That’s where willingness comes in. You must not only believe in God to know Me, you must
also be willing to really know Me—not simply know what you think you know about Me.
If your beliefs about Me make it impossible to know Me as I really am, then all the belief in
the world won’t work. You’ll continue to know what you think you know, instead of what is
really so.
You must be willing to suspend what you imagine you already know about God in order to
know God as you never imagined.
That is the key here, because you have many imaginings about God which bear no
resemblance to reality.
How can I get to this place of willingness?
You are already there, or you wouldn’t be spending time with this book. Now, expand on this
experience. Open yourself to new ideas, new possibilities about Me. If I was your best friend,
and not your “father,” think of what you could tell Me, what you could ask of Me!
In order to know God, you have to be “ready, willing, and able.” Belief in God is the
beginning. Your belief in some sort of higher power, in some kind of Deity, makes you
“ready.”
Next, your openness to some new thoughts about God—thoughts you’ve never had before,
thoughts that may even shake you up a bit, like “Our Friend, who art in heaven”—signals that
you are “willing.”
Finally, you must be “able.” If you are simply unable to see God in any of the new ways to
which you have opened yourself, you will have completely dis-abled the mechanism by which
you would come to know God in truth.
You must be able to embrace a God who loves and embraces you, without condition; be able
to welcome into your life a God who welcomes you into the kingdom, no questions asked; be
able to stop punishing yourself for acknowledging a God who will not be punishing you; and
be able to talk with a God who has never stopped talking to you.
All of these are radical ideas. The churches do indeed call these heresies. And so, in the
irony of all ironies, you may have to abandon the church in order to know God. Without a
doubt, you will have to at least abandon some of the church’s teachings. For churches teach
of a God whom you are told you cannot know, and whom you would not choose as a friend.
For what friend would you have who would punish you for your every misdeed? And what
kind of friend considers it a misdeed to simply be called by the wrong name?
In my Conversations with God I was told many things which contradicted everything I thought
I knew about You.
I know that you believe in God, or you could never have had conversations with God to begin
with. So you were “ready” to have a friendship with Me, but were you “willing”? I see that you
were—because willingness takes great courage, and you’ve demonstrated that courage, not
only by exploring other, non-traditional, points of view, but by doing so publicly. Thus, your