Insisting that God meet you on your terms
Is the surest way never to meet Him at all
Terms for Meeting God
Seeking Signs- The Exception and the Rule
Signs and Wonders)
Thus far I have emphasized why God would not want to manifest Himself to our physical senses as a way to win our belief in Him. I have pointed out how doing so can reinforce undesirable trends, such as an unwillingness to take a leap of faith or having an over-reliance on sensuous knowledge. These are important realities to understand and accept, as they discourage us from becoming, in the words of Jesus, “an evil and adulterous generation that seeks for a sign,” (Matthew 12:39).
All that being said, this series would not be complete if I did not acknowledge the fact that there are times where God manifests Himself in some miraculous way, and that this has had the fact of converting unbelievers.
One example of this is Elijah calling fire down from heaven to consume an offering, causing the Israelites that had strayed to Baal to cry out, “The Lord, he is the God; the Lord, he is the God.” There was also the day of Pentecost, where the disciples of Jesus spoke in tongues, every man hearing them in their own language, ultimately leading to 3,000 being baptized. There was also the earthquake that rent the doors of the prison where Paul and Silas were being held, leading their jailer to plead for salvation.
Thus, it is undeniable that sometimes God does show His power in incredible miracles, and that it does have the effect of converting unbelievers into His disciples. Given that, why is this not a common occurrence to everyone? Why can we not all count on it in our own lives?
Quieter Means)
Thus far in the series I have given some reason as to reasons why God would not resort to miracles as a general rule, but I do have to acknowledge that these are just speculation. There is no verified scripture that I know of which provides the definitive answer from God. Maybe the souls of those who did receive miracles were uniquely fitted for receiving those signs, maybe God only uses miracles to accelerate initial growth of his people but then relies on more natural means afterward, maybe there are cosmic balances to be considered as to when to show a miracle or not. I simply do not know.
What I do know, though, is that there is a vastly predominant pattern of disciples coming to their faith without miracles. Jesus, when he appeared to doubting Thomas, declared, “because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed,” (John 20:29). This passage makes clear that while some have believed because of what they were privileged to see, there will be many others who must believe without seeing.
For every tale of a miracle-based testimony, we have countless smaller and simpler accounts as well. Think of the Ethiopian eunuch who was converted simply by having Philip expound the scriptures to him (Acts 8:27-38). There is also Lydia of Thyatira who was convinced only by hearing the teaching of Paul (Acts 16:14-15). Think of Ruth, who converted due to her loyalty to her mother-in-law (Ruth 1:16-17). Or the people of Nineveh, who converted from Jonah’s preaching, even though they never witnessed his encounter with the big fish (Jonah 3). Think of Rahab, who saved the spies of Israel and joined their people, only by hearing the testimony of what the Lord had done in Egypt (Joshua 2). There were the Bereans, who compared Paul’s teachings to the words of the Bible to obtain their conviction (Acts 17:10-12). Think also of Simeon and Anna, who recognized the infant Jesus as their Lord, not by any thunderous sign, but simply by having cultivated a spiritual attunement in their hearts (Luke 2:25-38).
Yes, God can change people by miracles, but for whatever reasons, He usually does not. Far more commonly, He only relies upon spiritual, transcendent witnesses, which we will only secure if we open our hearts and seek them. God does not come to us on our terms; we come to Him on His.
Seeking Signs- Path Before Destination
Finding the Right Approach)
Yesterday I spoke about those who require a sign before they will believe in God or consider changing their lifestyles to fit His commandments. Today I want to point out that God does not just want us to believe in Him, He wants us to come to belief in the right way.
As any teacher knows, it is not enough for a student to have the right answer, but to come by it honestly. If all the teacher wanted was perfect grades, then the best method would be to show the children how to find the answers in the back of the book. Obviously, what is actually wanted is for the child to find the right answer through work and understanding.
It is the same for God. The disbeliever who calls for a sign is trying to peek at the back of the book. He assumes that if God wanted him to believe, then God should take the easiest, most direct route in convincing him. And yes, God does want him to believe, but like the teacher, God knows that belief is only helpful when the child comes to it through work and understanding.
The Flattening of God)
When those that seek signs describe what they want from God, it is manifestations that are perceived by the mortal senses. Writing in the heavens, a booming voice, an earthly visit…these are all things that would convince through sight, hearing, or touch.
Right away, I can see a problem with this. We are already a lopsided people. We rely on our physical senses so much more than our spiritual ones. There are many who only observe the world sensuously. Who doubt that there even is a spiritual domain. Who believe that knowledge can only be obtained by inquiry of the physical senses. If God were to flatten His presentation into this physical domain, it would only reinforce that lopsided view. It would reward us for being overly sensuous. It would affirm that this temporal domain is the only one that matters.
But God exists on so much more than just the temporal domain. He is transcendent and spiritual, and He wants us to meet Him on those planes. He wants to reward us for exercising our spiritual intuition. He wants us to feel Him in our hearts without ever seeing Him with our eyes. He wants us to learn that a spiritual connection is even more real and intimate than a physical one. So yes, God wants us to believe, but He wants us to find that belief in a way that sets us on a journey of rich spiritual discovery.
Seeking Signs- How Far Will You Pursue?
Waste of a Miracle)
There are those that say they will only believe in God if He will show them an irrefutable sign of His existence. They say, “If God is real, and He really cares about having me believe in Him, and He knows me perfectly, then He knows that I need physically observable evidence of Him.” They suggest things like a message written in the stars, or God descending to the earth in all His glory, or a booming voice sounding from heaven. Those would be strong, undeniable proofs of God’s existence, and surely that would bring many more people to accept Him as their Lord, so why not just do that?
To that I say: And what will you do if God does not show up with these great, undeniable signs? Will you continue to pursue the knowledge of Him?
The answer: I will do nothing, and I will pursue no further.
And to that I say: Why would God ever waste His time on someone with that attitude? Why manifest Himself to someone so fickle and disinterested? Frankly, you don’t seem to actually care all that much whether God is real or not. Are you genuinely quivering on the edge of remaking your whole life to follow Him just as soon He shows you a miracle? I find that hard to believe.
Pattern for Belief)
People hear that God wants us to believe in Him, and from that they assume that the onus is on Him to do the convincing. But two things can be true at once. God can both want us to believe in Him and also be perfectly willing to let us go if we don’t care enough to take the first step.
To be clear, I do believe that God pursues on His end, but I also believe He always stops short of making us believe in Him. In my experience, He always requires us to make at least one step in total faith. We have to do something because we believe it is right, not at all sure that it will turn out well, and that is when He appears to us.
If, on the other hand, we see that step before us and say, “no, God, not until you show me a sign,” He will let us go.
Better to Follow
Better than following a bad person is to follow a good one
Better than following a good person is to follow good itself
How to be Good Enough
You will never be enough so long as you hold part back.
You have to give your whole heart to Him,
And then you’re already enough.
Grit vs Surrender- Summary
The Journey We’ve Been On)
In the course of this study, I have argued in favor of Jesus’s claim in Matthew 11:28-30
Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
Through this study I have made special effort to address the two groups that might disagree with this claim: the unbeliever who sees the commandments of God as a terrible burden, and the believer who struggles every day to be worthy of God’s expectations. Here were the main points in my study:
- The liberation of the commandments. I examined how the true purpose of God’s restrictions is to free us from the demands of addiction and vice, which are the great taskmasters of humanity. Yes, God requires us to surrender to Him, but it is a surrender into rest and peace.
- Refutation of self-made perfection. I discussed how God never intended for us to perfect ourselves through sheer moral grit. Through that act of surrendering to Him we open the door to a miracle: effortless change.
- Surrendering will and autonomy. Yes, achieving a state of rest, peace, and effortless change is possible, but only at the cost of unconditional surrender to God. The one truly difficult task that God requires of us is to give up our autonomy and submit to His will.
- The easy way. The scriptures are full of examples of those who made this surrender, then found that God shouldered their burdens, accomplished miracles in their lives, and gave them easy victories. We talked about Gideon’s army, but also consider the examples of Peter fishing, the widow’s cruse of oil, the parting of the Red Sea, and the siege of Jericho.
The Great Secret)
Speaking for myself, I am not yet done surrendering my will to God. I am still very much a work in progress. This is because even after having had some practice at it, surrendering is still hard to do. It’s hard, but it’s worth it.
As difficult as surrender may be, it is still easier than the alternative lifestyles of grit or appetite-satiation. And once that surrender is made, everything afterward is weightless. I have learned these facts for myself, personally.
So, surrender is easier, but it does not at first appear so. I believe this is by design. It ensures that no one accidentally stumbles into that better way. They have to take what appears to be the harder path, by faith, before they can finally discover for themselves that it is actually much, much easier.
This is the great secret. Many people live and die, never understanding what it was all about. They are perpetually frustrated, always searching for success and satisfaction, but never finding it, and yet the answer was there in front of them all the time. Hopefully you and I can do it better.
Grit vs Surrender- An Easy Task
An Impossible Task)
Christianity calls us to accept Christ as our master, and modern society would go further and say that he is an overbearing taskmaster, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Perhaps Christ’s demands are seen as heavy because he does at times asks us to do the impossible, but in practice they are actually very light, because we don’t actually do any of the heavy lifting for thme.
I cannot think of a clearer example of this than Gideon in the Old Testament, Judges 6-8. God called Gideon to accomplish a few things in His name, but the greatest of all was to stand against the Midianite horde with a small band of Israelite men. At the outset, Gideon had only 32,000 men, while the Midianites had approximately 135,000. As if that wasn’t mismatched enough, God then commanded Gideon to send home over 99% of his army, leaving him with a mere 300 men! The task seemed absolutely impossible.
But then, remarkably, the fulfillment of that task could hardly have been any easier! Once Gideon’s army was sufficiently small, God instructed the 300 men to surround the Midian army in the dark of night, then each soldier broke a pitcher, lit a lamp, and blew a trumpet. The sudden manifestation of sound and light on all sides drove the Midianites into a panic, and unable to properly tell friend from foe, they slew each other until only a fraction of their forces remained! Then, Gideon and his men dealt with the rest.
Easy to Bear)
So, too, the true Christian who has committed his whole soul to the Lord may make incredible transformations in his life and accomplish wonderful things for the Lord. So much so, that it might seem superhuman what he has accomplished, and cause people to mistakenly believe that his effort was extreme. But this is not the case. Like Gideon, the true Christian accomplishes the impossible not by his own effort, but by the Lord’s.
We live in a world that demands strength and genius. In our vocations and communities, we are given a never-ending stream of demands, and we must constantly strive to meet them. God, however, requires so very little of us. Like Gideon, we do not have to be mighty, and we do not have to be brilliant. All we have to be willing to do is stand where God tells us to stand and perform the little things God tells us to do, and the victory will fall into our lap.
This is how God has “chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty,” (1 Corinthians 1:27). The foolish and the weak are sufficient, because so very little is required of them. All they have to be willing to do is surrender to the Lord, and anyone can do that.
Grit vs Surrender- The Beginning of Good
The Greatest Commandment)
Yesterday I shared scriptures which assert that refusing to surrender one’s will to God leads to all manner of evil, selfishness, and causing harm to the world. Today, I wanted to consider one other passage, the one where Jesus is asked which is the greatest commandment in the law:
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
-Matthew 22:37-39
Loving the Lord with all of one’s heart, soul, and mind involves offering each of those to Him, which is elsewhere summarized in the scriptures as our will “being swallowed up in the will of the Father” (Mosiah 15:7). Jesus listing this as the first commandment suggests that it is of a higher priority, but that it is not all. By putting it first, he is suggesting an order. Devotion to God naturally comes before loving our neighbor as ourselves. Thus, if not surrendering one’s will to God leads to harming the world, then surrendering one’s will to God leads to healing the world.
While the world may no longer be convinced of the importance of submitting to God, we do still value helping and treating one another with kindness. We value it, but also we are really bad at it. By inverting the proper order and putting self and fellow-man before submission to God, we have broken the entire sequence. We want to be good to each other, but we don’t want to submit to God, and so we end up treated each other horribly instead, violating our own ideal. Any cursory glance at the contention in our modern society will bear that out. The only way to get back to civility and compassion will be by putting things back in their proper order and first loving the Father and submitting to His will, just as Jesus taught.
Grit vs Surrender- The Consequences of Refusing to Surrender
A Scriptural Condemnation)
I have spoken at length about the importance of surrender in the gospel of Jesus Christ. To put things simply, there is no such thing as being a true disciple of Jesus Christ and also not surrendering your will and autonomy to the Lord. Jesus surrendered himself to the Father, and every follower of him must do the same, or they are not really his follower.
But why is surrender such an essential part of the gospel? Why did Jesus need to do it, and why do we need to? What cosmic or fundamental principle requires it? That’s an excellent subject for another series, one that I may try to tackle later. Today, though, I want to point out how the scriptures make clear the negative consequences that follow if we will not surrender our autonomy to the Lord. Let us look at a few verses.
For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.
-James 3:15 (NIV)
Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire; he breaks out against all sound judgment.
-Proverbs 18:1 (ESV)
For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
-2 Timothy 3:2-4
Each of these passages begins with those who set their own, autonomous self above all else. They are focused on their own desires, their own love, and their own ambition. Rather than surrendering their will they have set it upon the highest pedestal, and in each of these passages it is clear that what follows is harm and evil. The unmistakable message of the scriptures is that those who do not surrender will inevitably cause hurt and suffering.
We live in a society where people constantly speak of waking up to the notion that they “need to put themselves first.” That may sound nice and affirming, but anyone that follows it should know that they are embarking on a path that the scriptures have declared to be ruinous. One may, of course, reject that assertion, but if they do, at least they will know that the consequences that follow were foretold.
NOTE: In the process of editing this post, I accidentally published it twice before it was ready. I apologize for any confusion caused to my email subscribers.
Spiritual Wanderings 