“If anything is a mystery to you and is coming between you and God, never look for the explanation in your intellect, look for it in your disposition, it is that which is wrong.” (Oswald Chambers). The thought here is that God would love for there to be nothing in the way of perfect communion with us so whenever there is something in the way, it must be because of something in us, in our disposition, in the way we see things. This is also the case with a lot of the problems that non-believers have hearing and accepting the truth of God, their disposition gets in the way, their intellect has no explanation and they simply can not believe what makes no sense to them. When I am in discussions with non-believers, and even with believers who are struggling with difficult doctrines, the questions, comments and assaults generally form themselves around the same pattern; IF - THEN WHY?
IF God wants us all to be with Him in Heaven, THEN WHY doesn’t He just make it happen? IF God is a loving God, THEN WHY would He order the genocide of an entire people? IF God cares about us, THEN WHY would He kill children? IF God is perfect, THEN WHY do we have disease? IF blah, blah, blah, THEN WHY Yackity Smackity? In our study of the Bible we need to change the structure of the questions we ask to really appreciate what God is revealing to us. If the question starts with, “IF,” then we are already going the wrong direction. If the question has the word, “WHY,” in it then it will almost assuredly be an exercise in futility. God rarely ever answers the, “WHY,” questions and even were he to do it, we would never understand the answers. “’For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your, ways my ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.’” Isaiah 55:8-9.
So let’s dispense with the wanting to know, “WHY,” all the time and accept that though He does occasionally give a reason, the Word of God is to be accepted like the answer from your mother when you were two years old and asked, “WHY?” “Because!” That’s your answer, OK? This becomes much easier to accept if we work on changing the word, “IF,” to, “SINCE?” Whenever we ask, “IF…,” we are phrasing things in a manner that says we doubt what God is saying. If we use, “SINCE,” instead, we are accepting what we have been given as truth, even though we don’t necessarily understand the implications surrounding the issue at hand.
“If God is holy and unchanging then why was it OK for incest in the earlier parts of Genesis but not after the law was given through Moses?” This questions the holiness of God, “Is He really?” and also fires an accusation at the nature of God; “It was OK then but not now huh? I thought God couldn’t change! If the Bible can’t contradict itself then why does it?” When we change the, “If’s,” to, “Since’s,” then instead of accusing God of being a liar, we are indicting ourselves for being unknowing. This is were I come up with, “It’s OK to be stupid!” I have no problem accepting that God is smarter than we are and that there will always be questions to which we will never get an answer. I’m OK with that and I laughingly refer to those questions as being on the list I want answered when I get to Heaven. I’m sure that when I get there I won’t care about the answers anyway, but why, if they won’t matter when we enter eternity, should we be so hung up on them here?
Christianity will continue to be a bag of never-ending questions as long as we demand to understand everything. We need to begin with the realization that we, with our finite little brains, will never be able to fully comprehend the infinite! We are human and that’s the way humans are, we have to deal with it. But once we are able to say, “I don’t care what this book tells me, and even though I may not understand the how’s and why’s to everything it says, I WILL believe that it is the truth because Jesus Christ tells me it is true and the Spirit convicts me to believe it is the truth of God.”, then the light will begin to shine. Will it clear up all of our questions? Absolutely not! What it will do though is show us where we are limited. The Holy Spirit will lead us into the truth of God in Christ Jesus and that has to be enough, because that’s all we get.
The Spirit knows what, and how much we are able to receive and He will give us that much. To give us more than we are able to hold would be like pouring 12 ounces of water into a 10 ounce glass, part would be wasted and it would make a mess in the process. Do I understand the prophesies in Isaiah, with the wheels and the eyes and the wings and the ups and downs and all that? NO! I accept that I must not need it right now though or else the Spirit would have opened my eyes to it. This is exactly the reason we need to stay in the word though; what is not revealed with the first read may come in the next, or the 12th, or the 100th read. What we must understand is that the truthfulness of God’s Word does not depend on whether or not we understand or believe it. If the fact that children are going to bed hungry is something that we do not believe, it doesn’t make it any less true because of our disbelief. And because we don’t understand how God was able to part the Red Sea so that Israel could escape from Pharaoh doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen.
“IF,” is a word that will keep us bound to an explanation when there is no explanation to be had, and it will hinder our progression toward a deeper faith. Faith is all about believing; “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” Hebrews 11:1 Faith is not a blind leap though, nor is it one without a net. Faith is reasonable when we begin to exercise it, faith grows faith and the faith that is as small as a mustard seed can become the largest thing in our lives if we will allow it to grow. Whenever we don’t, “Get It,” we have to make ourselves understand that either we are not ready to receive it, we don’t need to know just yet, or it’s a shortcoming on our part, we’re not applying ourselves to the task. Our failure to understand is never because God made a mistake. That’s one thing He can not do!
“SINCE,” is the new, “IF,” Christian. So if you’re ready to get serious… I mean, SINCE this is the most important thing in our lives, it’s time to stop doubting God and simply accept that there are plenty of good reasons to believe that the Bible is truth. If we are the ambassadors of our Lord here on earth… wait… SINCE we have received the command to spread the Gospel and SINCE we are the property of Jesus, bought at a price and not our own, then it’s time to quit fooling around with arguments against God and get in step with the Creator of the universe. It is not a matter of, “If God will judge the world.” It’s, “SINCE.” It’s not, “If Jesus is the only way,” it’s, “SINCE.” It is not whether our actions and testimony matter, it’s SINCE we live…
All for the Glory of Christ
