Some of the most faith-shaking, fear-generating experiences are those in which God provides a blessing and then seems to pull the rug out from under us by taking away the blessing as soon as we get a taste of it.
The single woman who has waited years for a godly husband meets Mr. Right. God has provided at last! She feels God’s smile as she prepares for her wedding and her new life as a married woman. And then two days before the wedding, Mr. Right changes his mind and calls the whole thing off. The grief-stricken bride wonders why God even allowed her to get her hopes up, only to see them dashed to pieces. “Why would a loving God do that?” she asks, and her faith crumbles. God is not who she thought he was.
When we go through that sort of experience, our foundations can be shaken to the core. "I obviously cannot depend on God," we think, "so somehow I've got to make my life work. And if God could do this to me, what other painful thing might he do?" Adding to our fears about life are doubts about God himself. What we don't see at such times and in the midst of such thoughts is the fact that we were resting on the wrong foundation in the first place. Our view of God has actually been wrong all along. We thought we were relying on God, but the truth is we’d really been relying on our idea of God, and on what we were hoping God would do for us to make our lives happier.
What we don't see is that disappointments and other difficulties that threaten our faith are really a blessing in disguise. They are designed by God to draw us closer to him, to enable us to see him as he really is, and to dispel our misconceptions about him and our wrong understanding of what it means to be a Christian.
When we first discover that God isn’t who we’d thought, when he doesn’t turn out to fit our image of him, our slide into doubt can be extraordinary. "Who is God, if he is not the one I can count on to rescue me from bad things?" we ask. "Is he a God I can be close to after all? I’ve always gone to him with everything large and small. Does he care? Have I been kidding myself all this time?" When our view of a loving God is called into question, we don’t know where to turn.
What we don’t yet realize during the throes of such an experience is that he is, indeed, all those good things we'd known before our disappointment. But how he works that goodness into our lives is often very different from what we expected—or wanted. Bad things happen to us because God is actually calling us into a deeper faith, one that trusts him and chooses to stay with him even when his love for us includes losses, the relinquishment of dreams and earthly hopes, and painful experiences for which there will be no remedy in this lifetime.
Disappointments do not come from the hand of a cruel God; they come to us from the God who longs to relate and is actually drawing us nearer. Rather than despair, we can fight for hope, because "The LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. O LORD of hosts, blessed is the one who trusts in you!" (Psalm 84:11-12).
The single woman who has waited years for a godly husband meets Mr. Right. God has provided at last! She feels God’s smile as she prepares for her wedding and her new life as a married woman. And then two days before the wedding, Mr. Right changes his mind and calls the whole thing off. The grief-stricken bride wonders why God even allowed her to get her hopes up, only to see them dashed to pieces. “Why would a loving God do that?” she asks, and her faith crumbles. God is not who she thought he was.
When we go through that sort of experience, our foundations can be shaken to the core. "I obviously cannot depend on God," we think, "so somehow I've got to make my life work. And if God could do this to me, what other painful thing might he do?" Adding to our fears about life are doubts about God himself. What we don't see at such times and in the midst of such thoughts is the fact that we were resting on the wrong foundation in the first place. Our view of God has actually been wrong all along. We thought we were relying on God, but the truth is we’d really been relying on our idea of God, and on what we were hoping God would do for us to make our lives happier.
What we don't see is that disappointments and other difficulties that threaten our faith are really a blessing in disguise. They are designed by God to draw us closer to him, to enable us to see him as he really is, and to dispel our misconceptions about him and our wrong understanding of what it means to be a Christian.
When we first discover that God isn’t who we’d thought, when he doesn’t turn out to fit our image of him, our slide into doubt can be extraordinary. "Who is God, if he is not the one I can count on to rescue me from bad things?" we ask. "Is he a God I can be close to after all? I’ve always gone to him with everything large and small. Does he care? Have I been kidding myself all this time?" When our view of a loving God is called into question, we don’t know where to turn.
What we don’t yet realize during the throes of such an experience is that he is, indeed, all those good things we'd known before our disappointment. But how he works that goodness into our lives is often very different from what we expected—or wanted. Bad things happen to us because God is actually calling us into a deeper faith, one that trusts him and chooses to stay with him even when his love for us includes losses, the relinquishment of dreams and earthly hopes, and painful experiences for which there will be no remedy in this lifetime.
Disappointments do not come from the hand of a cruel God; they come to us from the God who longs to relate and is actually drawing us nearer. Rather than despair, we can fight for hope, because "The LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. O LORD of hosts, blessed is the one who trusts in you!" (Psalm 84:11-12).
Labels: Christian Life
4 Comments:
I've needed this post several times since finished seminary 4 years ago - no ministry job and no husband. God is good - and I cling to that verse in ps 84. Thank you.
Okay, I'm not sure how many guys read your blog—probably not a lot—but I've got say that I think this post was phenomenal. (All one has to do is change the example to be able to relate.) Very good blog, by the way.
Excellent post. Yes, our "disappointment" is due to our misunderstanding of God and who He is. I recently read that Luther once wrote to Erasmus telling him, "Your God is too human". Unfortunately, that still holds true today for so many.
Very good thoughts today. Thank you. Our disappointment definitely doesn't come from God, but really from within our own sinful desires. It's funny how often I am suprised about a trial...recently the Lord has placed someone in my life that is kind of prickly. I am suprised by this, shouldn't be though. Even Jesus tells us not to be surprised that we will have trials in this world.
For me, I think it has been that I have set up a certain expectation of God as like an idol or an affection in my heart. Usually think of idols as something tangible, like money, TV, etc...but even our wrong ideas, or even right ideas can be where our hearts are devoted to.
Thanks again!
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