Author: Tom Sanders

When God doesn’t follow your plan

image What do you do when your plans come apart and everything seems to go wrong. When all your hard work seems to have been a waste and your left feeling wasted and confused by life. Every one of us has had times in our lives where this is exactly what has happened. Life for everyone of us has it highs and its lows. And sometimes the lows can be extremely difficult and painful. There are times in all our lives where life simply sucks. There is no other way to describe the feeling inside.

Often when things fall apart many of us tend to blame God, especially when things are extremely painful. The death of a loved one can be extremely traumatic. And often when we have prayed and prayed and prayed for God to do something and they still die we can become very angry with God. Or when a major business deal falls through. Or maybe it is the ministry you felt called to do has come apart. As Christians this can be an extremely sensitive area we face as we talk with people about Christ, because everyone, everywhere faces extremely difficult lows in our lives. Some more painful than others. I cannot say I understand the pain of a child or a spouse passing away. That is a pain I can’t say I would wish on anyone. But in my own life there has been some extremely painful experiences. Some where I wished I could simply just die so the pain would stop. No one is able to corner the market on pain. We all face it. The pain you face may be different, but it is still pain none the less.

The most common question people ask when things go wrong is “Why?” Why did this have to happen? Why didn’t You heal her? Why, why, why…. The why’s can be endless and are as various as the pain we face. We all wonder why, and then look for some reason to justify the reason for the pain we are in. I have heard many Christians as God why, and get very frustrated when there is no explanation. I know I have been angry at times when God explain Himself in my life. We may never know the answer to the question why.

In my own life I have come to understand that there is purpose in my pain. It may not be pain for a purpose, as many suppose. Sometimes it is just pain. I know that God may not have caused the pain in my life. The pain usually is my fault, or the mistakes of people I care about. We all cause a lot of pain for ourselves, and pain for those we hold close. So God often doesn’t cause the pain, but He did allow it. If God is sovereign He could have simply said no and stopped it from happening. So then the pain has purpose in my life. God always is able to use our pain and turn it into something beautiful. One of my favourite scripture passages is Romans 8:28 ” We are confident that God is able to orchestrate everything to work toward something good and beautiful when we love Him and accept His invitation to live according to His plan.” (The Voice)

The pain we face can have purpose. We will probably never be able to understand why because God doesn’t think like we do. His wisdom completely supersedes our wisest of wise. ” because the wisdom of this rebellious and broken world looks like foolishness when put next to God.” 1Corinthians 3:19 The Voice, and ” This foolish plan of God is wiser than the wisest of human plans, and God’s weakness is stronger than the greatest of human strength.” 1Corinthians 1:25 NLT. Asking God to explain Himself to us is like a three year old asking for an explanation from their parents. The level of understanding isn’t even close.

We may never know the purpose of our pain in this life. But one thing I do know is God always has our best in mind for everything He does or allows, and it will all work out in the end. Sometimes the pain we face today is what pushed us to achieve the best we achieve tomorrow.

Is Your God to nice?

I have begun to be challenged by a new idea.  I recently read a book which asked  a question.  Is your God to nice?  I have to say it made me a little uncomfortable.  I have gone through many seasons in my walk with God where He revealed more of Himself to me and I came to know Him a little better.  Times where my understanding of who He is changed.  I feel myself at the brink of another change.

The main focus of most Christians today, at least the ones I have met, is that God loves.  In fact you don’t have to go into a church or talk to a Christian to hear that statement.  It has been a part of our culture in North America for many many years.  And while this is a true statement, because God does deeply incredibly love us, it I think has left us with an unbalanced view of God.  It has caused us view of God which is more like Santa Claus than the creator of everything and the one who came to save us, and who will come again to judge us.

I have heard many many Christians say in one way or another “God sees my heart and He know how hard I try..”  I wish that was all it took.  We live in a society that sees God as condoning our behaviors and patting us on the head saying “Its ok.  You’ll do better next time.”

Many years ago I came to personally experience the extravagant indescribable love that God has for me.  It was a powerful life changing experience.  One that I still have trouble describing because that kind of love defies description.  And my prayer for everyone is like Paul “I pray that you will know the love of Christ. His love goes beyond anything we can understand.” Ephesians 3:19 NLV

Our problem comes if we only focus on God’s love.  Because the God who says “I am the Lord, and I do not change.” Malachi 3:6 NLT is the same God who destroyed whole cities and nations because of their sin.

We have shifted away from a God whose justice demanded a high price for our wrong.  A God who knowing we could never pay that price, and loving us to much to leave us there paid for our choices and decisions on the cross.  We have lost the cost of sin in our lives today.  We have an attitude that God forgives and we can just carry on.  Everyone of us does wrong every day.  And every wrong we do is the reason Jesus suffered and died the way He did.

We serve a God who still punishes sin.  Many times in the new testament God struck people dead in churches.  People lost their sight, or voice.  People who took communion with the wrong attitude even became sick and died (1 Corinthians 11:27-30).  I think God is asking His church today to change our heart and put aside our impressions of who He is and to begin to seek Him as He is, for who He is like never before.  It is time we asked ourselves “Is your God to nice?”

It doesn’t make sense

image

There is a major push today for everything that happens to make sense to us.  We strive to understand everything from the celestial patterns of the stars above to the very small idiosyncrasies that we all have. We struggle and strive to make everything fit into a neat and tidy box where everything fits and has a place. And when it doesn’t many of us struggle with why.

Every one of us from the smartest person to the least intelligent struggle with trying to make our lives make sense.  The reality we all live in, even though we do our best to ignore it, is that life really doesn’t make sense.  We fight and struggle to make all the pieces fit, and we are sometimes successful for a time.  But then something happens.  Life enters our perfectly aligned world and scrambles all our pieces again.  For many of us this can be extremely traumatic depending on our circumstances and how badly we need our lives to be in order.  Life just refuses to be squeezed into our understanding of what we think life is meant to be.

The same thing happens when we try to make God fit our understanding.  I have spoken with many Christians who don’t understand what God is doing and often write it off because it doesn’t fit with their understanding.  And as a result completely miss out on a tremendous blessing and life changing encounter with the God who created them and deeply desires to be known and experienced by them.  It is unfortunate that this happens and my heart goes out to them every time.  Not everything that happens can be called a move of God.  But a great many moves of God have gone ignored and missed completely because they didn’t fit with our expectations or understanding.

We are not the first ones and definitely will not be the last ones to struggle with this.  Jesus himself walked the earth and many people were powerfully blessed and impacted by Him.  But a great many refused to receive from Him because He didn’t fit with their expectations and understanding.  Jesus didn’t make sense to a great many people.  The Pharisees were the ones who prided themselves on knowing and following God.  They even bragged about being able to know what God was doing.  “If we were alive when the prophets of old were here, we wouldn’t have stoned them, but would have known what God was doing and have surely followed.(my loose translation)”.  And yet they missed completely who Jesus was.  Jesus Himself said to them “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.”John 5:39-40 ESV

Many times we miss the moves of God because we have expectations that God does things a certain way and are guilty of missing what God is doing because we rely on our understandings to reveal what God will do, rather than be open to God speaking to us and revealing Himself in ways we don’t expect.God often moves in ways which cause us to say “That doesn’t make sense”.  Our task is to be open to what God is doing and allow Himself to reveal Himself to us and be willing to set aside our expectations and understandings and allow Him to be who He is, not who we expect and understand Him to be.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,”declares the Lord.” Isaiah 55:8 NIV

We will always get ourselves into trouble and miss out completely on what God wants to do if we rely on our own wisdom and understanding.  God is moving in our world and in our time, changing and impacting lives.  Will we choose to be open and apart of what He is building, or will we hold tightly to our own understanding and expectations and miss out?