At some point in high school, I came up with the ridiculous idea that when I ended my prayers with 'amen' this meant God stopped listening to me, seeing me, and guiding me. I thought as soon as I said amen, God was thinking 'ok finally, I can move onto the next person who needs Me.' I thought He left me alone when I finished talking to Him and therefore I was on my own until I talked to Him again. Yikes.
My solution? To never say 'amen.'
I figured if I never said amen, God would never leave me because I never said the 'magic word' that indicated our time was done so He could leave me alone to help someone else. I remember writing a journal entry about it once where I wrote, "I don't pray to God. I have conversations with Him. In fact, every single day of my life is just a long, drawn out conversation with God with breaks in the day until I go to sleep. And even at night, I don't say amen because I don't want God to leave me when I'm sleeping too."
Clearly I did not understand the meaning of 'Amen' nor did I understand our God.
When I was home from college during one of our breaks, I heard a sermon at church about the meaning of 'amen.' This was about three years into my abandonment of the word so this struck my attention. Amen simply means 'so it be' meaning "God, I trust Your plan. May Your will be done." It's not equivalent to the word "goodbye" like when we're talking to our friends on the phone. Goodbye means 'ok we're done talking now so you can stop listening to me.' Amen does not mean God abandons you to do other things and help other people just because you're not talking to Him directly anymore. I'd never heard that before.
But that's only the first part to this two-part misunderstanding. The second part, and more important, is that there is nothing you or I can say, do, or think that leads God to leave, abandon or ignore you.
Jesus says in Matthew 28:20 "I am with you always, even to the end of the age." Despite the number of times hearing that verse growing up, I had to determine what it actually meant for myself. I've had a lot of moments in college, some more serious than others, that proved to me God was with me even when I wasn't necessarily 'talking to Him.'
When I broke my nose and had to have surgery, even though I wasn't talking to God while in surgery- He was with me. When I got violently ill at school in the dorms, I wasn't praying to God the whole time while my sweet roommate helped nurse me back to health (thanks Taylor<3 ) but He was still with me. And when I had to be taken to the emergency room for going unconscious, I definitely wasn't talking to God and asking for help (if you've ever passed out before, you know what I mean. You don't dream or think; it's a crazy feeling)- yet He was with me.
Today, while I still consider my relationship with God to be a daily, long conversation with breaks in-between I always finish with 'amen.' So yea, I say amen close to 25 times a day. Because while I know He never leaves me, I also know that no matter what I think is best, His plan prevails and is better than anything I could ever imagine. And I trust it.
If you have a relationship with Jesus, did you ever stop saying 'amen'?
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