Beloved Daisy, in your wisdom you bring up so many valuable points. I think your first sentence would be a good one for me to copy down and put up on the wall.

And I see from your last sentence that you are a true mother.

My understanding from Heavenletters is that God does not discipline. He does not punish. He does not judge. He tells us not to judge, so why would He?

He tells us to love, so would He do less?

And yet we experience heartache in our lives. And even when we cannot understand and don't know what to do, God is here loving us and calming us.

Peace and blessings, angel.

With love,

Gloria

Hi Daisy,

I was moved by your writing and thought that since I have had to face some of the same thoughts as you that perhaps I could be of some comfort.

I have known of those many times when I asked and did not receive from God. But it is in our nature to ask things of God, is it not? But on the other hand there is no particular reason to get fixated on whether there is an answer to our immediate liking. So I think that if this is in our nature, this desire to ask of God, then Who has put that desire within? Isn't it God?

But again I do not wish to imply that we necessarily receive according to our immediate desires. We pray, and we let go of the demanding part of the prayer. We have faith that God will give as is best for us. But when we ask of God, it is so easy to begin the cycle of just thinking of God as the One Who answers, instead of just abiding in the presence of the love of God. As a famous person once said, seek ye first the kingdom of God.

I have seen that part of the reason I do not receive those things I ask for is that in my church background I have been taught to ask of God and that, of course(!) He will answer, if we have faith. (Well those teachings sounded great at the time.) So God has needed to upend my thinking, because I thought these teachings were absolute truth. He has needed to not answer my prayers because I never had the concept of God just being GOD!. I had the concept of God as my answer to my problems. But rather God just wants me to have the concept of Him as Him. He is as He is. (Not to get caught up in the gender thing.) But I just needed to let Him/Her be the Being in my life. I needed to see Him as my Lord and my God, and not a whole lot of other things.

So I would gently say, don't make it too much of an ironclad rule to 'not ask God for things'. But on the other hand maybe you really need some time in your life where you don't ask God for anything else except His presence in your life. Maybe you are right about this 'not asking'. But later you may want something and think, hmm...God, help! I'm scared if you don't help me now!

I agree with Gloria that God does not punish us for our sins, certainly not you, Daisy. Would God make a bunch of misfits like us, knowing our propensities and weaknesses, and then punish us, knowing that we were made this way? To do so would be like punishing Himself, wouldn't it? He/She started this whole ball rolling, knowing how we would end up in Temptationville. He wants to rescue us from this village, not punish us just because we have not figured out what the map looks like in this village...just because we do not know the right road and paths out of Temptationville. Look at Him to find the road...Is he not the way the truth and the light? So he is the road, the roadmap, and he/she controls the green traffic lights in this city. The way, truth and light.

Discipline, ooh, a painful subject, eh, Daisy? If you want to think of God as being a discipliner, remember the point is not your discomfort. The discomfort is just a tool to help you forget that you need temporal comfort. You need to have a greater feeing of the presence of God, right? Well, think of all of our wonderful comforts as something that substitutes for God sometimes. When the road becomes hard we cry out to God more sometimes. So God is only only using what you call discipline to help you to focus on the understanding that you do not particularly need comforts at all times.

I remember when I wrote the poem about Failure, and how I think I failed to express exactly how I felt. These things you call discipline, I could call failure, if they occurred in my life. But I have come to the point where I am in love with my failures. Because, Daisy, when you are in love with everything that isn't going right in your life, you begin to accept yourself completely. Of course I don't mean that I don't want anything to go right in my life, this would be against the nature of being human. So really, I can say I am very comfortable with my past failures. For example, if someone wants to call me an idiot, well, dude, you don't know the half of all the idiotic things I've done. I would have to admit that I am an idiot, I mean that's a part of me right? But I am beginning to learn to love my stupid idiocy. And when I can love my failures and stupidities, who can put me down? One says I'm an idiot, and I say praise the Lord, God loves idiots.

I don't mean to sound like I am to the point where I love the failures that I am facing today. For these things today that aren't going right I have to go to God and ask Him how am I going to get out of this mess? But tomorrow I will look back at what is today's mess and go, wow, that was a really good mess. I learned to love my messes a little more yesterday. And of course I want things to go tolerably well enough for me in the future. I don't love the prospect of failing tomorrow but I can handle it if I do. Give me liberty or give me death. I can handle either. Give me blessings or give me something else. It's all from God, in a way, since He made the whole Operation Earth.

Life gives challenges, and then I dig under them or through them or over them to deal with it. But God provides the shovel, and the strength to dig and the knowledge of how to dig.

If it is your daughter's condition which is making you feel as Job, I would only write, let God work it out. Don't think, well, maybe God won't work it out for me because He needs to discipline me. He doesn't need to discipline. He isn't caught up in that. Life just does alot of disciplining without God having to add on. Let God rescue you from this life. Let Him be your Rescuer. Sometimes the rescuing will be an understanding that it's okay if everything doesn't go exactly as you hoped for. But other times the rescuing will be what you need. God knows what type of rescue operation He/She needs to perform. So let Him perform.
Feeling at one with Job and the doubting Thomas is not a complete solution. It makes you feel sympathetic towards the conditions of others but it is only feeling closer to God that really brings you closer to God. Lay it all in the lap of God and don't expect discipline (or failure) but just let God do the Doing, how He does His doings in you.

Perhaps sometimes certain answers to prayer would not be good for you, as you write. But other times these thoughts come in to our heads, and it only cuts us off from praying more concerning the situation. These thoughts of 'this isn't good for me, that's why God does not give it' can separate us from God because we give up and stop praying for whatever we may need. But, on the other hand, sometimes what we pray for isn't the best for us. So I am just writing that sometimes we don't really know why the answer has not come. And we shouldn't too quickly assume we know why something wasn't answered exactly as we would hope.

To everyone else, hi, I just thought Daisy needed a little thumbs up. The heart stirred within, and the fingers typed. Blessings all. Love from the mountain of God's rest. Perhaps I'll write again in some month or time when this heart stirs again. Until then, all you fans of God, be well.

And to the daughter of Daisy, be well.

It is Beauty that acts as if something less...
It is Truth that pretends to be false...
It's Life playing hide and seek...
As if Life Itself isn't already found?
And this It
Is Us
Playing
In a play
So perhaps we can take solace that we're One with the Highest of the Highs
Undefined
Meaureless
Unbound to time
That is sooooooo powerful that it can somehow
Someway
Make believe to be less than It Is
Than We Are
Not sure if this is helpful
Just wanted to say Daisy
Karen
That I/We Know You As soooo wonderfully Great
In your humility
As Peace
In God's tranquility
With unlimited ability
Indeed
Self-Realization
Only in dreams
Not free
And so it is with us all
in love
mike:)