Contradictions

 "I am the LORD, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for Me?" Jeremiah 3:27

I recently came across a kind of scenario put forth by writer Larry Crabb. He put forward a truth, and then connected it with a seeming total contradiction. The truth was, "God is the God of the impossible. He can do anything." He then followed with a reality, "But He did nothing." What do we do when the truth we believe is totally contradicted by the reality we're living in? What happens when the God of all things seemingly does nothing for us? Especially after we have cried out to Him, pleaded with Him, and believed Him? Where does our faith go from there?

A great part of our problem is that we believe God always wants what we want. Even if He delays, we believe that in the end, if we just pray enough, believe enough, He'll bring about an answer that pleases us and makes our life better. The problem is that we have ourselves at the center of it all. What we want, how we want to feel, and all the circumstances surrounding that need to come together in a way that satisfies us. We can't see past our own dreams and desires. We're blind to Him and what His purposes may be. He's at work for something far bigger, deeper, and eternal then our here and now.

The Father is always working in us with eternity in view. He uses everything, especially our sufferings, to bring about His purposes for us. Satisfying a desire, even a need, may bring us into conflict with the greater work He's seeking to do. We need to reach a place where we can let go of the desire, even our deepest desires, to Him.....and trust Him with them. Trust Him even if He doesn't bring about that which we so desperately want. He doesn't want us centered upon our desired outcome. He wants us centered upon Him. Upon what He's speaking, showing, and doing in that time. He's focused on our growth in Him. Taking us deeper into intimacy with Him is always His priority.

Crabb says that our biggest problem is that "we want something or someone more than we want God." Dreams and desires, even good and valid ones, cannot take His place in our hearts and lives, and they can easily do so. If a shattered dream, painful as it may be, brings us into a deeper relationship with Him, He'll allow it. That's a great part of the "all things work together for good" that we struggle to understand. God works in us and for us with an eternal perspective, but we're so earthbound in our thinking that we miss and misunderstand what He's doing and working towards. Our hope and faith in Him is oftentimes only as deep as the results we seek. When those results don't come about, our hope and faith fades badly. Crabb says that, "we must find a hope that anchors us to God when dreams do not come true." That hope is not rooted in what He's doing, or not doing. It's a hope rooted completely in Him, in who He is.

We tend to base our well being on how we feel and how our lives are going. We think more in terms of happiness, while He wants us to know His joy. Jesus wants our joy in Him to be full. Without surrendered trust in Him, we can never really know the fullness of His joy, and every happening in our life that doesn't result in what we want causes us to doubt His love and His care for us. We live unsettled lives, tossed about emotionally and spiritually. God always seems a contradiction to us.

In the Garden, Jesus in His humanity desired to be spared the agony of the cross. Yet in the depths of His relationship with His Father, He surrendered the desire to the greater purposes of that Father. The result was glory. Sin crushed and death conquered. The cross seemed a total contradiction to the love of God. In reality it was a confirmation of it. To have full victory, full joy, full assurance in the face of all things, we too need to go to His cross and surrender all our desires, dreams, and hopes, for the greatest hope of all, hope in Him. Perhaps you need to go there today, with all the seeming contradictions to your own hopes and dreams. Crabb says that out of our shattered dreams, God can raise up a better dream. He did so at the cross, in Christ. He still does so at the cross, in Christ. Let us trust Him with every shattered dream and frustrated hope. Let Him reveal to us His better dream.

Blessings,

Pastor O