When I was a kid, I was taught to pray using the acronym “ACTS,” and I still use that when I pray by myself before bed, though as I've mentioned before, I switch up the order of the letters, so some nights it's TSAC or CSTA instead. Anyway, the letters stand for adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. Confession, thanksgiving, and supplication were always straightforward enough for me, but for years, even into adulthood, I struggled with adoration. I sort of got the idea that it was about praising God, but I had trouble distinguishing that from thanksgiving in any meaningful way. I just couldn't see the point of sitting around trying to tell God “You're so great” thirty different ways.
I was finally able to get my mind somewhat around it when I read somewhere that adoration was less about complimenting God and more about just being with God. Something about “asking only to enjoy God's presence.” Which is both wonderful and problematic. The problematic part is that it seems so forward to ask to hang out with God. It's one thing approaching God about issues that God is far better equipped to deal with than I am: I screwed up here, this is beyond my capability to deal with, etc. And thanksgiving feels like an appropriate recognition of my dependence on God's goodness. But asking God to share God's self and God's time (and yes, I know time isn't an issue for God in the same way, but still) is claiming a very different sort of relationship. Not the boss whose office you enter only when you have a good reason, state your business, and leave before you're told to get back to work already. More like a grandmother who has all the time in the world for the little kid who thinks she's just the greatest thing in the world.
The wonderful part is that, based on my own experience, this does actually seem to be the case. I find that if I'm really looking for God, He's right there. The times when I've been unable to sense the presence of God have been times when I didn't really want to, because I didn't want to let go of my anger or self-pity yet, or because I knew that doing so would mean I'd have to change my immediate behavior. And it's not that I felt that God wouldn't let me approach until I put those emotions aside; it's that the narrow, bitterly self-centered worldview simply couldn't coexist with the glory of God. It's an old metaphor, but it really is just like a bright floodlight chases all the shadows away. And there have been times when I wanted those shadows more than I wanted God, which yes, means that there have been times when I wanted misery more than I wanted joy, or more precisely that I wanted my misery rather than God's joy. And there probably will be again.
Technically, this is a pretty classic definition of sin. Maybe not quite as classic as the child's definition of doing things you're not supposed to do, but pretty squarely within the definition of separation from God, and even chosen separation from God. Of course, I've always come out of it eventually, and undoubtedly that's because God was working at me on an unconscious level (and my anti-anxiety mess helped too, but that's a whole bother topic. Short version is that no, I don't think mental illness is sin on the part of the sufferer, but yes, I think it can affect one's spiritual life, and the more so since I think there is a physiological component to our experience of the divine.) But the thing is, even though it may have been sin in the sense of being separated from God and being very unhappy and having to repent and turn back to God for things to be made right, there was never a sense of reprimand. And much more of a sense of being healed than being forgiven, though of course both were necessary in some sense.
Anyway, that's not where I thought I was going when I started to write, so back to my original train of thought...if I look for God, I find Him, and if I ask to enjoy the presence of God (and then actually pay attention and don't run off to do something else) that's usually there too. And I have to nod to C.S. Lewis and say yes, I know that depending on emotions is a bad idea, and that God is there regardless of what I feel about Him at any particular time, but at the same time, my sense of the presence of God is more or less a feeling, and it's pretty consistent. And frustratingly hard to describe. I've been halfway thinking about it this whole time I've been writing, and the closest I can get is that it feels something like being about to laugh, though without any sense of ridicule – joyous laughter rather than flippant laughter (again, thanks to C.S. Lewis for that distinction). And there's kind of a non-visual sense of brightness. And sometimes a feeling of lightness and space. (And now some of you might think it sounds like I'm talking about getting high. Maybe it does, I wouldn't know. It's definitely not at all like getting tipsy.) And so on one hand, there's this amazing sense that God is always near. On the other hand, there's a sense that it's important not to take that for granted. Which is odd phrasing, because it almost sounds like we shouldn't assume God will always be there, but it seems like trusting in God means assuming just that. What I think it means, and maybe what C.S. Lewis was getting at too, is that it's important to recognize that my individual feeling of the presence of God is not God itself, and that if my intentions veer towards wanting to feel those things instead of actually wanting to be with God, that's a problem. To approach God as a means to an end rather than as an end in Himself is surely blasphemy.
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