to instant gratification. I worry that we are losing the virtues of sacrifice, denial, and delayed gratification. During World War II, when rationing was enacted, the entire country made voluntary sacrifices to support the war effort. The Great Depression and World War II taught my parents how to make sacrifices and to live on less. I see how those instilled values created an incredible generosity in my parents. Pain and suffering can do the same for us. Pain can teach us humility, endurance, willingness to suffer for others, and gratitude for what we have.

James encourages us be grateful for our trials. “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” (James 1:2-4). Our reason for joy is that when we persevere, it produces a complete maturity that Paul defines as “attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:13). And that is God’s intention for our transformation, that we be filled with the fullness of God and, thus, bear His image in all its glory.

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Rick Hocker is a game programmer, artist, and author. In 2004, he sustained a back injury that left him bed-ridden in excruciating pain for six months, followed by a long recovery. He faced the challenges of disability, loss of income, and mounting debt. After emerging from this dark time, he discovered that profound growth had occurred. Three years later, he had a dream that inspired him to write his award-winning book, Four in the Garden. His goal was to help people have a close relationship with God and to share the insights he gained from the personal transformation that resulted from his back injury. He lives in Martinez, California.

For more articles, visit http://www.rickhocker.com/articles.html
Website: http://www.rickhocker.com
Email: mail@rickhocker.com

Overcoming Fear

Addressing fear takes more than applying methods or formulas. It requires a shift in consciousness, a new way of thinking. While preparing to write this article, God told me:

“Fear has everything to do with one’s relationship with oneself.”

I’ve been thinking about that statement for the past week and will try to unpack it for you.

A Fearful Parent

How do you relate to yourself? Take time to think about your answer. Try to put it into words. Do you behave as an over-protective parent who always fears for the welfare of her child? Or do you behave as a judgmental parent who always finds fault with his child? Do you behave as a controlling parent who puts strict limits on her child? In these examples, the parent is you and the child is your life. By substituting these terms, the first example describes a fear-based person who relates to her life by always thinking of potential misfortune or harm. In a real way, we parent ourselves by encouraging or discouraging our growth by the judgments we make about our lives.

When fear is active, then our response to life will be to protect, resist, or contract. We focus on ourselves and on what we risk losing. This focus on self creates a climate of fear within us. In this mindset, we see ourselves as threatened and powerless. We perceive our lives as small bubbles, and everything that exists outside our bubbles are a potential threat. Because we view the world as a threat, we take an oppositional stance against life. We resist all intrusions, both real and imagined, against our protected bubbles.

Moving Beyond Fear

To move beyond fear, we need to change how we see ourselves. Instead of regarding ourselves as tiny bubbles of existence fighting to survive, we choose to view ourselves as part of a larger whole, where we and the whole are not at odds with each other.

What is this whole? The whole is everything that comprises the universe. It is God who holds it all together. The whole is the greater Life that encompasses your life. It is the continuous flow of creation, decay, death, and transformation in which we all take part, whether consenting or not.

When we focus on the whole, we find it easier to trust because our stories are recognized as part of a larger story. This larger story is about the inherent goodness of God and the constancy of God. When we fix our attention on this overarching theme, what happens to us matters little because we’re more focused on participating in God and less focused on preserving our bubbles. We cannot do both. So we entrust our tiny bubbles to God—they were never really ours in the first place—and now identify with the grander, all-encompassing bubble that is God. We overcome fear by entrusting our fragile lives to God and choosing to not focus on ourselves or on what may happen to us.

Moving Away from Self

When we shift our focus from our tiny selves onto God, we learn to trust that God is bigger than our little stories. We take on a new story that is no longer about us, but about God’s activity in us and through us. The larger story of God’s sweep across all lives subsumes the smaller stories of our single selves.

We learn to trust the flow that carries us from event to event, from change to change, through difficulty and pain. We entrust ourselves to the whole, to the flow that is Life. We entrust ourselves to God, believing He will bring us to our destination. Our destination, in case you wondered, is God Himself.

How do we do this when we’ve spent our entire lives focused on ourselves? It means laying down our stories and our control over those narratives. It means giving God control over our stories and letting Him direct them. When we don’t like the direction He is taking us, we trust instead of resisting.

Trusting Life and God

Because of this new identification with the larger story, we can learn to no longer fear life, but trust it, even embrace it. From this new vantage point, we can define life as participation in the flow of God that requires our willingness to be transformed. If we’re to trust life, then we need to accept all stages of existence, including decay and death. Pain and suffering are an unavoidable part of life. Instead of resisting them, we learn to accept them as part of the whole, no longer judging them as needless or terrible. God inhabits both suffering and joy. He inhabits the entire spectrum of life.

When we resist life, we won’t grow. In my book, Four in the Garden, the Teachers tell Cherished, “Nothing is ever annihilated. When Creator destroys something, its substance is merely transformed. The rhythm of the universe is transformation.” Natural phenomena demonstrate this principle of transformation. Since this principle is elemental to life, then we ought not to resist it. When we accept change and hardship, then we move through life with grace and peace, and are transformed by it. God’s purpose is that we be transformed more and more into His image (2 Corinthians 3:18).

Connection

When we perceive our connection to this larger whole, then our lives have greater meaning. We see ourselves as an integral part of things rather than separate from them. When we’re connected, we don’t feel as threatened, so we have less reason to resist or fear. Our little self becomes hidden in God (Colossians 3:3) and embraced by God. Life is less scary because we are in God and with God. We choose to believe in the goodness of God to sustain us along the journey, no matter where our journey takes us.

A focus on self reinforces our perception of separateness. Separateness creates isolation. It’s the sense of isolation that creates fear. We believe we are alone and must fend for ourselves. Thus, we must protect and defend our tiny bubbles of existence. That’s why we need to shift to a viewpoint that is larger than self. We can enhance our sense of connection by reminding ourselves we are not separate and by telling ourselves we are already connected to God. We can’t grow in our relationship with God if we believe we are always disconnected from Him.

A Larger Vision

A larger vision of connection to and participation in God frees us from fear because we no longer have to worry about our bubbles. God invites us to share in His being and to let go of our tiny self-bubbles, to join Him in the flow of His Spirit. Our focus shifts from our little lives to the greater Life that is God. We move from a self-centered focus to a God-centered focus. When we fear, we focus inward and contract. When we trust, we focus outward toward God and expand.

When we’re connected, God ceases to be “out there.” We become joined with Him in relationship. Our life becomes connected to His Life. When God interacts with us, it will be from the inside out, not the other way around. He meets us at the intersection where spirit touches Spirit, where deep touches Deep.

The Trusting Parent

At the proper time, a parent gives up control over her child when her child has matured. When this time comes, the parent allows his child to make mistakes and learn from them, to experience the world without parental supervision. She entrusts her child to God, believing that God will take care of her child. Like a trusting parent, we need to give up control and entrust our lives to God. We transfer our parental rights to God, allowing God to be the parent over us, a parent more patient and loving than we could ever be. We release our tight grip on our lives and choose to have a loose grip, instead, allowing God freedom to have His way.

As we relax our grip, we release fear. At the same time, releasing our grip is terrifying to our egos. It’s illustrated by the difference between clutching the side of a deep swimming pool or floating in the middle. We fear the depths may swallow us, so we clutch something for security. We will never learn to trust if we never let go. God coaxes us to release our tight grip on life and trust Him to keep us afloat. Real trust clings to nothing, but believes God is our life-vest each moment.

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Rick Hocker is a game programmer, artist, and author. In 2004, he sustained a back injury that left him bed-ridden in excruciating pain for six months, followed by a long recovery. He faced the challenges of disability, loss of income, and mounting debt. After emerging from this dark time, he discovered that profound growth had occurred. Three years later, he had a dream that inspired him to write his award-winning book, Four in the Garden. His goal was to help people have a close relationship with God and to share the insights he gained from the personal transformation that resulted from his back injury. He lives in Martinez, California.

For more articles, visit http://www.rickhocker.com/articles.html
Website: http://www.rickhocker.com
Email: mail@rickhocker.com

Accepting All Outcomes

Life rarely turns out the way we prefer. Someone hurts us. We get sick. We suffer loss. If we believe in God, we turn to God for help. We pray for reconciliation, for healing, for provision. Sometimes, our requests aren’t granted, even when our requests are legitimate and sincere.

One reason people lose faith is because they relied on God to help them, but God seemingly let them down. They asked for something important, but God didn’t give it. Their conclusion is that God doesn’t exist or God doesn’t care. In either case, they lost faith.

Foolish Expectations

It’s foolish to expect God to grant our every request. What I mean is that we need to be careful with our expectations. It’s virtuous to ask God to meet our needs and to trust Him to do so. But His answer to our need may not align with our desired result. If we expect a certain result, then we set ourselves up for disappointment. God is not obligated to deliver the result we want.

When I was bedridden with a back injury, I prayed for healing, but I got worse, to the point where I was in too much pain to move. I was trusting God, but it wasn’t working as I expected. Eventually, I realized that I had misplaced my trust. My trust was in getting healed, not in God Himself. Notice the difference. I was putting my faith in a specific outcome, not in God’s care for me.

Trust in God, not Outcomes

God wants me to put my faith in Him and not in an outcome. I had to be willing to trust God with permanent disability. That required a much deeper trust than what I was exercising. I needed to entrust God with my life and my future. This was the level of trust that God wanted from me, trusting Him with any outcome, believing He would take care of me no matter what the circumstance.

So when you pray, be careful with your expectations. Don’t “expect” God to meet your desires, although you can still ask God to meet them. Rather, expect God to work in your life or the lives of others according to His good purpose. His purpose for us isn’t a trouble-free life. His purpose for us is to know Him and to grow in love and trust. And those things only happen when life challenges us. So rely on God, not outcomes. Learn to trust God with those outcomes. Believe that His love is enough to carry you through any trial. Allow His purpose to transform you into the person He wants you to be, a reflection of God Himself.

We Decide How Bad Things Are

One way to accept undesirable outcomes is to realize that things are only as bad as you judge them. Your response to circumstances depends on what you tell yourself about them. We decide how bad something is. Then we respond according to our judgment. Imagine that you discovered the word “bigot” spray-painted on the side of your car. This would trigger many feelings for most people. If you tell yourself this is a terrible and unbearable situation, your emotions will escalate in response. You will be more upset and angry. If you tell yourself this situation is manageable, then your emotions will be more tempered.

You think you respond to situations. The truth is that you respond to your “thoughts” about a situation. If you think something is horrible, then you will act as though it’s horrible. If you think something is not so bad, then you will act accordingly. So, be careful with what you tell yourself about your circumstances. Your thoughts determine whether your life is awful or manageable. Your judgments can create more stress for you.

Resistance Versus Acceptance

A situation has no inherent emotion. It’s neutral. It’s just an event. We decide what emotion to attach. We decide how upset it should make us. We make a story out of it. “This terrible thing happened to me and I freaked out because it messed up my plans.” An alternative narrative for the same event could be, “This thing happened, and I accepted it while learning how upset I still get when things don’t go my way.” We can choose to accept a circumstance or resist it. When we resist it, we make it our enemy, and our fight instinct kicks into gear with all the accompanying stresses. Resistance takes a toll on our bodies. When we accept it, we place our trust in God and try to enter His peace, at the same time asking for wisdom for what we can change about the circumstance.

Release your judgments about your life and entrust your circumstances to God. “With God all things are possible,” says Matthew 19.26. “Surely God is my help. The Lord is the one who sustains me,” says Psalm 54:4. With God, all things are manageable. We have no reason to tell ourselves that our circumstances are intolerable. If we can learn to avoid judging our circumstances so harshly, we will be more at peace and will find it easier to trust God. God wants us to trust Him more, and He is willing to help us do so.

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Rick Hocker is a game programmer, artist, and author. In 2004, he sustained a back injury that left him bed-ridden in excruciating pain for six months, followed by a long recovery. He faced the challenges of disability, loss of income, and mounting debt. After emerging from this dark time, he discovered that profound growth had occurred. Three years later, he had a dream that inspired him to write his award-winning book, Four in the Garden. His intent was to illustrate one’s growth toward deep communion with God and to share the insights he gained from the personal transformation that resulted from his back injury. He lives in Martinez, California.

For more articles, visit http://www.rickhocker.com/articles.html
Website: http://www.rickhocker.com
Email: mail@rickhocker.com

The Insidious Self

Our greatest enemy follows us wherever we go, and yet we consider it our best friend. It is our self. Time and time again, our self gets us into trouble because it’s insecure and fearful. In spite of this, it gives us our marching orders, setting the direction of our lives. And we listen to it, allowing it to control us.

Because our self is insecure, it worries about anything that might threaten it. It worries about instability, loss, rejection, betrayal, and its ability to cope. Much of our insecurity arises from the fact that we can’t control these things or entirely protect ourselves from them. Our predisposition to worry affects our everyday choices.

Fear Controls Us

We make decisions that mitigate our fears. We stay in the abusive relationship because we are more terrified of being alone or because we think no one else will have us. We don’t speak up because we’re afraid of confrontation or retribution. We stay in our hated job because we can’t see how to provide for our family any other way. We let people take advantage of us because we’re afraid of offending them, hurting their feelings, or them rejecting us.

Much of the time, we don’t realize how fear drives our choices. We act and react without introspection. We don’t examine our decisions to see if fear is at work. Is fear causing us to rule out available options? Do we shrink back from taking risks because of fear? What are we telling ourselves to justify our choices? What we think is a wise course of action may actually be a strategy to keep us safe from what we fear.

My major insecurity is fear of rejection. From the beginning, I felt different from the rest, out of place, unable to relate to my peers. As a result, I kept aloof, thinking that people wouldn’t accept me. In high school, I ate my lunch with the outcasts. I hardly spoke, even to them, because I feared saying anything that might cause people to reject me. In P.E. class, a budding friendship with a classmate encouraged me, but when he suggested we practice throwing and catching a baseball, I knew our future friendship was doomed. Sure enough, once he saw my ineptitude at sports, he never interacted with me again. Years later, I wrestle with this insecurity on a regular basis. What I have since learned is that the presence of fear doesn’t mean it has to control me. I acknowledge the fear, but empower myself to take risks, believing I can survive rejection because I know I’m accepted by God, myself, and others.

Guilt Trips Us

Another weakness that trips us up is guilt. Whereas fear is focused on the future, guilt finds its focus in the past. Our decisions are tied to what’s taken place in the past and our judgments of those events. We make guilt-induced choices because we feel indebted to others or bad about our past behavior. We overcompensate for our failings by going the extra mile and allowing others to take advantage. We may even be aware of this dynamic but tell ourselves that it’s a necessary penance for our sins.

In my life, I allowed guilt to have power because my soul was too fragile. The most effective manipulation was for someone to say, “If you were truly my friend, you would do this for me.” I had no choice but to comply. The alternative was to be rejected as a “bad” friend. I have learned a lot about boundaries since then. “No” is not a bad word and can be used with grace and respect. In addition, maturity must make room for self-nurture, which can’t happen when we allow others to direct our lives.

Transferring Control

When self is in control, then ego sits at the steering wheel. We are driven to and fro by our fears and insecurities. If we can recognize how counterproductive it is to allow self to be in charge, then we might be ready to set self aside and rely less on our ego. By this I mean we reduce the influence of fear, guilt, and insecurity in our lives. We move away from trusting in ourselves to trusting more in God who is more reliable than our feeble egos and who can empower us to push past our fears.

It’s not enough to identify our fears if we can’t overcome them. As one who has spent time in therapy, I recommend it for everyone, but therapy can only take us so far. God can see deep into our souls and uncover those wounds that impair us. Not only that, but God can mend those wounds as no one else can. Fear is not a wound. It is a weakness, like bad eyesight, that handicaps us if we let it. With the help of eyeglasses, we can clearly see. So with fear, we can overcome it with God’s help. Fear doesn’t go away completely; it still whispers in our ears. But we can learn to ignore its threats and take risks and live the abundant life that Jesus spoke about (John 10:10).

In my book, Four in the Garden, Creator tells Cherished, “When fear is strongest, you won’t trust. When trust is strongest, you won’t fear.” If we can learn to trust in God, then fear will have less hold on us. People who have great trust in God fear nothing. That’s because they know that God can take care of them in any circumstance, no matter how terrible. They rely on Him for strength and peace that will sustain them through any adversity. But even during times of contentment, they still rely on Him knowing that living for Him is far better than living for their egos.

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Rick Hocker is a game programmer, artist, and author. In 2004, he sustained a back injury that left him bed-ridden in excruciating pain for six months, followed by a long recovery. He faced the challenges of disability, loss of income, and mounting debt. After emerging from this dark time, he discovered that profound growth had occurred. Three years later, he had a dream that inspired him to write his award-winning book, Four in the Garden. His intent was to illustrate one’s growth toward deep communion with God and to share the insights he gained from the personal transformation that resulted from his back injury. He lives in Martinez, California.

For more articles, visit http://www.rickhocker.com/articles.html
Website: http://www.rickhocker.com
Email: mail@rickhocker.com

Willfulness

In my book, Four in the Garden, I avoided the use of the word “sin” because it’s such a religiously-loaded and off-putting word. It conjures feelings of shame, guilt, and condemnation. Rather than driving us to God, it generally has the opposite effect. Sin is often used to describe “bad” behavior or to describe the lifestyle of “bad” people. The traditional view of sin is that it makes us the object of God’s anger and subject to His judgment. In some unenlightened circles, we’re told that sin is sin because it’s “wrong.” Or sin is wrong because it’s sin. This shame-inducing mentality doesn’t lead us to experience the abundant life that Jesus talks about: “I have come that they may have life and have it to the full.” – John 10:10.

So I chose the word “willfulness” in place of sin. I think the word willfulness more aptly describes the true nature of sin. When we are willful, we insist on our own way, we resist authority, and we are unyielding. From a relational perspective, willfulness pushes others away and doesn’t take into account their thoughts or feelings. When we are willful, we push God away, we reject His participation in our lives, and we refuse to listen to Him.

A Meaty Example

Let’s suppose I’m on a road trip with friends and we stop for dinner. I suggest we stop at In-N-Out because I’m in the mood for one of their hamburgers. Others weigh in with their suggestions, but I insist on In-N-Out. A friend says, “You had a hamburger for lunch. Don’t you want something different for dinner?” I say, “It wasn’t an In-N-Out burger. It’s not the same. It’s In-N-Out or nothing.” Another friend says, “Eating hamburgers isn’t healthy. Shouldn’t you have a salad instead?” I say, “I don’t want a salad. I want an InN-Out burger. I won’t change my mind.”

The above example illustrates how willfulness behaves. Willfulness is usually expressed as “my way or no way.” It’s stubborn, doesn’t listen to reason, doesn’t consider consequences, and doesn’t make room for the will of others. It’s an energy that asserts its will and resists or discounts any opposing forces. We use it to justify our unhealthy or addictive behaviors. Can you think of situations where you were willful? In what ways have you been willful toward God?

It’s About Relationship

We need to discuss the effects of willfulness in light of our relationship with God. Jesus died to make relationship with God possible, so sin (willfulness) is defined in terms its damaging effects on relationship. The wrongness of willfulness is due to the relational harm it causes. When we are full of our own will, we disregard others and disregard the interdependence we have with others. From the beginning, God wanted relationship with us. When willfulness enters, we set ourselves as independent of God, severing our relationship with Him. That’s why God abhors willfulness. God hates anything that damages our relationship with Him. His primary concern is our relationship with Him and how our behaviors affect that relationship. Some people think His main concern is whether we are “sinning” or not.

God can’t work with willfulness because it’s oppositional. Willfulness resists God. And God resists willfulness. Willfulness can be subtle. It manifests when we rationalize our behavior, when we make excuses for our faults, whenever we shove God aside or ignore Him.

Laying It Down

When we recognize willfulness in our lives, we have a choice between holding on to it or to holding on to God. We can’t do both. True spirituality is to lay down our willfulness and submit to God’s will instead. It’s a choice between our will and God’s will. The humility God seeks of us is to lay down our will and to choose to trust Him, believing that His will for us is good. The hard part is doing this on a regular basis. It’s a daily practice to recognize willfulness within our hearts and to intentionally lay it down every time. In doing so, we make ourselves open to relationship with God. Instead of resisting Him, our humility invites Him to take residence in our hearts so He can engage us daily in ever-growing relationship with Him.

In my book, Four in the Garden, the protagonist, Cherished, chooses forbidden knowledge. This act of willfulness is seen as a declaration of independence from Creator. In effect, Cherished chooses knowledge over having to depend on Creator for guidance. His willfulness has shoved Creator aside, thus destroying his relationship with Creator. Self-rule becomes the norm for Cherished, but he learns that being master of his own life isn’t that great.

Like Cherished, we struggle with the tension between depending on ourselves and depending on God. Depending on God seems fraught with uncertainty. Depending on ourselves feels like the more reliable option, but it fails us when life gets difficult. In my experience, depending on God is the better option because God has shown Himself faithful to those who trust Him.

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Rick Hocker is a game programmer, artist and author. In 2004, he sustained a back injury that left him bed-ridden in excruciating pain for six months, followed by a long recovery. He faced the challenges of disability, loss of income and mounting debt. After emerging from this dark time, he discovered that profound growth had occurred. Three years later, he had a dream that inspired him to write his award-winning book, Four in the Garden. His intent was to illustrate one’s growth toward deep communion with God and to share the insights he gained from the personal transformation that resulted from his back injury. He lives in Martinez, California.

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