Fariza

In the two decades that I have been a Christian, the past three years have been especially transformative in my entire spiritual life. In the Protestant world, we love to pray this prayer, asking God for more of Him in our lives. But no one prepares you when He actually begins to answer that prayer.

So let me warn you now: be careful what you pray for, because He will give you exactly what you ask for.

I have learned one of the most important things about the character of God these past couple of years— He is not who you think He is. God is who He says He is, not the version of Him you have assembled so far. And what I love about Him is that He loves to surprise people.

A couple of years ago, I found myself asking God questions I had never thought to ask in the past twenty-three years I had known Him. It started when I began exploring Orthodoxy — and it felt, at first, like standing on shaking ground.

I felt betrayed.

Stay with me here, because what I felt at that time was not an actual betrayal on Jesus’s part — it was the process of maturation of my faith.

As I began to learn how the Orthodox faith differed from what I had been taught in Protestantism, I remember looking up and saying to Jesus: Do I even really know You?

You know what they say about marriage — that you do not truly know a person until the seventh year. I had been walking with Christ far longer than that. And yet I was discovering how much I had missed: things He said while He walked this earth, and the Church He left behind when He ascended into heaven.

So I wrestled. And wresteled. And then I remembered the prayer I had prayed:

Lord, there must be more to this faith than what I’m seeing around me. I want more of You.

And He began to answer it right in front of me — in a vision during a church worship service, gently whispering to my spirit that it was time.

As Christ began leading me into Orthodoxy, I understood what was happening. He was taking our relationship to the next level. He was showing me that there is more of Him than I had known and experienced so far. Because yes — there is more to Christ.

There is soooo much more!

He had not betrayed me. He was renewing our vows and taking me deeper into understanding the mysteries of who He is.

So be prepared. Pray bold prayers, but know what you are asking for.

Be prepared to learn things about God you never expected. Be prepared for the growth to feel like loss, for the deepening to feel like betrayal, because that is what transformation feels like from the inside.

But on the other side of that wrestling, you will find that you were not being betrayed and abandoned. You were being broken open — so that you could be crucified to your sins, and resurrected with Christ.