Third Confession: I am a User

Over the past few months I have been struck by the idea that we should not use God.  That WHO He is and who we are to Him is so much more important than just someone or something to make us feel better or look better or even be better.  

I wrote this in my journal yesterday: 

(Praying) 

"I want You to be more than just 'useful' to me, to make me good, to make me successful, to make me free, to make me healed, to make me beautiful, to make me safe, to make me fed, to make me clothed, to make me happy.  I want You to be my reason to get up in the morning and why I fall asleep at night.  The reason that I breathe.  I want You to be my True Love, not the world, not myself, not anyone, but You."

I realized that I have been using God as a way to feel better, be good and be successful, but that's not what this life is about.  That's not the reason that Jesus spilled His blood and tore His flesh for us, not just so that we could be good little girls and boys with pretty straight teeth, and pretty straight lives, all in pretty little worlds with the newest cell phone... He died not even so that we could be free, (at least in the Americanized "happy" version of freedom). He died so that I could be with Him and He could be with me.   All those things, He will give us, (True Freedom, Joy, Goodness, Safety, Beauty), but He will give it through Himself... They are not His purpose.  Jesus and I are not so different in that... He wants to be loved for WHO He is not what He can give.  

Jesus is not a commodity, either.