Throughნიმუში

When we’re confronted with a life-changing, potentially threatening, and traumatic situation, we have two alternatives for how to respond. Either we shout against the unfairness of life and question whether there could possibly be a God who would allow such suffering as part of his plans – or we choose to trust in him and in his plans for our life, even though we don’t understand anything about the situation at that time. This certainly isn’t to minimise how desperate the situation might be, nor to avoid the fact that just making it through each minute is a struggle. It’s not pretending that suddenly all things will come right, although of course that may indeed happen, sooner than we think.

Someone once said that the well-known verse, Romans 8:28, is only truly understood in retrospect. So when we read that “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” it might not make any sense when a tragedy has befallen us and our only questions are “Why?” or “How could you have allowed it?” or “When will it ever end?” Yet perhaps, even if only many years later, we may look back and recognise God’s hand in our lives and see how his guiding light was there all along, especially in the bleakest moments of our time in the wilderness.

It’s up to us, even in the darkness, to make a decision. Either we trust in the promises of God and rely on his faithfulness to do what he has said – or we don’t. Either we search his Word for examples of his nature towards his people and believe that he has our good at heart – or we don’t. Either God is who he says he is – or he isn’t. There can’t be any comfortable middle-of-the-road decision left for us to make.

C.S. Lewis writes:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

This is the choice we have to make. As DL Moody once said, “My friends... take God’s word for it.” Or don’t. That decision isn’t easy. Maybe you were fortunate enough to grow up in the church, and your faith throughout your life puts you in a secure spiritual place to make this choice. Then again, you may have spent your life far away from a relationship with God. Perhaps you found church – and those who inhabit the buildings called ‘church’ – legalistic, judgmental, and hypocritical.

Whatever our experiences, it’s through being thrust into the wilderness that we’re pressed to make a decision. Each of us must decide whether we’ll trust God, and his nature always to have grace and mercy, and to show us his faithfulness and lovingkindness – or whether we’ll persist through the difficulties we face in our own strength, trusting in the world’s refrain of ‘I did it my way’? We can’t pick and choose the aspects of faith we want to believe, while discarding others. Either we take the decision to believe fully, despite the doubts and challenges which will inevitably still come our way, or we choose to reject what God says about himself and his plans for our lives.

Nobody can make this decision for you. In the bleakness of your situation and in the quietness of your heart, hopefully, you might feel led to follow that advice to “take God at his word.” And as you make that decision, you might be prompted to dig deeper into that “Word” to find out more about God’s nature and his plans for your life.

Some thoughts for you to ponder:

• How often do you spend time in God's Word, finding out more about his nature and his promises over your life?
• Do you find it difficult at times to "take God at his word"?
• Can you think of one experience from the past when you have seen God "working all things together for good"? How might that experience remind you of God's faithfulness and that he is with you in your current wilderness?