The answer is God, and you wouldn’t believe the question

We are all living a shattering reality, no matter the spin anyone puts on it.  It’s nothing but tragic that the death toll rises by the day, the health and medical professionals at breaking point, funerals attended by the barest few, the beginning of the end in the way of life as we’ve come to know it.  Sound wrong?  It might sound wrong, but that’s the reality we stare down.

What is the point in me putting it so darkly?

Now, if you will humour me, don’t dare stop reading.  To face the pain of the reality I spell out for you above, I’m leading you toward God — the true, everlasting and living God — not away.

Only when we come face to face with the devastating truth, that we do not control life, and that historically these kinds of events have happened, do we begin to wrestle with the true nature of this harrowingly real life.

Where does it leave us?  I’ll tell you where.  It leaves us in our undoing.  It leaves us in a lament we cannot shake.  We’re left in a state of not being able to fix what is broken.  And there — nowhere else — do we find God.

At the end of ourselves.  At the end of our self-sufficiency, where we are compelled to say before the Lord of glory, “I look to You, my Lord, for without You there is no answer.”

The answer is God.  You wouldn’t believe me if I told you the question.

Nobody should believe me until and unless they’ve experienced this for themselves.

Until we find ourselves utterly desolate in our grief, no longer denying reality in some false and worthless faith, however it is dressed up to look, we will not get what God has in Divine possession to give us.

Only in lamenting the lamentable will we find the one and only true God; the God who laments with us, through the very pain of Jesus scourged and torn on that old rugged cross.

Where does the happy-clappy faith come from?  It comes from looking away from God.  There’s nothing of the deeper experience of sanctification in it.

The answer is God, and we will only find the answer when we ask the right question.  That question is, “Why, Lord?” and “Where are You, God?” and “Can You help me, Father?”

And other questions like these.

All genuine prayers that lead us to a deeper awareness of our God are desperate and even bitter questions.  Taken to the end of our tether, realising there’s no more rope, we recognise how much we need God.

Truly, God doesn’t become sovereign in our heart until God is without any shadow of doubt the absolute number one.  Until God becomes sovereign in our heart, God is just another ‘god’; an appendage, a symbol; something that adorns our life for the appearance of benefit, but without being of any true benefit.

If these times we’re living in won’t lead us to God, almost nothing will.  These times of societal alarm are a personal crisis for each of us.  We will find God when we are bereft of answers.

Before we come to the knowledge of God, we always feel we’ll get the answers.  It is actually the exact opposite.

Faith leads us out into the vast emptiness of seas without sight of land.

Finally, by faith, we’re equipped to face life in all its truth.  Life is hard.  But Jesus has overcome it, so though we do lose heart, we know that the only way back is through trusting Him.

The answer is God, but the question... well, you wouldn’t believe me; until you live it and discover it for yourself.

When we accept we’re not in control, and that we’re not meant to be in control — when we truly accept these things — we find we’re suddenly close to God.  People don’t tell you this when they’re trying to ‘lead you to Christ’ and ‘get you saved into the Kingdom’.

Now, I hope you’re still reading, because I’m only now getting to the point I want to make.  What I’ve said here is actually better news than any of us can believe, until we experience it!

What I’ve said sounds lamentable, but the point of faith is it is power over lament.

If lament cannot crush us, nothing can.

Imbibe this, my favourite quote:

“Yet those that be against us, so far are they from thwarting us at all, that even without their will they become to us causes of crowns, and procurers of countless blessings, in that God’s wisdom turns their plots unto our salvation and glory.
See how really no one is against us!”
— John Chrysostom (349 – 407)

See how not even these times that we’re living in are supposed to crush us.  On the contrary, living in Christ in these times is all the more cause for crowns and blessings, as God’s wisdom turns the plots of life unto our salvation and glory.

If Christ be for us, nothing verily can be against us.

Photo by Guilherme Stecanella on Unsplash