Repeatedly Surprised by God

When we read biblical history we cannot help but conclude that following God brings a life of surprises.  Whatever plans God’s people made, and however they tried to figure out God’s plans, they were inevitably greeted with one surprise after another.  There were turns in the story that no one could have possibly anticipated.   God would consistently include things or people in His plan that would have certainly been left out if His people had been doing the planning.  A principal reason for this is that we as people tend to focus on outcomes.  We are primarily concerned that things go well and that they turn out right.  Although God surely does care about the end of all things, He is at work in the process as well.

God often requires us to wait [think Abraham and Sarah].  We, however, tend to consider waiting to be a waste of time because our focus is only on the thing it is that we are waiting for.  We don’t consider the “good” to have begun until we have finally received it.  But God is not only present in the final delivery; He is present in the process as well.  Scripture teaches that when God ordains us to go through the trial of waiting, He changes us as we wait.  The biblical perspective on waiting is not just about being patient until we receive, but also about what we are becoming as we wait.  See Romans 4:20 where Abraham “was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God” while he waited for the promised heir.  Yes, even the father of the faithful was changed by waiting.

Scripture is also very clear about God using trials to mature us.  These God-ordained trials are not in the way of our lives but are one of His primary means of producing and maturing our spiritual lives.  We, however, tend to focus more on when these difficulties will end, rather than examining the good things God is doing in us in the middle of them.  Yet God is at work in the process.  He surprises us again and again with turns and twists that we could never have anticipated and would have never chosen for ourselves.

We also often get surprised for another reason … we tend to live our lives with what is good for US as our deepest concern.  We want our friendships to be happy, our investments to produce a profitable return, our health to be constantly good, our families to be united and our futures to be secure.  Now there is nothing wrong with wanting these things, but if this is all that we want, our world is narrower than it was ever meant to be.  God is not going to enter our miniscule little kingdoms to do everything that He can to make them be successful.  Instead, He has welcomed us out of allegiance to our personal kingdoms into the history-spanning expansiveness of HIS kingdom, to be part of what He planned not only before we took our first breaths, but also literally before the foundations of this world were even laid in place.  We were never created to live with our goals and needs as our deepest concerns.  Instead, we were created to know, love, serve and worship Him.  This means that we instead more strongly desire that His kingdom flourish and His glory be displayed.  Practically, this means that we end up being more motivated by the glory of God than by what we think would make us more comfortable and happy.

When we read the covenant promises that God makes in Genesis, we would not likely anticipate that a 420-year captivity as slaves in Egypt would be a part of God’s plan for His people, and yet it was.  We also would not think the promised land would be filled with warring rogue nations that would fight to the bitter end to drive God’s people out.  We would not think Jerusalem would one day be destroyed and that God’s people would be taken into exile.  With all our knowledge of the Old Testament, we too would have been shocked to discover that the Messiah would come from a working-class family in Nazareth, grow up to be a controversial itinerant preacher, and die on a cross like a common criminal.  We would have never predicted his ragtag band of followers would, under the fiercest of persecutions, effectively spread the good news of God’s saving grace across the face of the earth.  The history of Scripture is overflowing with mystery and surprise because God is in control and we are not.

So what does this review of biblical history have to do with us as we take stock of our lives in the middle?  Consider for a moment just why mid-life is a time of struggle at all.  Is it not because what we have planned for has not come to be?  Beneath the struggles of aging, regret and disappointment are the haunting questions of God’s sovereign wisdom, goodness and love.  It is at these times that our minds wander into fantasy and where we create worlds of our own making that do our own bidding.  When we do this, we are actually expressing a deep dissatisfaction with God’s rule in our lives and are wishing that we could have our own hands on the universe’s cosmic joystick.

As quasi-sovereigns, we hate waiting, disappointment, obstacles and failure.  We struggle to accept the fact that these things exist in a world that is under the wisest and most benevolent rule possible.  C. S. Lewis noted that a hardy belief in the truths of Christianity actually makes our experience of pain even more painful.  It is bad enough to have to endure pain, but as a believer, we must also say that it was not an accident and that it was sent by a God who declares Himself to be good!  To us, God’s order can look a lot like disorder and His wisdom can look like foolishness.   God’s lovingkindness can often seem to be anything but loving and definitely not kind.  All of this has to do with one humbling thing that we all have to admit:  as sinners, we want our own way.  It is hard to rest in the rulership of the King when our hearts and minds are so preoccupied with the success of our own little kingdoms.

And it is precisely during mid-life that we come face to face with the reality of who is King and just how different His will and His way are from ours.  Many of us have lived for decades in the world of our needs, our wants and our dreams.  For decades we have likely nurtured the illusion that if God really does love us, He will give these good things to us.  We too often have convinced ourselves that if we obey, then God will keep His part of the bargain and send good things our way.  We tended to think that if we parented well, then all our children would turn out the way that we had hoped.  We thought that if we worked faithfully throughout our careers, then we would harvest the seeds of these investments in our later years [only to see our stock portfolios and home values pummeled by a protracted recession].  We thought that if we kept our bodies under some semblance of subjection then the Lord would bless us with good health.  We thought that if we followed God in personal devotion and public worship and ministry, then our lives would be spiritually rich.

Remember, though, that God’s people have always struggled with the shock of His rule.  The kingdom of darkness is being destroyed by His kingdom of light, yet none of us can completely escape being affected by the carnage for deep beneath every mid-life struggle there lies a collision of two kingdoms.

If we were brutally honest what would we say it is that we want out of this life?  What are the true dreams for which we have been working?  What are the joys that captivate our eyes and control our hearts?  How much have our dreams been personal, earthbound, physical and about the here-and-now?  Have we been motivated more by OUR kingdom than GOD’S kingdom?  How is our present discouragement, disappointment and grief a window into what has actually captured our hearts?  Do we really want God to be our wise and loving Father who brings into our lives what He considers best, or do we really want Him to be a divine waiter, the all-powerful deliverer of our dreams?