Week 4 – Surrendering control

My grandma used to always say that she couldn’t wait to get to heaven because she had a lot of questions for God.  She had a deeply abiding faith in God, but there were some things that she just couldn’t grasp. Like – why are some babies born with painful deformities and disabilities?  How come terrible things happen to good-hearted people?  Why does God allow evil people to prosper?  And of course, why are there mosquitoes?

We’ve all wondered about these things.  If God is capable of creating the abstract complexity of this universe right alongside the delicate intricacies of the human body, then why does he not fix the things in this world that seem so…. Out of whack?  It’s tempting to think that if we were running the show, we’d do a few things differently.

Wondering what the heck God is thinking is not a new thing in our modern age.  David had plenty of questions for God, too.

 Psalm 73: 2 
But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled,
    my steps had nearly slipped.
3 
For I was envious of the arrogant
    when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

David couldn’t understand why evil people got to enjoy good health, great wealth and not a care in the world.  He said that his frustration over this almost caused him to lose faith, to doubt that God is truly in control.  At the end of Psalm 73 though, David came to understand that his envy and bitterness was doing him no good.  In fact, it was destroying his soul.

Psalm 72
21 
When my heart was grieved
    and my spirit embittered,
22 
I was senseless and ignorant;
    I was a brute beast before you

We can so easily fall into this pattern, can’t we?  We discern the injustices going on around us and assume we know God’s thoughts and ways – we assume that God is absent – that he has forgotten us and and abandoned us.  Some people even walk away from their faith. Once again, we forget that our thoughts and ways are not God’s. 

Don’t misunderstand, God does not want us to live in ignorance. He’s not patting us on the head, shushing us and trying to get us to stop trying to understand him and his ways.  He most certainly wants us to seek knowledge and understanding of Him and his ways.

Colossians 1 9 …We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will 
through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives

But we also need to remember that there are times where we are too mired in the details – in the up-closeness of life to see the truth and the long-term unfolding of a situation. It’s these times that we need to pause and trust that God has a purpose and a plan.

Corinthians 13:12
12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

Our understanding of God’s thoughts and ways can certainly be deciphered and deepened – we can study his Word, we can learn from other believers, we can listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit.  But there are some things that we don’t have the zoomed-out lens to ever truly understand during this lifetime.  It is in those moments that we must set aside our human understanding and, with great humility, simply trust God.

Psalm 131: 1
O Lord, my heart is not lifted up;
    my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
    too great and too marvelous for me.

This is posture that is a tad counter-cultural nowadays. We have oodles of information at our fingertips, volumes of written knowledge in our libraries and bookstores – we are bursting with information – and honestly, it’s really gone to our heads.  Humans have become bloated with arrogance about our own intellect.   But the scripture calls us to humility. To knowing what we don’t know. 

Reaching this conclusion is exactly what brought David the peace he sought.

Psalm 23 
Yet I am always with you;
    you hold me by my right hand.
24 
You guide me with your counsel,
    and afterward you will take me into glory.

David made the conscious decision to acknowledge the times when God’s thoughts and ways were simply not his thoughts and ways.  In those moments, he chose to stop grappling with the things that make no sense and instead dwell in the presence of the Lord.  To make the Lord his focus instead of other people. This is exactly what we are called to do in our scripture.  Humbly accept that we can’t fully understand God’s ways and choose to say “I trust you, God – You are infinitely wiser than me and it’s in you that I will put my trust and focus.”