Tag Archives: God

When Effort is Not Enough

When you pursue an important goal, you want God’s help to accomplish it, whether looking for a job, trying to lose weight, or seeking wisdom for a friend in trouble. But what is the balance between exerting effort and trusting in God? What is your part and what is God’s part? How do you know the difference?

Trust Alone

Let’s look at the extremes, first. I’ve known people who, desiring to be spiritual, wait on God to make the first move. These people expect God to provide income, housing, or a spouse without any effort on their part. It’s like trusting God for good grades without studying. “If God wants me to have this, He will provide it,” they say. When the desired thing doesn’t happen, then it must not be God’s will. The Bible says, “You have not, because you ask not,” (James 4:2) but some things require more than just asking. I believe God wants us to participate in the answer. These days, new age spirituality emphasizes the power of intention, but we need to apply willingness and effort, along with intention, toward our goals and desires. Our participation demonstrates to God our seriousness of intention. “God will provide,” but only if we do our part. We collaborate with God as we work toward our goals. It is meant to be a joint effort.

Effort Alone

At the other extreme are those who believe that goals are accomplished by pure effort alone. In effect, they take God out of the equation. But we can only do so much on our own. We have limitations. We need God to bless, extend, or multiply our labors to get us to the other side. It’s foolish to think that effort alone is sufficient. Our efforts fall short. We need God to open doors, grant us favor, manifest resources, and bring about what only He can do.

Sowing, Waiting, and Reaping

The challenge is to know when to restrain effort. For example, we could spend twelve hours a day looking for work, but anyone who has tried will tell you that nothing is more depressing. A farmer plants seeds, then waits for the seeds to sprout, trusting that God will bless him with a harvest. We invest ourselves, then we step back and wait and trust. We try to be wise with how we use our time. When we are desperate or fearful, we tend to over-invest and employ a scattershot approach to things, doing everything and anything that might make a difference. That leads to despair and burnout. A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself whether your effort is driven by fear or trust. Fear-driven effort produces far less results than trust-driven effort. We do our part, trusting in God, then we step back and trust God to do His part. We must remember to give God time to do His part. Seeds don’t sprout overnight.

We have to be careful with over-exertion. Sometimes, our efforts get in God’s way. We can be so focused on our labors that we miss God’s provision. I remember when I had to be out of my apartment by the end of the day. I should have spent all day looking for a new apartment because time was running out. Fear and panic could have driven all my effort. Instead, I chose to go to church that morning. I spoke with someone at church who happened to have an available room. That day, I moved into my new place. A farmer knows the seasons, when to sow, when to rest, when to reap. After sowing, the farmer scans his field for any changes, looking for first sprouts. In the same way, we step back and widen our view to look for any movement or change that God has brought about. If we keep our heads down all the time, we miss what may be happening around us. One purpose of the Sabbath is to remind us we need to rest from our labors and enjoy God.

The Bigger Picture

In my twenties, I struggled with a dysfunctional friend, not knowing how to deal with his codependency and attachment. I pushed back and set firm boundaries, but he became more passive-aggressive and resentful. Years later, out of the blue, it occurred to me that I needed to ask his forgiveness for hurting him. Up to that point, I was focused on his hurting me and my having to forgive him, since he was the problem. When I asked him to forgive me, he broke into sobs. We both experienced much healing as a result of that action. The friendship became more manageable after that. He had never been given an outlet to release his hurt and anger until I gave him an opportunity to forgive. If only I had stepped back and looked at the bigger picture, I would have seen the pain I had caused him by my actions. My point is that we need to remind ourselves to look at the larger picture and not always be so focused on our goals. The answer sometimes comes when we get rid of our tunnel vision.

When We Lack

In some situations, we can do nothing, such as a sibling’s cancer diagnosis. But even then, our part would be to pray for them. Or we can offer practical support. A friend was diagnosed with stage-four esophageal cancer. Never have I known anyone to put so much creative effort toward his own cure. He changed his diet and his thought life, banishing all things unhealthy or negative. He underwent alternative treatments, even flying to Asia for a special detox procedure. He tried experimental drugs, one of which proved effective. He’s now cancer free, and attributes people’s prayers and positive intentions to this miracle. From my perspective, his attitude and spirited efforts were contributing factors.

After we have done all we can do, all that’s left is to trust, and that’s sufficient. There comes a time when we surrender. We’ve done all we know to do and nothing has worked for us. At that point, we give everything to God, trusting God to do what we cannot do. That is the point where we abandon all effort. We give up. It’s now up to God. God may or may not act, but we have tried. In my experience, God often waits until I reach the end of myself as the prompt for Him to act. I suppose He wants me to know my limitations and wants to break my pride. Sometimes, we place our faith in our own efforts, when our faith ought to be in God, so He lets our efforts come to naught in order to teach us this lesson. On occasion, new direction comes during this surrender and we are given a new task or a shift in focus, but we need to be in a posture of watchful waiting—the farmer looking at the entire field, not the patch of dirt at his feet.

We all experience times when we don’t have faith, when we are discouraged or doubtful. In those times, I think it serves us to go through the motions. Even that is an act of faith—applying effort when we can’t see if it will do any good. We don’t have as much control over our lives as we think we do. Some goals are never realized. Some harvests never manifest. The true benefit of working toward a goal isn’t the goal itself, but the inner growth that results from the effort and faith applied. Are we learning patience, endurance, trust, and compassion? Are we being changed? That is the best measurement of a goal.

Finding A Balance

It’s difficult to know the balance between effort and trust. Am I doing enough? Am I trusting enough? An excellent picture of this balance is found in Exodus 17:10-12 where the Amalekites fought the Israelites while Moses stood on a hilltop during the battle with the staff of God in his hand. As long as he held up his hands, Israel prevailed. When he lowered them, the Amalekites prevailed. So Aaron and Hur sat Moses down on a stone and they held his hands up, one on each side, until the battle was won. The lifting of the staff demonstrated trust in God, but it took effort to keep it elevated. This action embodied faith. In this illustration, effort and faith went hand-in-hand. In the same way, our efforts should be acts of faith. As far as it’s possible, our strivings should be founded on faith and focused on God. In other words, faith generates action, and action reinforces faith.

Moses got weary, so his friends helped him to keep his hands uplifted. We, too, need to rely on our support network in our undertakings. Whether we are searching for work, housing, or wisdom, we need our friends to come alongside and hold us up when we weaken. We often forget about this important resource. Don’t be quick to write off friends because you think they can’t help or understand. They may have ideas or resources you don’t have. Or find a support group of people who can relate.

This balance between effort and trust shifts over time. At times, we work. At times, we rest from our labors and trust God for a harvest. In everything, we exercise faith, believing that God is working on our behalf to bless our efforts. It’s an opportunity to draw close to God and learn His priorities for us. In the story of Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-42), Jesus affirmed Mary for spending time with him, whereas Martha missed out on relationship because she was preoccupied with her work. In our laboring, we need to remember to stop and listen to God as Mary did. Let us cultivate relationship with God, which is God’s greatest desire for us and which supersedes the less important goals we set for ourselves. These smaller goals are but opportunities for God to teach us and transform us, through both success and failure.

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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.

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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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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.”²I 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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A Solitary Adam, without Eve

One of the most dramatic detours from the Garden of Eden story is that Four in the Garden explores the relationship between one person and God. In the Garden of Eden story, God created a companion for Adam because none of the animals proved to be a suitable companion for him. In the book, Four in the Garden, Creator chose to not create a companion for Cherished because He wanted nothing to distract from their relationship. That relationship is the focus of the story and that’s why I made the decision that Cherished would not have a companion or even a pet. So many things distract us from our relationship with God and yet that relationship is so important to God.

Removing the Trappings that Trip Us

Four in the Garden takes place in a primordial world, before rules and before religion. There is no church, no organized system of worship, no predefined code of conduct. Just God. I found this the ideal setting to depict God because I could describe a relationship with God without all the trappings of religion or culture or history. I could depict this relationship in a pure form as it ought to be portrayed. In its writing, I was careful to avoid words that are religiously loaded terms such as God, faith and sin.

I wanted to show what a relationship with God might look like, complete with the full range of emotions that accompany any meaningful relationship. We experience joy and disappointment, understanding and frustration in human relationships and our relationship with God is no different. I believe that our relationship with God develops in the same way as our other relationships develop, as we learn to task risks, be honest and trust more and more. We have setbacks. We misunderstand. We get angry. But if we value the relationship, we work through those issues and hopefully grow closer.

An Intimate God

When we think of emotional intimacy, we rarely think of God. Yet, God created intimacy. Not only that, but God is capable of deep intimacy. Some people were put off by the intimacy Creator showed the main character, Cherished, in my book, Four in the Garden. Why is it so easy to imagine a loving father snuggling with his child, but so difficult to picture a heavenly Father being intimate and playful with a child of His? We struggle with that image because it is not our experience. And yet, our discomfort with it prevents us from experiencing it. God desires intimacy with us, but only to the extent we allow it.

God and Brussels Sprouts

People seem to either love or hate Brussels sprouts. People who hate them made that determination because they have tried them at least once in their lives. Then you have those people who have spurned God because they tried that once, too, and they didn’t like it or it didn’t work for them. But I wonder what it was they tried.

When people reject God, often they are rejecting their perception of God. That perception is based on upbringing, religious teaching, church/temple experience, and encounters with religious people. How many people have actually encountered God directly? Many of those who fall in that category would say the experience was positive.

Pure Relationship with God

In writing Four in the Garden, I tried to present a relationship with God in the purest form possible, stripping away religious and man-made obstacles. The ideal I aimed for was to give people a direct experience with God.

One person reading the book explained his surprise at being presented with a relationship with God that he found workable, one that he had never considered before. He is struggling to know what to do with that information. I suppose that if a person is being shown an open door, then he must make a decision whether to walk through it.

What is an Umbilicus?

In the story, Four in the Garden, the umbilicus is presented as a unique connection to God, a channel through which God’s life flows into us. Spiritual abundance is often compared to a well or fountain that overflows and spills out from within. The dictionary definition of umbilicus is “center” and this makes sense, since it is our inward center where God intersects us and fills us with His spiritual nourishment. God fills us from the inside out, not the other way around. The umbilicus is our spiritual connection to God and to the abundant, divine life that He brings to our souls.

Why the book?

In February 2007, I had a dream. I dreamt that I was sitting in a college religion class. The class was discussing a book that presented a world where God had created only one person. The story described the growing relationship between this person and God. When I awoke, I concluded that God wanted me to write this story, believing that it had not yet been told. I started writing later that year, beginning with a chapter in the middle of the book. It didn’t take me long to discover that I didn’t know how to write a book. In September 2009, I found a writer’s workshop that I have been attending ever since. My writing teacher, Sue Clark, is brilliant and I have learned so much from her. With her help and thirteen revisions later, I finished my manuscript on February 7th of this year. Over time, the book gained a life of its own and took me places I didn’t expect to go. I take that as a good sign and hope that the journey for the reader will be as rewarding as it has been for me.