The Other Side of God

As I write this, 32,000 men, women, and children have been forced to flee their homes in Colorado Springs as the Waldo Canyon Fire rushed into town in "a firestorm of epic proportions," incinerating suburban neighborhoods in its path.  No one has yet been killed or injured, but the sheer display of unrestrained destruction is terrifying.

As a Christian, how do we respond to this?

We should pray, certainly, but I think the disaster and others like it around the state should also give us pause to think.  We speak of God so often as gentle, mild, and almost cuddly.  How then do we explain this fire?  What is our answer?  Is it simply one of those things that just happen and over which our adorably plushy care-bear styled god has no power?  If that is so, what use is he and why should we pray to him in the face of this disaster--if he obviously couldn't stop it in the first place?  Is it, perhaps, that god has the power to quell this fire, but simply can't be bothered to use it?  What kind of an apathetic god that is--and what a contradiction that we should preach he was the one who sent Jesus to die!  Or do we acknowledge (with the insurance companies, of all things) that wildfires--including this one--are an "act of God?"

I admit I vacillate between the answers myself.  I have cultivated over the years an image of God as a cosmic "nice guy," who would never allow this sort of thing to happen.  But it is happening right now, and, as Amos says, "Is a trumpet blown in a city, and the people are not afraid? Does disaster come to a city, unless the LORD has done it?" (Amos 3:6).  There is disaster right now in my city.  I may blame winds and terrain, dry seasons, and such like.  I may even concoct wildfire-demons to pin this on, but ultimately I have to face the fact that God made all of these precisely the way that they are in the full knowledge that on June 26 this wildfire would begin to destroy this city.  I may never understand why, but I have to come to terms with the fact that this is what has happened.  It shows a whole other side of God, one I confess I'm reluctant to know.  It shows the same side of God that cursed the whole of his creation because Adam and Eve took a bite from the wrong fruit tree.  It shows the same side of God that ordered the genocide of the Canaanite peoples in the book of Joshua, the same side that later claimed ultimate responsibility for Assyria and Babylon's brutal conquest of the Jews, the same side that pre-planned the gory murder of His own Son, the same side that promises to reward all who reject His Son with torment in Hell.

It's not a comfortable side of God, and perhaps not one I can ever fully comprehend, but it is real, and if I really want to know God, I must know this side of Him as well.

Tenacity of the Heart

I just finished reading a post by a friend of mine, a girl, who posted on some of the horrors of divorce and commented that one reason why she remains single is fear of the what ifs of divorce.  What if she got married and her husband just up and left her?  How would she go on with the man in her life missing?  Her fears, sadly, are legitimized by a great many statistics and personal stories.  However, in my opinion (and I say this more to any men in my audience than women, I suppose), if any woman finds her husband has given up and walked away, she need not really wonder what she must do now that she no longer has a man in her life: in my opinion she didn't have a man in her life to begin with.  A man would not walk away--at least not any man worth the name.

I suppose it's rather impetuous of me to say something like that.  After all, I'm single.  I always have been.  I don't know the pressures of a relationship or of a marriage--not firsthand--and so who am I to judge those who have and find them too much for them?  The answer is this: I am a man with a tenacious heart.  I am a man whose ideal of nobility is something like a picture of the Alamo, where 180 volunteers held out for three days against an army more than 10 times their size--volunteers who fought even knowing that the battle was lost before the first shot was fired.  My ideal of nobility, of masculinity, is a heart that does not let go, that refuses to walk away, the costs be damned.  When I hear a man recite his vows and say, "Till death do us part," I expect he means it literally.  Death may overtake him or her suddenly and part them, but if any other force threatens to part them, he would rather die than yield.

You may say I'm young and naive.  Overly optimistic, overly idealistic, and completely unrealistic.  Maybe I am, but that is who I am.  It is not just an ideal I have put up on a shelf in my mind to be forgotten.  It's something I live even in small ways.  It's this sense of the nobility of tenacity that has me writing this tonight.  It's one o'clock...well, one-thirty.  I worked a full day today, standing every minute of it because I'm a cashier.  Halfway through I felt ready for a nap, but I wouldn't rest then and won't rest now either.  I have something I have to do.  I've set my heart on finishing this blog entry (and another one, actually, mercifully brief) and I'm tenacious about it.  My legs may be cramping just a bit and I will definitely feel like cursing my name tomorrow morning when I have to wake up--possibly to have my entire life here turned upside down by evacuation orders--but my comfort and my sleep are expendable.  Something ought to be said about having tenacity of heart and I'm willing to suffer a bit to make it so--even knowing that this post will probably be viewed a grand total of 2 times, and those by random visitors from South Korea who get redirected here by some ad on a dating site (don't ask me! I'm just reading what it says on my blog's stats!).

Like I said, I haven't ever been in a relationship, but I have demonstrated it in similar ways.  In the rift that developed some months ago between myself and some of my friends I expended a lot of energy and shed a lot of tears trying to mend or hold on to the relationship which was, in retrospect, a lost cause.  I held on so long and so hard that I let the strain of it damage me at the deepest level: my relationship with God.  I remember literally pitching a screaming fit at Him during the heat of things, and (as in a previous post) it would take months for me to discover and heal the scars.  Even now, I would seize the chance to mend the rift, if it were to present itself.  Though it was in vain, I held on beyond the point of merely hurting myself and only let go when I literally had no other option--and this was a friendship where no vows were involved.

I knew during this ordeal that God wanted to use me to portray Himself, how He would love and pursue.  I think I understand now what He meant by that.  He wanted to show me that He is Himself tenacious.  Many times I have thought, I've done it now!  Surely after that, God will throw up His hands and walk away from me!  But He never does and He never will.  He has a noble tenacious heart.  To hold on to me, He literally sacrificed His life, enduring the most brutal death of human history, to save me.  Even if I were to somehow sever myself from Him (were it possible), He would willingly welcome me back.  He never gives up!  He never walks away, and when I find my dream girl and make my vows, I want to be as tenacious as Him.  I know I am not perfect, and that my blunders will probably endanger the relationship as much as anything else, but with God as my help and my model, may I never give up!

Embarrassed by Hell

I've been reading a couple of discussions lately where Christians have had to defend the existence of Hell.  Inevitably, at some point, one or more of the defenders will feel the need to apologize for Hell or express the fact that they personally dislike it.  I can't help but wonder what God thinks of this.

Hell was His idea, after all, and to hear Him talk, He's not embarrassed in the least about it.  Jesus talked about Hell extensively while He walked the earth.  Paul's letters allude to Hell (the fate of the wicked) more times than they do Heaven (the fate of the believer).  Revelation even quotes believers and angels singing praises to God over the torment of the wicked in Hell.

So why are we so embarrassed by Hell?

A quick answer comes to mind.  Those who oppose the doctrine of Hell typically say, "I just can't believe in a God so cruel he would endlessly torture people for all eternity in Hell!  I wouldn't hold my child's hand in a fire for a second!  How can God do that to innocent people for all eternity?"  We confess our own belief in Hell a bit shamefacedly, then, because it seems we must admit that they are right.

But they're not at all.  Hell doesn't exist because God is a sadistic monster who enjoys torturing innocent people endlessly for kicks.  Hell exists because God is just and gives people the punishment they deserve.

This, I think, brings us (me at least) to another, much closer reason why we blush at the idea of Hell.  Hell confronts us with our own nature and the weight of our own sin.  To say that God sends people, even "good" people, to Hell if they don't accept the forgiveness offered through Christ and to say that God is just in doing so is to say this: that every one of us, apart from Christ, deserves Hell.  That's a rather embarrassing admission.  I'll admit that I'm not perfect.  I'll admit that I've done wrong, and that some of the things I've done are worthy of some punishment.  However, Hell seems a bit extreme!  The unquenchable fire, the darkness, the weeping and gnashing of teeth...that all seems too much.  I don't like to think that I've done anything worthy of that!

But if Hell is real and God is just, then I have.  Admitting this is important in several respects.  First, it glorifies God because it shows how good, holy, perfect, and pure He is.  God is not merely good as I might say another person is good--for I certainly don't think I deserve heinous punishment compared to such a person.  God is better.  God is so good that He makes a good person look like a selfish little monster.  Second, it glorifies God's love.  The Bible says the God loved us, loved me, while we were still sinners justly condemned to Hell.  If Hell is just the everyday troubles of this life, then that's no big deal--but if Hell is an eternity of unimaginable horrors, the God's love must be something really incredible!  Finally, it glorifies Christ's sacrifice.  If Christ's death on the cross is enough to set me free from an eternity in Hell, then it is truly the biggest and best news the world has ever seen!

So while Hell may be embarrassing to me because it openly shows the magnitude of my failings, it is glorifying to God, whose I am and whom I serve.  There is no reason for me to be ashamed of it, because it magnifies Him!

Learning History

There is a famous quote from George Santayana that goes like this: "Those who cannot remember their past are condemned to repeat it."  That best sums up the reason I write this today, for I have seen it come true in the church and college ministry I attended in Fort Collins.

This church is a proud member of the Great Commission Movement, whose full history may be viewed here.  What I want to point out here as being of particular note was the criticism and accusations of cult-like activity that the Movement came under in the 1970's and 80's (covered here in the Wikipedia article on the Movement).  The Movement, in general, responded negatively toward this criticism at first, excommunicating an estimated 500 members, but in 1991 began to see that parts of the criticism were, sadly, valid and issued A Statement Recognizing Early Errors and Weaknesses in the Development of the Great Commission Association of Churches.  The statement recognized a number of church errors and listed actions to be taken to correct these errors and reconcile the church with alienated former members.  The statement was ratified by the Movement's pastors and national leaders on July 19, 1991.

That being said, it should be old news, totally without importance today.  The statement was issued a full 21 years ago and everything it admits should no doubt have been addressed by now.  However, I would still recommend any current or prospective members of the Great Commission Movement or its affiliated churches and ministries to read the statement for themselves.  I would also advise members of the leadership of the same to make the statement a part of the curriculum for new members or at least new leaders and elders.  Admittedly, a statement of errors past is not good promotional material.  FedEx would probably be ill-advised to post the video of one of their employee's tossing a computer monitor on their site or use it at the end of a commercial.  However, it would probably be a good idea to show the video during employee or management training sessions to make sure the next generation of FedEx employees know that this is not acceptable behavior.  The Great Commission Movement should similarly use this Statement of Error to their advantage--for those who do not learn their history are doomed to repeat it.

As it is today, neither the past criticism nor the statement made in response to it are common knowledge among members of the Great Commission Movement.  The statement itself cannot be found on any Great Commission website.  I had to go to one of the sites of the Movement's critics to find it.  So it seems today that the Great Commission does not recall its history and, sadly, my personal experience is that they are indeed repeating it.

In section 2, part 1 of the statement, the Movement confesses, "In the past, we did not always clearly communicate the difference between a scriptural command, a scriptural principle, and a personal preference.  And while it is not always easy to determine those differences, it is important to do so in order to allow individuals in the church to hold and express biblically-based convictions that are different from those of their leaders."  And further, "failing to properly distinguish a command from a principle or preference resulted at times in legalism.  An individual who had a conviction contrary to that of the pastors was sometimes considered rebellious, even though that conviction was one permitted by the Word.  The result was that a person might be forced to choose between violating his or her conscience or remaining 'rebellious.'"

One of the admitted examples of this failure follows:

A third example of our failure to clearly distinguish between commands and principles concerns the area of dating. Many of us in the early years of our churches encouraged young men and women to refrain from dating until they had a fairly strong conviction that God was leading them toward marriage to a particular individual. This had some very positive results including the lack of many problems that casual dating can cause (temptation to immorality, trauma and strife because of romantic breakups, distraction from a devotion to holiness and service to the Lord) and contributed to the formation of many, many strong marriages. However, it also had negative results including alienating believers who did not share our preference and causing some who did to develop a bad attitude toward Christians who dated. It is our present understanding that discouraging casual dating was a preference of many of us leaders and not a command or even a principle of Scripture, although there are many principles that may be used to support the preference. We believe that individuals are free to have different preferences as to how serious they want to be before they begin dating someone. Pastors may suggest or encourage their own personal preference concerning dating, as well as their reasons for that preference, but they should be careful to clearly communicate that it is simply their preference, and that others may be equally valid.

 Here, I am sorry to say the church and especially the college ministry I attended has repeated history with a vengeance.  The college ministry published, distributed, and delivered a series of messages on a booklet entitled "Rock Solid Relationships" in 2008 that presented a model of relationships that rejected dating as "God's standard."  The group's teaching and especially the private sessions with its leaders communicate that any other preference on dating is a sin.  A leader of the group has repeatedly expressed disdain to me for those who hold other preferences and especially their church and para-church organizations--accusing them of enforcing or allowing a culture of divorce and sexual immorality.  Many good marriages have resulted from following this preference, of course, but these have not been without their trials and more than one couple who eventually courted and got married to the joy of the church were subjected to months or years of guilt from their leaders for even having feelings for each other.  Those Christians who do not share or agree to this preference are not told that their convictions may be equally valid but are accused of sinful living or desires.  If they persist, they are labeled as "rebellious" and ostracized from the group or subjected or threatened with church discipline (another part of the statement addresses the Movement's improper use of church discipline).  In some instances, members yielding to this pressure have rushed into marriages to avoid the guilt and criticism, only to have these ill-advised marriages fall apart.  When pressed, some members of the group leadership did admit that their attitude toward dating was not a command but a principle.  At no point did anyone admit or even seem to be aware that it was nothing more than a preference or personal conviction, and that others might be equally valid.

There are other ways the group is repeating history.  They have demonstrated "the expectation that all believers be as actively involved as we were in sharing the gospel and the conclusion that if they were not they were not obeying God's perfect will for their lives" (Section 1, Part 2).  This is particularly evident in the views some members have developed on school work, who view any time it interrupts their church involvement as a fault to be ashamed of.  This also is repeating history, as the statement confesses that the Movement has historically demonstrated a "lack of emphasis on formal education," confessing, "In most cases, this lack of emphasis on education resulted in the failure by church leaders to stress to students the importance of committing their time and effort to excelling in their studies, and the resulting belief that involvement with church activities was more important than schoolwork" (Section 2, Part 5).  There have also been times when leaders, in discipling others, have been "overly directive in the personal affairs of church members and," more damagingly, "were not...sufficiently sensitive to the Holy Spirit's leading in the person's life" (Section 2, Part 2).

I offer this and the links to the statement itself as constructive criticism, as lessons in history.  Myself, as an individual and an administrator of an online forum have often had to learn the importance of listening to criticism and learning from history the hard way.  It is my hope that the Great Commission Movement may be spared having to repeat the darker aspects of its history any further and that its members and leaders may individual be spared participating in or experiencing such repetition themselves.

True Grace

There's a woman I'm talking with online who is appalled at my lack of faith in God.  She's said to me:  "Having a FORM of godliness but denying its power. That's you....I would really rather be part of this world then grovel with you and your lack of knowledge of our Christ! I'm stunned......have you ever seen a healing....do you ever experience His unmistakable presence...or do you prefer to stick to your powerless doctrine to ease your own conscience??"

Regular readers of this blog may be surprised to hear such accusations aimed at me, especially considering my last post was on dealing with accusations that I trusted God with too much power, and much of this blog consists of knowing and experiencing God in intimate ways.

Some context is necessary.  The person who said these things is a frequent poster on a Christian discussion board I'm an administrator of.  Over the past couple weeks, she has stridently proclaimed, "the gospel of grace."  She proclaims the law abolished by Christ's sacrifice and accordingly seems to think that any believer who feels obligated to obey any command of scripture (including the "law of Christ" from Galatians 6:2) is trying to earn their salvation.  She repeatedly declares that the believer should have "no consciousness of sin," meaning they should be totally oblivious to it, to the point that she opposes a Christian confessing his sin as an abhorrent act (and going further, she opposes even the scriptural saying that we are "jars of clay," which is apparently demeaning to say about such "children of God" as we are).  She maintains that her view does not promote a lifestyle of living in sin, nor that believers are themselves perfect, but how those two work out is a mystery to me.  If we are not perfect, we sin, and if we are blind to all sin in our lives and yet still sin (because we are imperfect) we cannot but continue in that sin, oblivious to it.  Somehow grace is supposed to fix that logical inconsistency.  Additionally, because of grace, a true believer can never do anything to displease God (not that there is any restriction on their actions, just on God's emotional responses).  All this is background however, to the remarks above.  They actually took place in another discussion, where she preached a new part of this gospel: that God would never use sickness to discipline His children and--further--that any Christian with sufficient faith and knowledge would never know illness.

Scriptural proofs were traded back and forth.  But I will not rehash the arguments here.  My question regards her claim and accusation about me.  Does her viewpoint represent "true grace?"  By holding something different, am I holding something less?  Is this "good news" she's proclaimed really better than what I have heard, or worse?  To put it more concretely, does confession undermine grace or highlight it?  Does humility glorify God or insult Him?  Is God less loving if we can displease Him?  And finally, is a God who allows sickness powerless?

In answer to the question about confession, it depends.  I have to say, she's got a point here.  With certain types of confession--the kinds I used to do and am sometimes still tempted to engage in, the confession undermines grace.  This is because its a confession that's made not for forgiveness but for guilt.  I used to do this all the time.  I would sin and I would realize it and then turn around to confess that sin to God...and then confess it again (not sin again, confess the same sin twice)...and then again...and then again.  All through the day I might bring the same sin I'd committed late last night before God, allegedly so He would forgive me.  Really, while words asking for forgiveness came out of my mouth, my heart wasn't accepting any forgiveness at all, nor was I willing to forgive myself.  My real purpose in "confessing" was so I could bring the sin back to mind and bludgeon myself with guilt over it.  God had a thing or two to say about that and eventually got me straightened out (if you've been reading my blog, you've probably seen some of the entries that touched on that).

Now what I practice is a different kind of confession with a different intent and result.  Rather than "bringing my sins to God" so I can wallow in guilt over them, I bring them to Him so I can be free of them.  I realize, of course, that as a Christian I am forgiven and no longer subject to the penalty of sin (Hell), nor am I any longer sin's slave--but I sure can act that way!  I can go out and chase after something I know is wrong by telling myself that it isn't wrong at all.  Doesn't all temptation begin this way?  A lust or desire rears its head where it ought not, and it just seems so innocent...what could possibly be wrong about entertaining it, just for a second or two.  Of course I know it's not what God says I should do, but I'll ignore Him just for a second, and be right back!  But seconds become minutes and minutes hours...if I'm not careful I can find myself having spent most of a day trying to shut out all awareness of God while I pursued some sinful desire.  Confession is how I stop.  Rather than beating myself up about those hours, its a simple admission that what I did in them was wrong and that I really do want to stop, an acknowledgement that I actually am trying to ignore God and a willingness to let down my walls before Him once more.  Once I make such a confession, I am immediately aware of God's forgiveness and experience intimacy with Him once more.

I dare to say that this kind of confession doesn't undermine grace at all, but highlights it.  After all, this confession hinges on grace.  If not for God's grace, this confession is useless.  Its entire intent is to admit mistakes so that they can be forgiven and reversed, but without grace there would be no forgiveness and no possibility of coming back into God's arms.  Such confessions acknowledge grace, for grace is their end.  They are said once, as I repent, and not repeated because the sin is gone, covered by grace, and the fellowship is restored by grace (since I, by grace, am no longer trying to block out God).  One great advantage of these confessions over no confession at all is that these acknowledge the power of grace because they show what that grace has covered.  If a man says, "My wife still loves me and forgives me," that sounds nice enough.  It's nice to hear people love each other, though we really don't know how much the wife loves him or what she forgives him of.  But if the man adds the explanation: "I had an affair and fathered a child with my wife's best friend," then it's a different story.  Now we know that not only does this man's wife love him, but she loves him in a deep, profound way.  Before, her forgiveness, which seemed a light thing (what did he do, leave the toilet seat up?) seems almost superhuman.  The grace she shows her husband is magnified by the knowledge of what it covers.  So also a man who stands behind the pulpit and says, "I'm forgiven by the blood of Jesus" magnifies God's grace, but a man who says, "I was employed by the Sanhedrin to imprison and exterminate Christian, but now I'm forgiven by the blood of Jesus" magnifies it more!

This brings us to the next question: does humility shame God or glorify Him?  Paul I think, says enough that we can definitively say, "Yes" and even give a reason.  He says, "But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us" (2 Corinithians 4:7, NIV).  This is what humility does.  True humility shows how great God is.  It's like Indigo Montoya fighting with his left hand.  That he uses the wrong hand doesn't demean him in any way.  Rather, the results he's able to achieve using the wrong hand highlight just how skilled of a swordsman he is.  So also it is with us.  God uses us to accomplish His glorious will, when we are, really, nothing but dust (for that was what He made us from).  He is not shamed by this, but rather it shows how great His power really is.  If this is what He can do through fallible, mortal, human proxies, how great a God He must be in person!  Now, of course, the woman had a point in her responses.  She countered by saying I mustn't say such humble things for I was a "son of God."  And she is right in that I am a son of God.  But is this lessened in any way by admitting I am a "jar of clay" as well?  By no means!  Rather, to say I am a jar of clay, but that by grace I am a son of God glorifies God more!  He can, literally from dust, raise up sons of God!  And so, it is best to acknowledge both, to be humble and yet bear about and proclaim one's identity in Christ.  In so doing, the grace of God that brings all-surpassing power to jars of clay is magnified!

For the next question, we'll use two foundational assumptions, which both sides would agree on.  First, that God loves us unconditionally and independent of what we do or don't do (His love is not earned).  Second, that we Christians are not perfect people, we still do the wrong things from time to time.  So the question is, at those times, if our wrong behavior (sin) displeases God, does that make Him less loving?  The poster seemed to think so, but I have to say she totally missed the point there.  People, and God no less, have emotional responses to other people's actions.  Certain actions from others bring them pleasure, certain others, displeasure.  The degree to which these reactions can occur is directly proportional to the love and intimacy of the relationship in question.  Take a simple situation: a co-worker you met yesterday (and talked to for only five minutes, during which it slipped that tomorrow was your birthday) forgets your birthday.  Will this upset you?  Unlikely.  You are not very close to this person at all.  You don't expect much of them.  Even if this coworker were to be rude to you, it would probably only be a nuisance.  But what if it's not a strange coworker, but your closest friend whom you've known for years and years.  Now you're no doubt hurt and upset.  How could your best friend have forgotten your birthday?  And if your friend is rude to you--well, that's really upsetting1  Does all of this prove that you're closer to an unknown co-worker than to your best friend?  By no means!  The reason your friend's behavior can actually hurt you and displease you so much is because you love them more and are closer to them.  So it is with God.  If god were to keep smiling down on me and saying, "Isn't he something?  I'm so proud of him," while I surfed porn or went on a shooting spree at the mall, I would have to conclude that god's love was very distant.  If he doesn't care what I do with myself, its safe to say he doesn't care about me either.  However, if doing these same things hurts and displeases God, and might even provoke Him, then I know He cares.  If every idle word I speak makes a difference to Him, then how great and intimate His love must be!

Now we come to the final question: is God powerless if Christians get sick?  First of all, it cannot be denied that Christians do, in fact, get sick.  The answer, then, depends on why you think the Christians are sick in the first place.  If Christians are sick not because God allows it but because of some failing of themselves that God can't help (which was, ironically, her position--she believed the failing was insufficient faith), then yes: sick Christians prove an impotent God.  After all, if God were really powerful, nothing He didn't allow would happen.  He would be able to overcome these Christian's deficiencies and heal them or--better still--keep them in perfect health.  However, if God is in control of the sickness and the Christians are only sick because He allows it to be so, then God's sovereignty and power are absolute.  He is not bound by faith or lack of faith, sickness or health: He does what He pleases.  Now, does this show God is unloving, that He allows sickness?  I do not think so.  Paul provides an example.  He suffered a "thorn in the flesh"--some unspecified malady that Christ simply refused to heal him of, no matter how many times He asked.  But the reason Christ refused was that this "thorn" kept Paul humble.  If not for the thorn, Paul might have been puffed up with pride, disrupting his relationship with God (who opposes the proud) and ruining his ministry.  The fallout of such pride would have been enormous for Paul: it would have ruined him!  By comparison, a nagging infirmity is inconsequential and when God chooses to deliver that to stave off Paul's ruining himself, He actually proves that He loves Paul enough to do whatever it takes to preserve him!

So, in conclusion, true grace is not what this woman proclaimed.  Her gospel is not more glorious than the one I hold.  It does not proclaim a greater grace, but a lesser one--one which cannot confess what it was we were saved from and cannot acknowledge the humble origins from which Christ has raised us up.  It does not preach a more loving God, but a less loving God--one which does not give a damn what we do with our time or how we respond to Him.  It does not preach a more powerful God, but a handcuffed one--who is powerless to control our sicknesses and can't even have a reaction to our behavior (even I can respond express displeasure toward anyone who does enough to provoke it--but god apparently cannot).  True grace takes place in the true world--just as it is, full of Christians who sin, get sick, and are ultimately descended from a man created out of dust--and is administered by the true God--whose sovereignty is absolute and who's heart is close enough to be injured.  This is true grace, that brings them together!

Trust and Obey

I haven't posted in a while.  A lot has been going on in my life, with graduation and all...looking for a job, etc.  At the same time, not much has been going on in my life, it seems.  I haven't felt I had anything to write for ages.    I've been feeling kind of listless, directionless, especially in my spiritual life.  At first I thought it was just a dry spell, something that just happens and then goes away again without rhyme or reason.  But the longer it went on, the more I wondered.

There was an incident a few months back, a big blow-up between myself and some of my near and dear friends--where the rifts made and the relationships destroyed have never been repaired.  I don't like to think about it.  I have forgiven everyone involved, sincerely, even though none of them have apologized (as I've learned, though, that doesn't matter, because God forgives us even our unconfessed sins).  I just want to put it all behind me.  But there are still consequences of what happened then.  I knew that one of them is that those friends I lost or was distanced from cannot be restored by any effort of my own.  But what about spiritual consequences?  One of my friends had warned me that in letting my "theology get tangled" in the situation, he believed I had "made a shipwreck" of my faith.  Was that really what had happened?  I had believed that God was at work in the situation between me and my friends, and that I could trust His guidance there.  Had I been wrong?  Several of my friends very strongly felt it was so.  Was this the reason for the slowdown in my spiritual life, that I'd trusted God too far and in too much detail?

Like I said, I tried to avoid the question.  A big dramatic blow-up like that isn't exactly anyone's favorite moment to dwell on, and I didn't want to give any opportunity for bitterness to develop in my heart.  But last night, God brought the situation back to the fore.  It turned out that it was that situation that had damaged my faith.  I had trusted that I could hear from God, personally, any time on any thing.  I had obeyed His direction at every step, only to have the whole situation blow up in my face.  As I usually do, I blamed myself.  I wondered if I'd been mistaken: maybe I never heard from God at all.  Maybe I couldn't.  Though I continued to listen in prayer and obey, to an extent, I was hesitant now.  Was I really hearing from God?  After all, the last time I thought I'd heard from Him, I'd royally screwed up, right?

I don't think so.  What I saw last night was that everything had been going exactly and perfectly according to what God had shown me would come to pass between me and my friend, and continued to go that way, as long as everyone involved trusted and obeyed Him.  But a year or so before everything fell to pieces, my friend stopped trusting.  She had heard something that didn't set well with her and, on advice from some people from her church, she decided that her friends, her heart, and her church were more accurate barometers for the will of God than what He had miraculously revealed to her.  She stopped trusting.  She stopped obeying.  Immediately, the conflicts that formed the basis of the big blow-up reared their heads.  From that point on, nothing I did in trusting or obeying made a difference for the relationship.  As long as one side or the other wasn't trusting God, the blow-up was only a matter of time.

So what was I doing here, four months later, questioning whether what God was miraculously revealing to me was really His will or not?  I was repeating my friend's moves, the very ones that made that painful blow-up inevitable.  It seems that, for me, unconsciously repeating her mistake was a consequence of the situation.

Once I realized what was going on, my doubts and questions all unsnarled.  I had dared believe in a God Who was as real in my life today as He was in the lives of saints in the Bible--and I wasn't wrong.  There is no evidence to support that conclusion at all.  Yes, God had told me that things were in His will that didn't come to pass, but lots of things happen that aren't in line with God's will (as in His desires and feelings--sin, for instance, would be a violation of His will that happens quite regularly--; His ultimate plan and purpose, of course, cannot be thwarted) and I already know that both from experience and the Bible.  That doesn't mean I can't trust Him.  That doesn't mean I should hesitate in obeying Him.  I felt like a two-ton weight had evaporated from my heart!  I will dare believe what I once believed, that there is a God in Heaven Who reveals Himself to me, Who cares about me, about even the details of my life and the desires of my heart, Who is involved and powerful, Who can be trusted and obeyed.