My Breakup With God

An insight that helped guide my spiritual transformation – Contributed by Will Hernan

A few years ago I wrote a breakup letter to God.

For a little background, I use writing as a way to clarify my thoughts, and at the time I just could not wrap my head around an everlasting and ever-loving God. So I took to pen and paper to reflect and hopefully clear up and better understand what I was feeling and why I was feeling it.

And interestingly, this writing quickly started to look like a breakup letter. I even pulled out the “it’s not you, it’s me” line.

Imagine that for a moment–shipping a letter to God that reads, “Yeah…this isn’t working out. But it’s not you, it’s me. I hope we can still be friends, but I think it’s best that we spend some time apart…”

And as cliché as “it’s not you, it’s me” sounds, it was true. My doubts and struggles with God have never been about him and who He is.

It had always been about me.

My spiritual deficiency has always been about my unwillingness to receive.

Many of you likely had a boyfriend or girlfriend in which the relationship didn’t work out, despite the fact that they did, and were willing to do, anything for you. We (or maybe I should just say “I” because maybe it’s just a “me” problem) often get uncomfortable with people that are too nice, who seem to always have patience, and who always welcome you with open arms.

Yes, I appreciate these people. I love these people. I truly do and I don’t want them to ever stop being so welcoming. I try to be one of these people. But some days, I don’t feel worthy enough to receive it.

It’s not a them problem. It’s a me problem.

I just got unnecessarily angry at my wife or child for an innocent mistake–I don’t deserve you to be so kind and nice towards me.

I just tailgated a slow driver on the road because I wanted to send him a message that some people have places to get to–I don’t deserve you to be patient with me.

God – you know what goes on in my mind some days. You know how selfish I can be. You know how short-tempered and impatient I am some days. You know I can fall into apathetic and lazy behaviors.

Yet You still stand there with open arms and welcome me.

And I don’t feel deserving. I don’t feel like I am doing enough. So forgive me if I don’t feel this relationship can continue. It’s not you. It’s me.

It’s all a gift.

My inability to receive had been the primary cause for my lack of spiritual growth in the past. I have independently stifled my own growth because of the story I tell myself of not being enough.

See, God offers an abundance of love, connection, forgiveness, peace, grace, wisdom, freedom and compassion.

And all we have to do is receive it.

Receive this gift. Receive this life. Receive this breath.

It’s all a gift.

Our life is transformed when we understand that everything we’ve ever been searching for–purpose, love, peace, freedom, enoughness–we have had the entire time.

We just have to receive it. We have to believe that we are who our Father says we are–loved, worthy, enough, forgiven, redeemed–and not who we think we are–unloveable, unworthy, not enough. We must move away from the stories we play in our own minds and move towards the story God holds for us.

The Christian faith is far greater than a transactional relationship with our Savior. It is deeply and movingly transformational. It is transformational because it begins with who we truly are. And when we begin from this deeper level, everything changes.

You are always with me and everything I have is yours.

When Jesus tells the parable of the prodigal son, which Pastor Eric wonderfully used in his sermon on Spiritual Health to help encourage our spiritual transformation, he paints us the picture of the son who returns after taking and squandering his inheritance.

The son returns with a prepared speech. He says, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”

Almost sounds like a breakup letter, don’t you think?

But what does the father do? He immediately gets his son a robe and throws him a party! For he was lost but is found!

And this angers the older brother, who has stayed home this whole time and who has obeyed his father’s orders and yet hasn’t received such a party. I think many of us can relate to this as well. The idea that we deserve something for doing what we were told to do.

The father says to his older, angered son:

The father in this parable sends a message to his sons that the story they keep telling themselves isn’t the same story he has for them. One son doesn’t believe he deserves anything and another believes he deserves it all.

The father welcomes home a lost son with loving and open arms, and reminds the arrogant and bitter son that all he has diligently toiled for is still his but that that isn’t the point.

What the father essential says is, “our relationship is not transactional.” He invites his sons in from the pitfalls of misery and merit into a celebration of forgiveness and fellowship. And in doing so, he offers up the opportunity for them to be transformed.

This leaves us with a choice.

You can choose to believe the story you keep telling yourself about how you are not deserving or worthy of anything (or perhaps you are stuck in the arrogant belief that you deserve everything).

Alternatively, you can choose to receive and trust in the story that He has for you as demonstrated by His willingness to gift us His one and only Son so that we may have eternal life.

One choice leads to a breakup.

The other, transformation.