In the meantime, as I am preparing to deliver this series, I will probably write several blog posts for you all to share in what God is teaching me throughout this time. I have never been one to sit at the feet of Jesus to learn and keep it to myself; by God's grace I'm just not wired that way!
If you haven't caught it yet, this series will be all about the difficult times that we all go through and how we can deal with them. We will tackle tough questions and circumstances, not only in our own lives, but also issues that are going on in the world around us. Most, if not all of us have at one point asked God why something is happening to us or someone we love.
That question flows out of several different motives. Some of the emotions that flood our hearts are anger, confusion, frustration, sorrow, etc. We go to God knowing that He is in control and that He loves us, but at that time, we are having trouble really believing it. My hope is that we all understand one simple truth through those times...
God answers our "why" with a "Who."
We would do our students a great disservice to teach them that everything has an explanation in this life; that if we wait long enough, God will tell us why things happened to us. That belief is just simply not supported in Scripture. Instead, God always points us back to His character and attributes during the times that we don't understand what is going on.
Just look at the life of Job. He experienced sorrow that most of us will never understand even in part. We know what went on behind the scenes as Satan was attacking, but there is nothing in the Bible that suggests Job ever found out why it all happened. All he knew was that God was still God and that his responsibility was to trust God through it all; even if he never found out why it all happened.
If we will just learn to fix our eyes on Jesus during the hard times in our lives instead of looking at the circumstances, then we will begin to gain grace in our time of need. How do we expect to find strength and grace to journey through a difficult time when all we are looking for is answers? We act as if we would feel better if we knew why. But finding out the answer does not bring healing; we must look to The Healer for that!
God's answer to Job is evidence that He is not all that interested in us finding out why all the time. There are times where we will know and times where we will not. In all circumstances, God is interested in us knowing Him, not knowing why.
That's the premise of this series and it is my prayer that students will hunger for the God who gives grace in times of need. My prayer is that they stop looking for answers and start looking for Jesus; that they would know that finding answers will not satisfy, but finding Jesus will!
Pray with me during this time.
No comments:
Post a Comment