When You Don't Understand Godနမူနာ

Finding Peace in the Tension

The words peace and tension feel like opposites, don’t they? It's hard to experience peace when things are tense. As followers of Jesus, we can have peace even when things around us feel out of control, because His presence brings us peace...even when our questions don’t get answered.

Here’s a quick news flash: we’ll always have questions for God. He’s the all-knowing, all-powerful, and always present Creator of the universe. There will always be some mystery with our God. And isn’t that what we want? Do we really want to know, understand, and fully grasp Him and His ways? Don’t we want to follow a God who is bigger, smarter, wiser, and more intelligent than us or would we rather know everything He knows? The truth is that if we had all of the answers, we wouldn’t need Him. 

If you think about it, questioning God shows a bit of arrogance on our part. For human beings to actually think we know what’s best or know more than the Creator of the universe seems a bit absurd. Granted, sometimes we’re just questioning Him because we’re hurting and because we thought our plan was pretty good. We desired our loved one to be healed, for disease to be eradicated, or for natural disasters to end. Those all make sense to us, so why wouldn’t they make sense to God?

There’s the tension. It’s almost palpable, isn’t it? Sometimes, it just won’t go away and we have to choose to experience the peace Jesus brings despite the fact that some of our questions will never get answered. This is the part of the Christian walk where our faith hits a crisis level. We either choose to press into God more and trust Him or we turn our backs on Him in anger and walk away from our faith. Walking away will bring a double portion of misery to us. Isn’t it better to experience God’s peace in the midst of your pain and questions than to still have questions without His peace? 

Instead of questioning God, maybe we should question the world’s ways more? We’re often so quick to believe the doubts that we hear from others and even ourselves, and yet, the One who created the world is the one we question. Why can’t we question what people say or what our self-talk is instead of always questioning our God? What we listen to and believe makes us either question God or run to Him. 

So, run to Him with your questions, fears, doubts, and concerns. He can handle it and as you do this, you’ll experience His peace as you simultaneously fight through your doubts and grow your trust in Him. At the end of the day, ask God to reveal Himself to you and allow His perfect peace to renew your mind in the midst of the tension of unanswered questions.