The Uncomfortable Places

"I can trust Him in the uncomfortable places where even what I'm looking at with my physical eyes seems fake."

SENNACHERIB RODE up with an army to conquer Jerusalem and began making threats. The men of Jerusalem stared down at him from the wall, saying nothing. Amidst all his egotistic grandstanding were a lot of words about the other lands he’d conquered whose gods hadn’t helped them one bit. “So don’t think your God, Israel, will come to your rescue. He is nothing to me.”

Yeah, well. Watch this. That’d be my reply, at least. Since the God of Israel, the God of the Hebrews is THE ONLY LIVING GOD.

It’s repeated in the Old and New Testaments that idols made with hands cannot breathe or talk or think. Yet, men of many nations created them over and over again. If I walk outside to my planting table and start praying to it, nothing’s going to happen. It’s made of glass and metal. The rocking chair nearby is wood. It may soothe my need for movement, but it isn’t going to talk. Man’s imagination created Zeus and Apollo and dozens of other entities that people today still bow down to. They wrote stories about them to make them appear godlike, or at least, man’s image of a god. But the truth is, manmade gods are all so … human.

We’ve built superheroes galore in entertainment, and that’s all they are, entertainment. You will never see an actual Spiderman or Superman or any of these new ones I have no idea what that is. But you can see the God of all things.

There are a couple verses in Exodus that stop me when I read them. Moses was about to ascend the mountain to receive the stone tablets. He sprinkled the blood of the covenant as he’d been instructed, then he and Aaron and the seventy elders came up higher from the camp of Israel, approaching God. Then we read:

“And they saw the God of Israel: and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness. And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand: also they saw God, and did eat and drink.” (Exodus 24:10-11)

They saw God. This is before Moses spends forty days and nights on the mountain and descended with his face blinding from God’s Presence. This is before Moses pleads to see the glory of the Lord, and it is granted in a measure. This is before Israel begs Aaron to make them a god to worship. The leaders of Israel saw the living God, their God, who’d promised them a land of plenty, saw His feet and the floor of sapphire. Yet, a short time later, they worshiped the work of their hands. Nothing but metal cast in the fire.

Doubt begs an answer. What we aren’t certain of, we will search to supply the reason and how to solve it. Doubt leads to outright rebellion eventually, the mind focused on itself and what limited knowledge it has. Arrogance and ego often fill in the holes. Because nobody wants to live continually under doubt. Nobody wants to quit seeking for a salve for their doubt and instead, allow someone else complete control. All men are fickle, so we think. No one can be trusted.

God of heaven asks our surrender (James 4:7). He wants complete control. Not to make us into robots, but for our good (Romans 8:28). We surrender even our thinking. First, we admit we are thinking wrong, then we accept His way is right.

We’re unreasonable about it. I know because I’ve fought this battle with God. He wanted me to do something in a new way. But even though He is God, that made me uncomfortable, so I did it how it felt good to me. Even having seen a vision of God, though not on the scale of Exodus or John’s Revelation, the vision showed me He is real and in control of my life, though I sometimes do what I want instead. Choosing to surrender now and to lean on Him, hour-by-hour, every day, has shown me His faithfulness. I can trust Him in the uncomfortable places where even what I’m looking at with my physical eyes seems fake. Though I want to see the ending far in advance, I can let Him have what I cannot see and trust Him to take me there.

“This is what it means to trust God: We will be sure about the things that we hope for. We will be sure in our minds about things that we cannot even see.” (Hebrews 11:1, EASY)

All we believe that He will do for us comes down to our trust in WHO HE IS. We know His character, that He is good and faithful and patient and kind and the source of Truth, and so we let go of our manipulation of our future. This is what Israel was doing, what they continued to do that led to them wandering the wilderness for forty years. They feared entering the Promised Land, they said “for the sake of their children,” yet it was their own fears that caused them to turn back, preferring what they knew in Egypt to what God, who they’d seen, could do with a mighty hand. In the end, God led their children in and gave them prosperity. They saw none of it.

Self-choice made in fear will lead us the wrong way. God is not the author of fear or confusion (2 Timothy 1:7). He tempts no one with evil (James 1:13). He seeks our peace, to allay our fears and give us confidence. He will step in and bring calm, when we seek Him. But fear takes many forms and sometimes it is that arrogance that would cause a Pharaoh to ride his chariots into the midst of an obviously supernaturally parted sea. Or make the remark Aaron did when his brother, Moses, asked him about the golden calf. “I dunno. It just came out of the fire.” Yeah, right.

Point is, trust God and not yourself. Treasure those things He shares with you, divine moments connecting you with Him in a higher place, and give Him your doubts. Even when you can’t seem to see why God needs you to go that way, when He doesn’t fully answer, although you ask, but you know His hand is upon you, trust Him.

“You, Eternal One, are my sustenance and my life-giving cup. In that cup, You hold my future and my eternal riches.” (Psalm 16:5, VOICE)

“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?” (Matthew 7:11)

Image by Joshua Woroniecki from Pixabay


----------
Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com