Interactive and Conversational

I was up last night praying through some things going on in my world. Not worried prayers, not praying with anxiety (which I can do pretty well at times), but more conversational, more "Lord God, I can't wait to find out how this works out." He led me to some amazing things in Scripture, all concerned with our actually having an interactive, conversational relationship with Him, where He speaks to us personally, actively, clearly, and may at times confirm or encourage but at other times directs specifically and expects our response back to Him, like the way Samuel conversed with God in 1 Samuel 16. God told him to go to Jesse's house in Bethlehem to anoint a new king over Israel. Afraid of Saul, Samuel doesn't immediately go , but asks God how he's supposed to leave with Saul on his back. He's not doubting God or distrusting Him. It actually is an incredible act of faith to interact with the Lord God and effectively say, "Okay, I'll do this, but how am I to proceed? I believe that you'll do this and that you're out for the success of it, so I want to be on board with it, too." So, God gives Samuel him a scheme: to take a heifer and say that he's going to go sacrifice for the Lord. And so he does it. That's pretty specific, you know? And it's scheming, I mean God doesn't tell him to lie, exactly, but God's directive never initially included anything about sacrificing to the Lord. He's leading Samuel to be as wise as a serpent and then he tells him how to proceed step-by-step to follow God, almost as if God is in front of him walking through a wood, across a creek maybe, and He looks back at his son following and says, "Place your foot right there on that rock. It's a bit wobbly, so be careful. And then on that bit of log -- careful, it's slippery, and then that last rock and then you're home free". I dunno. That's pretty awesome to me.

After reading that I just sat in my chair. It was late but I was too excited to sleep. Earlier I had asked God to let me rest, to help me sleep but "keep my heart awake" (Songs 5:2), but I couldn't. I was "swooning," in the words of John Bunyan. He wrote in "Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners" that after reading of the reality of his new righteous life with God (no longer sinful as default, but rather made right and whole and good), "I thought that the glory of these words was then so weighty on me, that I was both once and twice ready to swoon as I sat, yet not with grief and trouble, but with solid joy and peace."

Yup, same here.

"We stand within a community of the spoken to," says Willard. Whoa. I just... my heart beats wildly with that thought, with the experience of that. I can't believe (I can, but you understand the expression) that God would be that intimate with us and caring and desirous of interaction, of wrestling even, with what He says. I love this. I love this reality.