Though the vision tarry, wait for it

Posted on October 21, 2013 by STLloyd

Why does God permit injustice?
Why should God use the wicked to rebuke the just?
The just shall live by faith!

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:  For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.  Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?  Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?  If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?

Could it be that we don’t really know what ”good” is or have the ability to recognize it? We ask for wisdom, but we don’t feel like we understand things any better after praying that prayer for years on end, than we did the first day we prayed it.  We ask God to show us what it is we are supposed to be learning from the difficult and painful trials of life, yet we are as confounded as ever.  Of all the questions we ask God, I have concluded that it is the “why’s” that are rarely if ever revealed to us right away.

Sometimes, the immediate answer is simply, “because I am God, and I say so.  We don’t like it, but we can either accept it, or continue to “kick against the pricks”.  The goads or pricks, were sharp sticks used to prod and influence the oxen the way the master needed it to go, in order to accomplish what the master intended to accomplish.  Kicking against the pricks is to resist that prodding.  Often the ox may not have liked the idea of what it was being directed toward, reacting instinctively with resistance, the more the ox kicked in an attempt to stave off the goad, the more the oxen incurred injury to itself.

In a similar way, when a person is drowning, they instinctively might flail against the efforts of someone trying to rescue them.

God has set a vision in our hearts.  We are often discouraged when things appear unjust, when evil seems to prevail.  We mistakenly think that doing certain “right things” will somehow turn the tide or balance the scales toward the right, and then we expect we can count on some corresponding “correction” in the circumstances to take place.  Give, and it will be given to you.  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  These seem to infer that if you treat others right, then kindness, generosity, forgiveness, grace will return to you.  And the promise is there, but beware of coming to your own conclusions as to what the fulfillment will look like.  You aren’t free to form your own expectations.  

Give of what you have, be obedient, and good things will come to you.  Just not necessarily right away, and don’t assume you’ll necessarily recognize them as such.  Rest assured something infinitely better than anything you could hope for or imagine, will poured into your life, even if it be stored away in Heaven for you to collect at a later date.

The problem with our expectations are that they are always confined by and to our very limited and finite scope of sight and understanding, and that most wretched of all considerations; time.

It remains true that God’s ways are not our ways, His thoughts, not our thoughts.
It is not wrong to question God, to be confounded, at times, in our sincere effort and desire to understand what it is He is doing, in our circumstances.
Of making many books, there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.  We can speculate, ruminate, theorize, philosophize, navel-gaze from “here ’til kingdom come”.  We can be mighty proud of it too.  God looks for the simple, unpretentious, unambitious, unadulterated faith of a child.

Job and his friends questioned God.  Jobs friends questioned with disdain, while Job questioned with sincerity and from a broken heart.  Humbly.

Ecclesiastes, Habakkuk, the Apostle Paul, who once was Saul and persecuted Christians in his zeal to uphold the law, and Job. These portions of scripture deal with some of the more heavy-hitting issues of life.  The unanswered questions.  The unfathomable ways of God.  The injustices which seem to go unaddressed.  Job was stripped of all he had, and by God’s permission.  Solomon, in Ecclesiastes, had lived his entire life, as the wisest man in all of scripture, at the end of His life, he was condensing all He had learned, down to it’s barest essence.  All is vanity.  Pleasure is vain. There is joy in simple labor. There is a time for everything.  Life’s not fair, rain falls on the just and unjust.  Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man, for God shall bring every work into judgment, whether it be good or whether it be evil.

We cry out in sincere desire to understand, and stand frustrated, feeling thwarted in our attempt to gain insight, we kick against the pricks, wanting no more to do with whatever it is God is doing until and unless, He answer the cry of our heart, when all the while what He is doing is influencing us, creating a new heart within us which will eventually learn to ask the proper questions.  Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.  But first, He gives your heart new desires, because He knows the plans He has for you, and you, quite simply, do not.

We imagine we are in a tug-of-war with God.  Is that a contest any mere mortal can ever win?  Really?

God will not be conformed.  Forget it.  He will not.  HE. IS. ALREADY. PERFECT.
It is we who are incomplete.  In our understanding.  In our aspirations.  Even in what we think we need from Him.

God has set eternity in our hearts.  He has preserved a residual, though pale, knowledge of what was lost in Eden.  We know we were made for more than this,  but exist now in a world far, far removed from what it should have been and once was, but will be again.
And we wonder at our frustration?  We wonder at the aching void within?  The yearning?
Wonder  not at why we are nearly inconsolable, but at how we could ever be even remotely happy with this world as it now is.

We are not of this world.  It is not our home.
It hurts to breathe here.
If it doesn’t then you have become too comfortable.  You have settled.
God does not prod us with the pricks out of some heinous pleasure at our misery.  Shame on us for thinking so!

Does He owe us answers?  Job didn’t seem to think so after God finally did respond.  You see, sometimes we question God out of ignorance.  But there is ignorance we can’t help, and then there is ignorance we can do something about.  Have we even bothered to know about God, the things He has clearly and deliberately set down in writing about Himself?  Until we have availed ourselves of the knowledge He has made available, I should think it is right nervy and presumptuous of us to accuse Him of holding out on us in the areas of our own personal interests.

Job may have momentarily allowed himself to be influenced by friends who knew God even less well than Job himself did, but he was also very quick to realize the error of his position and repent of it.

God didn’t hold back while he reminded Job what he did know.  He answered with His own questions:
Where were you, Job, when I laid the foundations of the world?  Who was it that told the sea, you may come this far and no further?  Was that you, Job?  Can you bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?   Who set the stars in the sky?
As I see it, there are two options when it comes to those questions in our lives to which God seems to withhold His answers.  We can walk on, living by faith and not sight, waiting expectantly for HIs eventual response, or we can plop down right where we are in a misguided “sit-down-strike”, and give God the silent treatment, much to our own detriment.

Either He is God or He isn’t.  He owes us none other than what He has promised to give us, and then only because of His own nature, must He fulfill that which He promised.  God will not, nay, cannot operate on your terms.  If He could or would, what kind of God would He be?

I’m afraid it boils down to that fact that He is God, and we are not; that dreaded parental proclamation, “because I am the parent, and I say so”, has probably never set well with any son or daughter who ever lived, and likely never will become any more palatable or easy to swallow, but there it is.

Take it or delude yourself into walking away from it.  When you walk away from the truth, though, you need never expect to find satisfaction or peace or justification, and certainly not answers.

We don’t have to like the set-up, but learning acceptance while retaining our faith in His ultimate good intentions and plans for us, is merely the prudent course.

Surrender!  Just Surrender already. Don’t keep kicking against the pricks, inflicting more self-injury and then railing at God about the cuts and bruises.  You will not overpower God.  But when you finally stop resisting, you will find those concerns and questions you were focused on, were probably not even relevant.  God is not the enemy.  God is not the one condemning you, Christian.  He is not punishing, tempting, or toying with you.  We struggle against principalities and powers in this life as it is.  What twisted sense or logic is there in resisting God on top of it?  When will you realize He is making you into something you have no capacity to even conceive of.   Stop trying to over-ride that.  Just let it be.  Let Him have His way.  Yield!

Surrender!

God has a vision for the finished product of you, and it will be fulfilled. HE who began a good work in you, will be faithful to complete it.  Commit thy works unto the Lord, and your thoughts will be established.  The Lord hath made all things for Himself: yea; even the wicked for the day of evil.

*Image source: http://www.tapestryproductions.com/_productimages/121032.jpg

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Habakkuk 1, 2
Job 38-39
Acts 26:14
Ecclesiastes 12
Proverbs 16