Do you understand? Do you need to?

As I reflect back on the past year, there are events that I have yet to figure out as to how they fit into God’s plan and His purpose.  I don’t always understand God’s ways; but I heard someone say once, “You can have God or you can have understanding.  You can’t have both.”  Is that true?

Solomon writes in a verse very familiar to most of us, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths.”  With all your heart goes beyond what most of us are willing to do.  As I noted in a previous blog, we “know” we should trust God, but to trust God with all our heart implies we will go beyond our own knowing, our own understanding, to a deeper level of acceptance and trust, or as one author puts it, to a “deep reliance on the Lord, a settled confidence in His care and faithfulness.”

In a book I often like to quote, “The Shack,” the main character is confronted not for his lack of understanding, but his lack of acceptance of God’s methods.  He is accused of judging God.  He is encouraged to, “Give up being His judge and know Papa (the nickname for God) for who He is.  Then you will be able to embrace His love in the midst of your pain, instead of pushing him away with your self-centered perception of how you think the universe should be.”  Ouch!

Maybe it isn’t so much that we need to give up trying to understand God and His methods.  That understanding is often available to us and what God desires for us.  However, we are reminded, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts (Is. 55:9).”  What is truly needed is for us to learn to trust God’s ways.

“For I know the plans I have for you, plans for welfare (shalom, peace and plenty) and not for evil (calamity), to give you a future and a hope (Jer. 29:11).”

Have a blessed New Year!  Godspeed, Phil

God is "with us"

Enjoying Isaiah 9:6 this morning, it reads: 

“Therefore, the Lord Himself will give you a sign.  Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel”

Matthew thought it so significant that he quotes this verse at the beginning of his gospel, and tells us the meaning of the word, “Immanuel.”  It means, “God with us (Matt. 1:23).”

I am reminded of a similar verse in Isaiah 31:8.  Moses is commissioning Joshua to succeed him as the leader of the people of Israel.  In front of all the people, he encourages him to be strong and courageous for, “It is the Lord Himself who goes before you.  He will be with you; He will not leave you or forsake you.  Do not fear or be dismayed.”

Isn’t it awesome that we have a God who goes before us, past Christmas and into the New Year.  It is so reassuring to know He has already been there, He knows what our year will be and all that we will need, and He will be with us.  He will not leave us or forsake us.  We have nothing to fear.

I hope that you have had a great year, but if anything has happened that has led to feeling discouraged or frustrated or afraid.  Jesus also made a similar statement to these others, and Matthew closes his gospel with what Jesus had to say:

“Behold I am with you always, even to the end of the age (Matt. 28:20).”

Merry Christmas and a Blessed New Year!

Godspeed, Phil

From the Head to the Heart

“I know that I can trust God, but…”  I have heard others say it and I say it myself, at the same time realizing that I am much like my children when I tell them I want them to do something (e.g., take the trash out).  Their immediate response is, “I knowww (exaggerated response here with tone of disgust),” and then it doesn’t get done.  I wonder if it annoys God as much as it does me.

I know I can trust God, but I get stuck when I am confronted with trusting God beyond what I am able to see.  Alice Fryling speaks of “moving from the head down to the heart.”  It doesn’t mean I leave my mind out of the picture and trust only in my feelings.  It does mean, as Fryling states, “moving from theoretical knowledge to actual experience (“Seeking God Together”).”

I understand that God has given me a rational mind to use, the ability to predict, plan, and process information as needed.  Paul writes in I Cor. 2, after exposing the futility of the world’s knowledge, that we have received “the Spirit that is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God…spiritual truths.”  These are things that can only be spiritually discerned, according to Paul, for “we have the mind of Christ.”

However, we would be amiss if we fail to nurture our heart relationship with God. Several times in Scripture we are told to “love the Lord your God with all your heart (heart is always first), mind, strength and soul.”  As Robert Mulholland suggests, we need to respond to what we read in Scripture with our heart and spirit rather than only with our “rational, cognitive, intellectual faculties (“Shaped by the Word”).”  In my book (“Here’s My Heart, Lord”) I argue that while God initiates, we are called to respond to God’s heart with our own.

Tohoyiko Kagawa writes, “Love alone introduces God to me.  Love is my sanctuary…I have my sanctuary everywhere I go in the universe.  Where Love is, there God is…Love is the ultimate religion.  Classify me not by creed: I belong to nothing but Love.”

We need to be able to take our faith beyond being able to know that we can trust God.  Blaise Pascal said, “The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.  It is the heart which experiences God, and not the reason.  This, then, is faith: God felt by the heart, not by the reason (“Pennes”).”

 

Godspeed, Phil