I began writing this blog post a few weeks ago now. It began as a response to my deep sadness after listening to someone dear to me expressing their being “finished with God”. You know those times of almost bone-aching pain of the soul that threatens to devour you? I was moved by the sound of helplessness, disappointment, abandonment and restrained anger in his voice that betrayed the depth of emotional investment in his declaration.
I get it. I understand that in life’s most challenging moments, when the unspeakable happens…a loved one is snatched from our lives; a diagnosis pulls the mat out from underneath us and forces us to review our lives and it’s priorities; your life circumstances are thrown into disarray by an event or person, an unwarranted, uncensored, unexpected happening and its roll-on effects of anxiety, disappointment, depression and mistrust along with their crippling and life-changing consequences suck the joy out of everything. How do I respond to another in that place?
I have been there in that dark void.
How do I navigate that level of emotional hijacking? How do I answer those unanswerable questions? To whom can I turn and unleash my frustration or unload my pain? How do I find peace or come to a place of acceptance or navigate those feelings and deep ,deep emotions that unseat me from my place of joy, comfort, certainty and security in my circumstances? The answers can be found in the nature of God…the inexplicable solidity of Him as found in Scripture but that is a process. It takes a determination to explore the possibility of God as the answer to all those unsettling dilemmas and that determination is driven, often, by a desperate need….a need for some kind of resolution or at least a satisfactory, secure, stable place to land.
I shared a little that day of my own experience, but it was not the time or place to share deeply or express my thoughts. I had a sense my experience did not translate well as a comparison to theirs. What I would have said had I the moment again would be that God is in that place of tension between the brokenness and shattered confidence and the yet unrealised hope for healing and restoration that was longed for.
Who is God and what are His quoted attributes that would convince anyone to have any confidence in Him, His ability or even His willingness to acknowledge me or my plight and current situation? Why should I think God would do anything? It starts with some very fundamental truths, beginning with God is Good.
That is one of those quandaries. I have wondered often what has formed my opinion of Who God is and what He is like. I think sometimes we go through life never really questioning why we think the way we do. I wonder too how often we attribute to God the foibles and failings of our own fathers where they have not demonstrated love to us in a way we need, where the very notion of calling God “Father” is a real and palpable sticking point.
Historically, a good God has rarely been preached from the pulpit…at least in my earshot. Often, we are entrenched in the Old Testament and Old covenant view of God …the God of rules and regulations read out of context which, when not fulfilled ignites His wrath. It’s not that I recall growing up with the Old Testament view of a vengeful judging God but have been challenged often lately in my presumption that God is more likely to smite me than love me. This has certainly been a huge part of my processing these questions as I’m challenged in my thinking and responses to events and circumstances. I need to realise that it is not God who is responsible for the evil in our world or my challenging life situations. Jesus states in John 10:10 that it is “the thief “(satan) who comes to steal, kill and destroy.” The next part of that verse is Jesus saying “I am come that you might have life and have it more abundantly.”
God is Good. What we miss is the tension between who God is and what he does, His desire with His creation of man for relationship and mankind’s insistent rejection of His demonstrations of love and longing for that intimacy.
God addressed this in His sending Jesus, His Son, to be the bridge over that chasm between the Old and the New. The purpose of Jesus was to dispense with the rules…the old covenant law and its oppression and become the New covenant…the promise and demonstration of God’s unfailing love and Goodness and His desire for us.
In Bill Johnson’s book, titled “God is Good…He’s better than you think”, he writes, “His goodness is beyond our ability to comprehend but not our ability to experience. Our hearts will take us where our heads can’t fit.” He cites a verse in Psalm 34:8 “Taste and see that the Lord is good”. Pp33-34
I could type an epistle quoting verses and experiences that would do little to convince most struggling with their situations or those whose minds are steeled against any idea of a good God.
The verse from Psalm 34 about “tasting” God requires an element of belief…of trust …of even a mustard seed of faith in the possibility that God really does love you and is waiting to be asked…to be invited to invade your circumstances… and then overriding your head sufficiently that you can speak out His name and ask for help. We sometimes get caught in that place of tension between our belief and human understanding and the nature of God, the truth of His Word, His proclaimed promises in The Bible, His purposes for us and the realisation…or not…of our faith in the goodness of God. How do I reconcile that faith stand in the face of tragedy, of unchanged circumstances, of unanswered prayer? God has claimed to love us beyond our human reason or understanding… and wants to grow us into a relationship of trust and love.
It struck me while writing this that the list of negatives we use to our detriment are what stifle our faith and future. The belief that God cannot, does not, should not, would not are the lies were told and instead we are advised to trust ourselves.
The new paradigm is to find our answers “within ourselves” through self-help literature and programs, the concept being that we have no need of anything or anyone external to ourselves and we have been launched into a world of self-absorption, self-importance ,self-reliance.
What is difficult is we are asked to trust God…to give up our need to know and understand, to surrender ourselves to Him. To many, this is an unsatisfactory and seemingly irrational response. It does not make any sense. It flies in the face of reason, of common sense, of reality as we understand and experience it. Yet it is the mainstay of faith.
Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.”
So, to begin I must believe and trust that there is a Divine Being who loves me, is interested in all that I am and have and desires to act for me and on my behalf. That’s a fairly important first step.
Psalm 52:8 states “I trust in the steadfast love of God”
Psalm 4: 3 “Put you trust in The Lord”.
His Word, the Bible is the foundation of our trust…our faith that what is written in the pages of The Bible is truth.
“For the Word of God is living and active…it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” Hebrews 4:12
“For every word God speaks is sure and every promise pure. His truth is tested, found to be flawless and ever faithful. It’s as pure as silver refined seven times in a crucible of clay.” Psalm 12: 6
Proverbs 30:5 “Every word of God is flawless: He is a shield to those who take refuge in Him”.
How do I trust God and how does anyone “get to know” Him? Jesus is the exact representation of His Father, He mirrored God in all His ways, His interactions, His acts of grace, healing and love. So, to know the Son is to know the Father. My readings of Jesus’ ministry recorded in the gospels show love, compassion, patience, understanding, tenderness in all his interactions with people. He healed everyone who came to Him. He spoke with authority yet with gentleness. While He spoke to crowds He was concerned with individual’s welfare, social, religious and political injustices, the details and everyday issues of life which He used in His sermons and teachings as metaphors to explain, in human terms, God’s love for us and how we should interact with Him and with others.
He loves us with a love beyond measure. Ephesians 3:17-19 states:
“By constantly using your faith, the life of Christ will be released deep inside you, and the resting place of His love will become the very source and root of your life.
Then you will be empowered to discover what every holy one experiences- the great magnitude of the astonishing love of Christ in all its dimensions. How deeply intimate and far reaching is His love! How enduring and inclusive it is! Endless love beyond measurement that transcends understanding- this extravagant love pours into you until you are filled to overflowing with the fullness of God.” The Passion Translation.
But His love needs to be reciprocated. The only way to know and experience His love and goodness, in the measure He longs to express to us in relationship and intimacy, is for us to choose Him. He chose us in the beginning. He now wants us to invite Him to act on our behalf, to love and care for us as only a Good Father would. It is not assumed that He will just do it because we have decided He should and will. He already decided that. Jesus reset the stage for that level of intimacy again with God by example, living as man amongst us but being Divine and in constant communion with the Father. He only did what He saw the Father do and what He was told to do. We have been invited to live in that same realm of reality…Kingdom reality through Jesus redemption and example.
Our greatest sticking points are letting go of our illusory control of our destiny and that of our believing we know the mind of God.
“Isaiah 55: 9 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts higher than your thoughts.”
This past year has taught me a lot. I began as this blog began, my faith in tatters after crushing disappointments for which I blamed God. I wrote Him off. I turned my back on my lifelong see-saw faith which was great when all was well, and the wheels fell off when things did not go according to my plan and expectation.
I have been that person who, out of desperate need in the midst of my health crisis, has searched back through those tatters of faith, looking for some substance, some truth, some help. I found it…or rather, God found me. We have been working together through my past, peeling back all the layers of my perceived beliefs about myself, my history, my faith and I can announce I am a work in progress …loved by God, saved in every way possible, trusting Him for my future. It has meant letting go of the “striver “in me…the need to keep up the appearance of being the Good Girl, always trying to please and insisting on my own way. It’s been a huge leap to trust God and it has released me from fear and stress of the responsibility of being in control of something I have no control over. So, even though I still wait for answers I am confident in my relationship with God and His love for me. 1 John 5;14 says “And this is the confidence that we have towards Him, that if we ask anything according to His will he hears us”. It has been freeing to allow God, who knows my innermost being and supplies all my needs, to do what He does best. I revel in His goodness. It’s quite the adventure!
