“Jesus answered him,
“What I’m doing you don’t understand now,
but afterward you will know.””
John 13:7
In the words of one of my sassy youth teens, "Yaaaaaaaas."
We hit a circumstance in our life where this seems to be the case, asking God: "God, what in the world are You doing?!"
Not so much with a questioning tone than an accusatory one. Our hearts might be full of tension or anxiety or some other feeling about the future, and in not understanding why things are not going our way we sort of feel in our nerves what our mouths are too chicken to say. Things like:
"What did I do wrong to make You so mean to me?"
"How did I incur Your wrath to be put in this situation?"
"Why won't You be more helpful?!"
"Where are You when I need You the most?!"
"Why do I even bother asking..."
"Your way is not that great."
"God, I don't like You right now."
The last thought is the worst. Because then the guilt hits you like a volleyball, smack into your face, breaking your nose, causing blood to drip down and everyone stares at the mess you are. You are down. You feel the pain, you see the blood, and things are not the way they're supposed to be.
Your heart is racing, eyes are scanning the situation, mind is fuzzy, and nothing explains why you do what you do next. You might cry or get up stone-faced like you don't care, but behind whatever external facade you put up, you are hurt. I'm not talking about the actual volleyball, I'm talking about the part where you finally admit you don't really like God, and that means he doesn't really like you either. If we believed He liked us, let alone loved us, and believed that He was God and His word was true, then we would be happy campers in any circumstance. It's like a billion dollars at the end of a single day of shoveling dirt. In other words, His "worth-ness" or "worthy-ship" for whatever we are asked to endure will be incomparably light and easy.
1. I believe in Jesus.
2. Everything that happens to me will work out for my good (Romans 8:28)
3. Nothing that happens to me will be bad in the end. (Romans 8:28)
4. The absence of anything leading to something bad means that all things lead to something good. (Romans 8:28)
5. Everything in my life is good.
Wow. Is everything always stemming from "all will be well" or "crap! What the heck?!" Like the centurion who cried out desperately when something seemingly "bad" was happening in his life (his boy was harming himself and doing things that threatened the safety of his life), do you find yourself realizing you suddenly want to believe, but how can you when things are like this?! (Mark 9:24). How can we believe in Jesus when there are bad things happening in our lives, like suicides, rape, and diseases. What the heck God?! What are You doing up there? Why aren't You helping out or preventing these bad things from happening if You're so real, so good and so for us?
We turn the tables on God.
I believed for good things to always happen, but God didn't follow through on my expectations. We secretly might discover the premises as follows:
1. I believe in Jesus ...to give me everything good according to what I deem is good.
2. Everything that happens to me will work out for my good (Romans 8:28)...the way I want it to work out.
3. Nothing that happens to me will be bad in the end. (Romans 8:28)...and I'll be able to tell because it won't ever be that bad to begin with.
4. The absence of anything leading to something bad means that all things lead to something good. (Romans 8:28)...and I'll be able to tell because nothing will look or feel bad in the first place.
5. Everything in my life is good....because that's the way I see it.
There is no faith in this sequence, no necessary trust or hope is involved. It's all nerves and sight. What you see and what you feel is the truth in absence of faith about any given situation or circumstance. This includes you if you are of those seeing or feeling their singleness as something bad, or their marriage as something bad, their kids (or lack thereof) as something bad, their looks as something bad, their age as something bad, their financial situation as something bad, their health as something bad, their work as something bad, their families as something bad, their relationships as something bad, their life as something bad.
An absence of faith in what we see and feel will become our truth. Without faith there is no capacity to believe in Jesus, only a knowledge of Him, but all the right words and understanding will be dumped into the trash if you base your knowledge on what you see and feel. I see this, I feel this, and so it must be this.
Rather, what would it be like to live by faith? To see this, to feel this, but then to grab something not felt or seen. It sounds crazy, how does one even handle something they neither see nor feel? It is impossible, like telling a child to glibe. The child wonders...what is glibe? They have never seen this word nor do they know what it feels like to glibe as an indication that they are actually glibing. Unless I tell them what it is. Unless I say glibing is when you glide across the floor while bobbing your head. Now, I made that up, but I wanted to show how faith is a lot of like the word glibe to anyone who has never seen or felt something they were told to do.
But we were told. We were told by God that faith is believing without seeing that God is real, good, and loves you. That Jesus died for you. That you are forgiven. That God is powerful and more powerful than anything that you might have once thought was a threat to you. Faith is removing the flag of truth from what you see and feel to what God has said. You plant the flag of truth in His Word. You plant your flag of truth in His word. That is faith. To uproot what you thought was real and true off of the land of sight and feeling, and onto the fertile soil of the Word. The Word is Jesus. You plant your flag in Christ, because where your truth is there your life will be also. He says, faith is this....and like the child who was told what glibing is, we can proceed trustfully by the words which defined what we were told.
Where is your flag of truth? Is it planted in the land of sight and feeling? Or is it planted in the Word, Jesus? We have the words of life because the Word became flesh and told us Himself that this is the way. The Word said God is the only one true God, that all our sins have been forgiven fully and sufficiently by His body, and now we have all the promises of God! Is your flag of truth in that place or another place?
Test your self.
What makes us not like the very God who gave us everything, including the promise that everything is going to work out for our good, except that our flag of truth was planted in the land of the enemy of God? Whatever is not for God is not in Him, for all things exist in Him, and apart from Him all things die.
"yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist."
-1 Corinthian 8:6
“I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in Me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without Me.”
-John 15:5
I hear myself and others say this all the time, "but it's so hard!"
It's only hard because your truth is not in Him. Simple as that. If your truth is in the Word, it's very simple. Allllllll this that we see and feel...is what we see and feel, but all the truth about what it all means is in what the Word says. It doesn't mean we won't see and feel, it just means that what we see and feel will need to get its meaning from the Word not from culture or friends or anything or anyone else.
It's like looking through a pair of goggles underwater, it looks and feels murky, but what does it mean when you see a school of fish? What informs you about what you see? Isn't it what you know from what you've heard or read? Maybe a magazine with words or a friend or teacher's words come to mind and they inform you about what you see. Words inform us of the meaning of what we see and feel. We are either being informed by The Word or by words elsewhere.
Jesus was apt to prepare his disciples against these "elsewhere" words like when Peter's words were “Lord, are You going to wash my feet?" (These words sound innocent, but they are not The Word.)
The Word to Not-The-Word:
“What I’m doing you don’t understand now,
but afterward you will know.”
Not-The-Word to The Word:
“You will never wash my feet — ever! ”
(Not-The-Word has the appearance of humility but not the substance)
The Word to Not-The-Word:
“If I don’t wash you, you have no part with Me.”
Not-The-Word said to The Word:
“Lord, not only my feet, but also my hands and my head.”
The Word to Not-The-Word:
“One who has bathed,” Jesus told him, “doesn’t need to wash anything except his feet, but he is completely clean. You are clean, but not all of you.”
For He knew who would betray Him. This is why He said, “You are not all clean.”
-John 13:6-11
I encourage you all to pray with The Word. Allow your words to speak to The Word, and listen. Let your Not-The-Word approach The Word in communication and friendship.
We speak not to be The Word, but to know The Word. Your you comes to His Him, and only one of you will be Lord and the other will be servant.
So my words are free and must necessarily meet The Word because only then will I know and be informed of the truth regarding my words. Is what I see and feel finding its meaning in The Word or in my words? I will only know by what my words actually are and what The Word is. I need both a knowledge of what I see and feel and the knowledge of what He says in His Word.
Plant your flag in the Word and live in the places between the land of the Word and the land of what you see and feel. You can be in many places over the span of 80-100 years, but you can only plant the single flag of truth at one place at a time. Keep it planted in The Word.
Don't just assume your flag is planted in The Word, and it be found not. Or that it is planted in Not-The-Word rather than in The Word, when it is. Don't assume, period. But strive for more certainty and find in the striving a meeting with God to be where it all gets resolved.
One way to test whether your flag is planted in The Word is by the measure and depth of your hope. The absence of bad is not just to be okay, but it is the celebration for the deep hope of something glorious.
There is no lukewarm Christian.
Romans 3:4 says,
"Let God be true,
and every man a liar."
And celebrate that! Because those other words in you or in others or in culture, are usually condemning and/or threaten your life. But let God be true and every man a liar. There is no threat that comes up against The Word, which has said:
"I am willing! Be made clean!" (Mathew 8:3)
"Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” (Mark 5:34)
"I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6)
"“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom." (Luke 12:32)
"And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age." (Matthew 28:20)
"Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.
And he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” (Luke 7:48)
"Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be afraid, for I am your God. I will strengthen you; I will help you; I will hold on to you with My righteous right hand." (Isaiah 41:10)
"Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 5:3)
"When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come." (John 16:13)
"Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him." (Matthew 6:8)
"Your faith has healed you." (Mark 10:52)
"But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." (1 John 2:1)
"(Nothing) will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Roman 8:39)
"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid." (John 14:27)
"In that day you will not ask Me anything. "I assure you: Anything you ask the Father in My name, He will give you." (John 16:23)
“Aren’t two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s consent. But even the hairs of your head have all been counted. So don’t be afraid therefore; you are worth more than many sparrows.” (Matthew 10:29-31)
Phew, and so many more from The Word. Herein lies my truth flag from which I get all my meaning from what I see and feel. Sometimes it's right away, but most of the time it's with much fighting and resisting temptation and crying and suffering that I am carried from one land to the one where The Word is. And I plant the flag again and again and again, because I can. Why wouldn't I? Is it too much work to shovel for a day at a time to get an eternity of reward? This life is 80-100 years long, or shorter, and we know this for a fact.
“For if the dead are not raised,
Christ has not been raised.
If we have put our hope in Christ
for this life only,
we should be pitied more than anyone.”
1 Corinthians 15:16, 19
“But God gives it a body as He wants, and to each of the seeds its own body. Not all flesh is the same flesh; there is one flesh for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is different from that of the earthly ones. There is a splendor of the sun, another of the moon, and another of the stars; for one star differs from another star in splendor. So it is with the resurrection of the dead: Sown in corruption, raised in incorruption; sown in dishonor, raised in glory; sown in weakness, raised in power; sown a natural body, raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.
However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, then the spiritual.
And just as we have borne the image of the man made of dust, we will also bear the image of the heavenly man. Brothers, I tell you this: Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, and corruption cannot inherit incorruption. Listen! I am telling you a mystery: We will not all fall asleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the blink of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we will be changed. For this corruptible must be clothed with incorruptibility, and this mortal must be clothed with immortality. When this corruptible is clothed with incorruptibility, and this mortal is clothed with immortality, then the saying that is written will take place: Death has been swallowed up in victory.
But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! Therefore, my dear brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the Lord’s work, knowing that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”
1 Corinthians 15:38-44, 46, 49-54, 57-58
I will stop here only because I may end up copying and pasting the entire bible in one post haha.
Jmegrey
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