Month: June 2013

Not Out but Through
Copyright by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved

Taking the easy way out in hard circumstances is a perennial temptation in the Christian life. The desire to follow the path of least resistance is a function of fallen human nature. It comes in the form of the voice in our head that tells us ease is more important than building our character and comfort more important than being authentic witnesses of God’s grace in our times of trouble.

Most of us want to avoid pain and, in and of itself, there is nothing wrong with that desire. The sin comes when we chose such avoidance at any cost, including the cost of ignoring the will of God. Suffering is sometimes necessary if we want to stay on the path of obedience. Our Lord uses trials and tribulations to refine His children as gold is purified by fire. Such refining is painful during the time we undergo it. There is no way around this truth. It is only later, in retrospect, that we realize the experience has brought about something so blessed that it was worth the hurt of the moment.

There are times in the life of every Christian when we must decide whether we are willing to endure pain, be it emotional or physical, if that is God’s will. In such circumstances our temptation is to try to avoid the pain by “opting out” of a trial rather than trusting Him to bring us through it and out to the other side. If we give in to this temptation we are in danger of hurting ourselves, and sometimes others, in a way that will be far more painful in the end.

Most would agree that a trip to the dentist for a root canal or a tooth extraction is an unpleasant experience. Such procedures are, to say the least, uncomfortable but we know that the result of the procedure is worth the pain involved because we will be able to enjoy healthy teeth for many more years. Despite knowing this we can decide to ignore the condition, hoping that the pain will go away. We may even foolishly let it run its course because we are so afraid of the immediate pain of visiting the dentist.

The consequences of these kinds of avoidance decisions are always harmful to our bodies and souls in the end. Unfortunately, beyond that, we may also hurt others in the process. This is especially true when we are trying to win someone to Christ. If a non-believer sees a Christian unwilling to endure necessary pain, for the welfare of themselves or others, that non-believer might be less convicted of the truth of our Savior’s own self-sacrifice for them. They will see cowardice in us and that perception compromises our witness and makes our faith seem far less authentic and attractive.

It should again be stated that the desire to avoid pain is not inherently sinful. Jesus Himself asked that His own great cup of pain be taken from Him. The fear He experienced in the Garden of Gethsemane was unimaginably intense and completely understandable from a human perspective. The Son of Man did not want to experience the agony of the cross and who among us would? But obedience to His Father was more important to Him than avoiding the anguish required to redeem the human race. Beyond that He knew that the future joy of having many new brothers and sisters in the Kingdom of God would be worth the pain.

May we, too, have that perspective on the unavoidable and often necessary pain we must face in this life. For the sake of our Lord, others and ourselves may we never take the “easy way out” when the only way out is through.

Human Desire and God’s Timing
Copyright by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved.

When God does not act on our behalf in the way, or at the time, we would expect Him to we might be tempted to think that He does not love us. If God does not immediately give us what we desire we might wonder if He is our champion or our enemy. Sometimes our response is even anger towards our Lord. Such is the reaction of fallen human nature to not getting its way when and how it wants it.

It is disconcerting to realize that we sometimes react to God the way a small child reacts to its parents when those parents challenge its will. Who has not seen (or been) a frustrated six-year-old screaming “I Hate You!” at a mother who will not buy the candy bar he or she wants? The innate human response to not getting our way with someone is to decide that someone does not have our best interest in mind. Anger usually follows.

In this world even the desires of a child of God are often frustrated. The reason for this is that our flesh, the “old man” who, though dying, still dwells within us, sometimes influences us to want the right thing in the wrong way or at the wrong time. For instance many un-married Christians have a God-given desire for a spouse but choose relationships with people who God knows would not be good for them or the other person. Or perhaps they desire the right partner, but one or both of them are not yet at the level of maturity required to make a marriage work. The result is frustration, a believer’s legitimate desire for a good thing thwarted by the sovereign wisdom of God. The pain of such denial is real. When it happens to us it often seems like we cannot help but react.

This is where the temptation to believe a lie about the Lord rears its ugly head. The pain we experience in not receiving something we desperately want, something that makes sense to us to receive, and receive right now, can be intense. We begin to wonder if the God we believe in really has our best interests at heart. We begin to wonder if He is against us, and if He is against us who can be for us? Sometimes we lash out at a God we have come to think is a cruel parent, perhaps like the darkly imperfect human parents who raised some of us. For that matter, even the best human parents make mistakes.

But the God of the cross is anything but a bad parent.

He is, in fact, the perfect parent. No one knows us better than the One who created us. No one loves us better than the One who died for us and has redeemed us. The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ knows and loves us perfectly and wants to bless us more deeply than we could ever imagine. However He also knows what we need, and when we need it, far better than we do. As obvious as this might be to us intellectually our hearts often have a harder time accepting it. It takes longer for our hearts to grow in trust than our minds.

The answer is the acceptance that coming to fully trust in our God is a long process. We believe but we still need to continue to ask Him to help us in our unbelief, to be prepared to grow in faith over the long term. A Giant Redwood tree is not made in a day and neither is our faith. Growth in faith tends to be incremental. Patience does not come overnight. When the Psalmist tells us to “wait on the Lord” he means, among other things, that a patient heart will receive its desire at exactly the right time. God gives us the desires of our heart when the giving will do us the most good. If we wish to be wise, and enjoy life in Christ to the full, we do well to accept that getting the things we want, even desperately want, will not be according to our imperfect schedule but according to His perfect one.

Wanting What We Need
Copyright 2013 by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved

We do not need the “God” we want or the “God” we do not want. We only need God as He truly is, irrespective of either our positive or negative desires.

An overabundance of subjectivity is part of our fallenness as a race. Being emotional beings is not a problem in and of itself (God Himself has strong emotions.) The problem comes when our passions become more of a driver in our spiritual lives than they should be. Feelings are not intrinsically sinful. What we do with them can be.

At any given time our emotions can be leading us closer to our Lord or farther away from Him. This is a function of how accurately those emotions are painting spiritual reality. It does not so much matter if they seem to us positive or negative; most of us tend to know both poles of feeling on a regular basis. This is part of our nature as bearers of the image of a passionate God. What is far more important is how much credence we are giving to them as far as what they may seem to tell us about His nature. It is in allowing either extreme to define our perception of God that we often get into trouble.

Emotions and desires are intimately intertwined in the human heart. We tend to want what we feel is good and not want what we feel is bad. This may be an obvious point, but it bears repeating because how we deal with desires that are mediated by our emotions has profound ramifications for our spiritual lives. It can be argued that nothing is more important for us than who we ultimately decide God is because that is the greatest determinant in whether we decide for or against Him. We dare not make that decision based solely, or even wholly, on whom we want Him to be or not be; to paraphrase the discovery of Moses God “is Who He is”, nothing more and nothing less.

Whether we like it or not Who we desire Him to be is irrelevant to Who He is. It, however, is very relevant to who and where we will be eternally. It is vital that we come to know God as He really is. How to best get there is the problem we all face (and it should be stated here that the answer to this problem is not necessarily to elevate human reason at the expense of human emotion. Both our cognitive and emotive perceptions are equally fallen.)

This is where both God and His word come to the fore. The best way we can arrive at a true knowledge of Him, in defiance of what may be a faulty system that amounts to wish-fulfillment, is through a Holy-Spirit inspired knowledge of the Bible. We can learn to apprehend God’s revelation of Himself in the pages of scripture, but the only way this happens is through both immersing ourselves in meditation on that scripture and praying that it will be made real to us by His Spirit. We must also ask that this true knowledge of the Divine will become the one thing we most deeply desire. As this prayer is answered both the Bible and the Spirit behind it will become our “avenues” to Objective Reality. Our subjective desires must yield to this reality if we are ever to come to know the Lord we profess to serve. Only then we will recognize Him not as who we want or do not want Him to be, but as who He really is.

This may not be what we initially want, but it is what we finally need.