by Jacob Ninan
From my teenage years, I have been asking a lot of questions, sometimes to others but mostly to myself. I could not usually accept what I was told without understanding it. So, I have had a difficult but exciting journey, sometimes making mistakes and sometimes making discoveries. At some point I concluded that there was no God, later that there might be God somewhere but I could not know Him, and then basically all religions were the same. I believe the hand of God was upon me, guiding me in an overall way, finally helping me to know Him personally. He helped me to learn from my mistakes and from observing those of others, and drawing me closer and closer to Him with time. Looking back at the struggles I have had trying to figure things out from the Bible passages and especially their practical implications, I feel for those who are going through similar battles.
One mistake we can make is to base our understanding on our practical experience, and believe what we can see, touch and taste, rather than what God has revealed to us in His word. We need to believe that the Bible is the word of God which God Himself has given to us for our teaching, correction, guidance, etc. So what we need to do is to start from the point of believing that what the Bible says is true, and from there going on to see how our experiences fit or do not fit it. If our experience seems to be different from what the Bible says, either we have not understood the word properly or there is something wrong with our experience.
No man is perfect, and if we depend on people, we will get disappointed sooner or later. We will find that no one can fully understand us except God, people are not always there when we need them, and sometimes there is nothing anyone can do, except God. In all such situations, we, because of our lack of understanding of God or because we do not fully understand the depth of our sinfulness we may blame God. The closer we come to the place where we don't place our hope in ourselves and other people, but we are learning to trust in Jesus, our life will become more stable and less prone to doubts and fears (Rom.7:24,25).
Putting it in another way, our anchor during the storms in our mind has to be God, as revealed to us in His word. If we anchor our position on our current experience, feelings, circumstances, people around us, etc., our life will never be steady but bobbing up and down in the waters of the storm. Holding verses in our mind as a part of our doctrines is not enough, but we must believe it by applying the word to our situation and acting upon it. "Remember the word to Your servant, In which You have made me hope. This is my comfort in my misery, That Your word has revived me" (Psa.119:49).
Some people who think they are 'tough' many times refuse to face reality. They don't acknowledge failures, shortcomings, negative feelings, doubts, etc., and live in a make-believe world of doctrines. They make themselves imagine they are already there in the position God has placed them 'in Christ' without checking to see if things are really so in their practical life. There is great comfort in knowing what God has planned for us, but that should not prevent us from being down to earth and taking note of the differences from that position to what we are experiencing here and now. Only then can we learn to seek to understand what steps we need to take to get to the place where we can be according to God's plan.
Let's learn to be honest with ourselves before God. If we look at the psalms of David, one thing we see is the sheer honesty David had with God. When he felt bad or could not understand what was going on, David shared those plainly with God, instead of acting pious and using impressive words. David knew that God already knew everything even before he told Him, and he was only being honest about it. That was one of the things that helped him to become a man after God's own heart. As the Son of Man, Jesus showed us an example of sinless humanity by acknowledging that He too went through suffering and sorrow when He was tempted (Matt.26:38).
As human beings, we don't know everything, we can't understand everything, and God hasn't provided all the answers to our doubts. We have to hold on to God's word, knowing as our foundation stones, His heart of love, compassion, kindness, patience, mercy, etc.
I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore I have drawn you out with kindness (Jer.31:3)
Have we come to God by experiencing His grace? Then we can be sure that God loves us with an everlasting love. His love is not something that depends on His 'moods'. Once we have experienced His love, it will never end. If we have failed Him in any way, or even if we have strayed away from Him, He does not stop loving us. But like the father of the prodigal son, He keeps waiting for us to return.
When God picked us from our pit of sin, He knew who He was dealing with. He knew our past and its influences on our thinking, feeling and behaviour, and He also knew our present weaknesses and all forms of imperfections. He knew even how we would fail in the future and so He was not shocked when we did. He knows that He is able to cause everything to work out for our good. He valued us so much that He sent His only Son to die in our place so that He could have us to be with Him forever. He has engraved our names on His palms and can never forget us.
This addresses the questions about acceptability before God. Our acceptability is not based on our goodness or anything we have done, because if we take that route, no one can find acceptance with God. God can accept us only through grace, and that because our sins have already been placed on Jesus as our sacrifice. Here the promise is that God will reject no one who goes to Him through Jesus. However undeserving or wretched we feel about ourselves, our merit comes from the righteousness of Jesus.
This is not just about receiving acceptance with God the first time we went to Him, but also in the daily situations in our life where this question comes up, especially after we have failed. God is fully aware of our fragility and how we are made of dust. Even if we have made terrible mistakes and then we go back to Him, His promise is that He will not reject us. He who has told us to forgive others who have wronged us 490 times in a day, will be more merciful towards us than that. He is confident that what He has started in us, He is able to complete.
Believing this and standing with that confidence is what helps us to hold on and not give up when the enemy's fiery darts of doubts and fears are fired at us from unexpected directions.
Even though God had promised to take the people of Israel to the Promised Land, most of them had become afraid when they heard of the giants there. Here Moses was assuring them that they didn't have to be afraid because God was going to be with them. The Lord is our strength, shield and fortress. He will always be with us and He will never abandon us. In the midst of trouble it is natural that the question comes to our mind asking where God is, why He is not helping us, etc. But we can assure ourselves saying that even when we can't see God or sense His presence with us at those times, the fact will always be that He is there with us, always. When we believe that, we receive courage and boldness, and we can lean on Him to guide us and tell us what to do.
There may be some good people around us who can mentor and help us. But they cannot be there always. There will be things which even they cannot handle. That is where we can learn to lean on God who is always with us, always available to listen to our prayers, always able to protect us and to guide us. The more we cultivate our friendship with Him and the more we learn to share our hearts and minds with Him, we will no longer feel lonely or helpless.
We may be broken-hearted for yet another failure, or knowing that we have again come short of God's expectations. We may be crushed in our spirit, almost ready to give up thinking that there may be no more hope for us. But that is the time to remember that we have the Lord Jesus with us. We have failed, but He will never fail. He can work miracles, and bring out great things even from our failures, beauty from ashes. As we sing in a song, He can make a way where there seems to be no way. In our weaknesses let us give Him an opportunity show His love and power as we trust Him without giving up.
Failure is a part of our life because we are all people with a fallen nature. But we can learn precious lessons from our failures that can help us to succeed later, if we allow God to teach us. Our Christian life is not one where we make records of success, but one which is real, with real failures and real victories. The apostle James confesses humbly that everyone makes many mistakes. What God assures us in these verses is that even though there may be failures, God will protect us from becoming a total, hopeless failure. On the other hand, His plan is to make us more than conquerors. In one sense what this means is that He will teach us so many spiritual lessons from our failures that not only we gain victory for ourselves, but we also become able to lead others to victory in their lives too.
Here is a wretched man crying out to God from his utter helplessness. There is no one to help him, and he finds no resources within himself to help himself. From an earthly point of view, his situation is hopeless. But from that point, he reaches out to God. This verse tells us that God listens to such cries and delivers those who reach out to Him like this. I would think that this applies even to unbelievers who finally reach out to God in their helplessness and find that He loves them too. This is the heart of God.
There are always troubles of different kinds that we face. Sometimes, especially when we are young in faith, He does miracles to snatch us out from the trouble. But as we keep growing, God may choose to give us grace to go through the trouble victoriously rather than take the trouble away. This is how He helps us to develop our spiritual muscles. Our faith become more valuable after it has passed the trials.
This is the confidence we must have in God, that every single plan that God makes for us is only for our good, and He does not make any plan for evil. There is so much of evil in this world because of the sinfulness of man, including us. But we must not attribute any of that to God. Even when we cannot figure out where God is and why some calamity is happening to us, we can still hold on to the belief that God is always good. It may not be easy for us, and so let us continue to hold on to Him realising that His ways are far above ours and that we will never be able to understand everything about Him. Even with such limitations, our heart can still trust in Him.
This does not mean that everything that happens to us will be good, or that God will protect us from all evil, but that whatever happens to us, including trouble, God will make it bring out something good for us. We only have to look at what happened to Jesus or to Job to see that bad things happen to good people too. And when we think about the good that God will bring out, let us not think merely in terms of earthly gain. Rom.8:29 clarifies that the best thing that God has in mind for us is that we should be transformed into the character of His Son our Lord Jesus Christ. That will be riches we will enjoy through eternity. Believing in this will help us to go through the many difficulties we have to face.
Conclusion
Suffering is an unavoidable part of our life. It brings up doubts, questions, fears and confusion about the nature of God, His relationship with us and our expectations from Him. But trying to evade the issues by pretence or make-belief is not going to help. If we go up to our Father and bare our heart and mind to Him, He is always there to help us. Trouble always comes to an end, and if we have been holding on to God we can see that there is blessing at the end (Psa.30:5).