Nursing / Weaning

Another metaphor that has come up a number of times recently has been the concepts of nursing & weaning. Odd topics for a guy to be thinking about perhaps, but yeah, you can't always control the themes that show up in your life:

Nursing: I mentioned this in the New Years post, but God introduces himself to Abram/Abraham as "El Shaddai" - the all sufficient, almighty God. "Shaddai" is from the root word for a woman's breast ( 'Shad') metaphorically/in reality God is coming to Abram saying, I will supply everything for you. You can rely on me to be the complete source for everything in your life.

Today at church, the idea was brought up of being childlike & of how we don't really give ourselves over to God fully & needed to work at that. For me the thoughts that came (& I didn't voice them 'cause, well, I didn't) was that we become truly childlike with God when we recognize our complete, utter inability & incapacity to supply our own needs. A little baby only knows need & comfort. When they need (hungry, poopy, afraid, alone) they cry. They yell & wail & keep crying until their needs are met. When these needs are met, they find comfort, they live & thrive in the embrace of their mothers (& fathers). In the early days, their mom's are the baby's whole world. Every source of joy, food, & love is found in her &, in a healthy relationship, the baby relies on the mother with true trust, because they learn through experience, that when they cry, when they need, mom will come to look after them.

With us & God (as with children & parents) the issue comes when we think we know better than our parents what our needs are & how to meet those needs. In a child, as they grow to maturity, there is a reality where a kid has to establish themselves, has to separate themselves from their parents to become their own individual. But this is a phased process & all the while, the kids are mostly reliant on their parents to supply all their needs.

I think we are maybe less childlike with God because we haven't gotten in touch with our true need. When I was unemployed I recognized that there was lots of places where I could wait on God to provide.....or... there was mastercard.... & it's this thing where we don't trust God with our lives & have our 'resources' that we turn to when we figure God hasn't done enough....

To be truly childlike, is to recognize that any resources we have are really gifts from Him anyhow, gifts that can vanish in a heartbeat... and so we do stand in total reliance on Him.

Weaning: As mentioned above, there is a point where kids have to be weaned from nursing. This is a painful process for the kid 'cause it changes the normal set of operations. As mentioned above, the way it works is that the kid cries, mom comes running & looks after the kid. In the weaning process, the kid finds that they will cry & complain & mom hands them a bottle or a cup & says 'help yourself'.... this freaks the kid out 'cause it breaks that dependance on the mom & causes the kid to have to separate from mom & start to become their own individual.

This happens for us spiritually as well. Bob Sorge in his book "Envy: The enemy within" really unpacks this & describes it well (& I'm stealing these thoughts/idea from him). Lots of times, God vanishes in our life, as in Song of Songs chapter 5. We're left as wreck's at that point because, like a small child, we don't understand what's going on or why God's not there, why the closeness of His presence has vanished. These are the places of where God seeks to mature us, to grow us into sons & daughters instead of servants & it's necessary to help mature our love for Him as His bride...

..but it's an encouraging thought in some moments: to realize that you are not abandoned by God, you are being weaned (Psalms 131)

& yeah, this came up in the context of counselling people..... Sometimes you have to wean people off their counsellors, too....