Dangerous Comfort

We love control. We want to be in control because it is then that we feel like everything will go as we planned. We never want outside influences to come in and disrupt our control cause then we lose it. We even put God under our control complex sometimes. We can see this when we make up things about the character of God to make us feel better about whats happening in our lives.

Hailey recently sent me an email with this quote from Rick Warren's "Purpose Driven Life":

"In order to build your faith, God will give you a dream; then he'll urge you to make a decision; but then he'll allow a delay, because in the delay he matures you and prepares you for what is to come."

I have a bit of a problem with this passage because I feel like we constantly take a little bit of God and then expand Him to fit what we need and also we try and explain God. So in this case with Rick Warren we see a formula is put on God. He gives a dream, then delays, then matures, then provides. But this is crap! One could just as easily say "God gives you a dream and in faith you should follow it now without delay." And you can justify it! After the quote given above Warren goes on to talk about how the people of Israel had to go through that time of delay in the dessert and thus his statement is justified. Well, I'll use the same book, in Exodus Moses meets God in the form of a burning bush and God gives Moses the new path that his life will go on. But does Moses go through the same period of delay like Warren said people will? No, Moses and Aaron go to Egypt right away, with no delay to mature in faith, even though Moses just heard a bush of fire talk to him he has no time to "mature in faith" over the bush. And now my statement above is justified. Using the same book, same Bible, just I took what I wanted out of the Bible the same way Warren did.

What is also interesting about all this is we don't need for us to have ownership over the control for us to feel comfortable. So in both statements made above by Warren and myself, God is still very much the one on control, we were not given the power of control, but since both statements put a formula on God we feel comfortable because we know the formula. So we don't even need to be in control we just want to know what's going to happen and how. And from that we get our sense of control. It's all a mind game we play with ourselves. We will make up anything to make ourselves feel better even if that means making a formula for God to function under.

So how does God work? I don't know. Not fully. No one knows fully, we can only get little glimpses of how God might work. It's supposed to be that way. If we can figure out how God works than He ceases to be in control and thus ceases to be God! Look at Job. He thinks he figured out how God works and determines that all the hardships he has suffered he did not deserve, and from our perspective he probably didn't, at least we can't figure out why he would deserve such torture. But what does God say when he speaks to Job? "Well done figuring this out Job, you did not deserve all this, I was testing you." No! He rocks his world by saying "Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it?"

You see we don't know how this all works. We do not go through some formula outlined in a book. All we have is Salvation in Christ and that is enough. His grace is sufficient. Seek comfort in that, not in weak justifications that make you feel better for a moment. Like most things it will leave you empty with only a space Christ can fill.