(This was written in July.)
A lot of people in America like to think that getting saved is sort of like fire insurance or your get-out-of-jail-free card. That once you become a Christian everything is happy and easy and God takes perfect care of you and that’s it. But if we’re really honest with ourselves, we know that becoming a Christian doesn’t solve all our problems. We still have to struggle with things, and there are still days with life just completely sucks. Christianity doesn’t take away all the hard stuff. It just changes how we deal with it.
I really don’t like being vulnerable. I don’t like people to know what’s really going on in my life. It’s just easier to toughen up and deal with it on my own. But quite honestly that gets old. And I think in order for you guys to understand where this post is coming from, I’m going to have to get really uncomfortable and be at least partially honest with you people. Which basically means being honest about how my life is going right now. But I’ll try and be brief. The short version is that my relationship with certain people in my life has suddenly gotten very rocky, and there has been a lot of anger and hurt. And then it’s felt the past few months like God has more or less checked out of my life. I know He hasn’t, but I haven’t been able to find Him anymore and it’s made things really hard. It’s almost like there’s a glass wall between me and Him: I know He’s there, but I can’t quite get to Him. The song “Storm” by Lifehouse talks a little bit about that, about being surrounded by the storms of life and knowing that if you could just see God everything would be okay. I’ve spent a lot of the last several months pretty much just surviving, trying to wait things out and hope they get better. And in a way they have, little by little. But over the past few months I’ve done a lot of thinking about things, so this post is really just me processing through things and hoping I’ll come across something that will help some of you somehow.
When something bad happens, the first thing people ask is: “Why would God let this happen?” I think He lets bad things happen for two reasons. The first is to further His glory. Our God is all-powerful, and can use even bad things for His glory. Daniel was thrown into the lion’s den, seemingly to his death, but when he was found alive the next morning, King Darius believed in God’s power and sent out a decree that his people should fear this God (Daniel 6). Joseph was thrown in a pit, sold into slavery by his brothers, accused of adultery, and thrown in jail. But in the end he came out as Pharaoh’s right-hand man and was able to save God’s chosen people from starvation (Genesis 37, 39-46). God is powerful enough to turn bad things into good, to use them to bring glory to His name. At the time, though, that’s usually pretty hard to remember. But that’s the thing that sets Christianity apart from other religions. When things get rough, we have someone to cling to, to trust in. When things get hard, we can turn to God. Romans 8:28 says that God works all things together “for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.” Most people just take the first part of that verse and say that God works all things together for the good of everybody. That’s not what this verse is saying. But it IS saying that God will work all things together for the good of those “who love Him” and “have been called according to His purpose.” That means us. Christians. God promises that in our lives, He WILL work all things together for good. While that can often be hard to remember and it can be pretty hard to see how God could ever make anything good out of some situations, He promises that He will, and that promise gives us something to cling to when times get rough.
Sometimes I think God allows bad things to happen for another reason: to get our attention. Sometimes it’s so easy for us to get caught up in our easy, comfortable lives that we forget to listen for God’s voice. Sometimes our lives get so noisy that the still small voice gets drowned out (1 Kings 19:11-13). Sometimes when things are going good we start to think that maybe we don’t need God anymore. I was thinking about that concept during AGM and starting scribbling down my thoughts. This is what I wrote:
“We are so stupid, and so selfish, and so stubborn, and so short-sighted that God usually has to put a wall in front of us just to get our attention. And it’s only after we’ve tried to climb over the wall, dig under the wall, walk around the wall, and even push through the wall and we finally realize that it isn’t going to move that we finally look at God and say, “Oh, did you want something?” That’s why He compares us to sheep. Because despite being the smartest things on this planet, if we’re really honest with ourselves we realize that, compared to God, we’re really not that bright.”
Sometimes the only way for God to get our attention is for Him to put a roadblock in our path that we simply can’t move by ourselves. For the Israelites in the Old Testament that meant going back into slavery again and again and again. Sometimes for us that roadblock is something visible, such as a tragedy or illness or death. Sometimes it’s just the feeling of being separated from God. Sometimes God is just trying to help us get our eyes back on Him. Sometimes He’s actually trying to teach us something or get us to notice something that we keep missing. Sometimes He just wants us to run back to Him and cling to Him like He really is our everything. I’ve been thinking a lot about roadblocks lately, so these are just kind of some of my thoughts. I hope some of it is helpful.
When you (I say “you” because it’s easier to write to “you” than to “we”, but I’m still talking to myself as well as you guys) run into roadblocks, one of the first things you should probably do is ask yourself what the roadblock is about. Is there something you can do to fix it? If God is feeling distant, is it maybe because you haven’t been in the Word and haven’t been talking to Him lately? Something like that is fairly easy to remedy. Did you do something that you’re pretty sure wasn’t in accordance with His will or not do something that you know He wanted you to do, and now everything is falling apart? Maybe you did something wrong and haven’t asked Him for forgiveness. Now, I’m not saying that doing something wrong will result in God completely shutting you out and letting your life fall apart and refusing to have anything to do with you. Just because everything is going wrong doesn’t necessarily mean that you did something wrong. Most roadblocks result from something much bigger than this. But it is worth at least thinking about, because if the root of the problem is your heart or your actions, then that’s the place to start.
Most times, however, you can’t think of any reason for there to be a roadblock. Those are the times when you need to take a step back and look at the situation. Could God be trying to teach you something through the situation? If so, what do you think it might be? Talk to God about it. Dig into His word. Ask Him to show you what it is He’s trying to teach you. Two or three years ago I spent several months feeling completely isolated from God, and it was horrible. Looking back now, I can understand the reason. God was asking me to surrender some things to Him that I wasn’t ready to let go of, to trust Him to do what was best with my life. And, to be honest, I just wasn’t ready to go there. So God waited. And when I finally came before Him in tears and told Him that I was ready to give Him control, it was like a weight lifted off my shoulders. The roadblock lifted, and suddenly I was closer to God than I had ever been. Now I can see that God never really left me. He just wasn’t able to use me until I surrendered to Him. So He waited until I was ready to do that. When you hit a roadblock, see if there might be something God is trying to teach you. Is He trying to strengthen your faith? Is He waiting for you to surrender something to Him that you aren’t ready to give up? Or maybe He’s just waiting for you to trust Him.
I’ve discovered that most roadblocks in my life deal with two things: faith/trust and praise. When things get rough, God is usually waiting for me to just trust in Him. He’s trying to make my faith grow stronger, trying to teach me to trust in Him completely, no matter. Can I still trust Him when my life is crumbling around me and I can’t see anything through the smoke? God says in Jeremiah 29:11 that He has plans to prosper us and not to harm us, plans to give us a hope and a future. But do we really believe that? Do we really trust that God knows what’s best for us? Are we still willing to serve Him when everything is going wrong? That tends to be the biggest test of faith. Serving God when things are easy is one thing. But serving Him when I don’t understand what He’s doing takes some serious faith. Britt Nichole’s song “Have Your Way” is one of my favorites, and it is basically a cry to God telling Him that you’re willing to trust Him even when things don’t make sense. For me, this is one of the hardest things to do, and God has had to put several roadblocks in front of me to get me to come to the place of accepting that I can’t make it on my own and that I have to trust Him. The song “Let the Waters Rise” by Mikeschair talks about being willing to trust God and follow Him even when “the waters rise.”
Another song I like is “Here With Me” (also by Mikeschair), and it talks about trusting that God is always with us even when we can’t see Him. The song’s first lines are “God I’m desperate for a sign / that I’m not praying to the night sky.” BarlowGirl’s song “Never Alone”, although exhibiting a very different sound, talks about the same idea. I’ve spent a lot of time lately in that place of being on my knees just begging for God to show up, to come in and heal the hurts and let me know that I’m not alone. I know from experience that one of the most painful places to be in life is one where you can’t feel God. It feels horrible beyond description, one of the worst roadblocks I have ever experienced. And really the only way around it that I know of is to just seek God like crazy. Talk to Him, read His word, spend time with His people. At one point I made the mistake of more or less giving up, thinking that it was pointless and I would just have to wait it out. Let me tell you, it doesn’t work. When you can’t find God, seek hard after Him, no matter how hopeless it seems. Jesus promises us that if we seek Him, really truly seek Him, we will find Him (Luke 11:9, Matthew 7:7). Eventually you will find Him again. And when you do, it’ll be kind of like in the poem “Footprints in the Sand.” You’ll realize that He never actually left you. You just thought He did. But in reality, He’s always with you, no matter how it seems (Matthew 28:20, Joshua 1:9, Isaiah 41:10).
But I digress. I said earlier that a lot of roadblocks in my life deal with faith/trust in God. A lot of them also deal with, as strange as it may initially sound, praise. God wants to see if I can continue to praise Him when things get rough. Can I praise Him when everything is falling apart? Can I praise Him when I don’t understand? And arguably the hardest of all: can I still praise Him even if He chooses not to fix this situation? The greatest example of this is probably Job. Job was a very blessed man. He has several children, TONS of livestock (which in those days was equivalent to being rich), and many servants. (See Job 1:1-3 for exact numbers.) Then one day four of his servants come to him and tell him that all of his livestock is either dead or stolen, the rest of his servants have been slaughtered, and that his children have all been killed (Job 1:13-19). Job tears his robe and shaves his head as was customary for mourners, and then he falls to the ground in worship, saying: “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.” (Job 1:20-21) Wow. (I can say it backwards too: wow. Sorry, bad joke.) Let me say that again. Wow. That scene just completely blows my mind. To be able to praise God after having lost everything (and this man had a LOT to lose) is just incredible. Actually it’s beyond incredible. Those words are now the bridge of the popular worship song “Blessed Be Your Name”, which is one my favorites. Two more of my favorite songs are Nichole Nordeman’s “Gratitude” and Casting Crown’s “Praise You In This Storm”, which also talk about this concept of praising God when it’s hard.
My all-time favorite song right now, which I highly encourage all of you to listen to, is “Broken” by Lifehouse. It talks about being completely broken inside, but also about holding on to God through all of that. While the verses deal a lot in symbolism, the chorus is brutally honest about how it feels to be falling apart inside. But there’s also a sense of hope that if we hold on to God we can make it through and find the healing we’re looking for. That thought has helped keep me going on some of my worst days, and more or less sums up how I’ve felt a lot over the past few months. But I have found a bit of hope, and things are beginning to get just a bit better. Not they’re fixed, not by a long shot. But I am beginning to catch small glimpses of God from the corner of my eye, starting to feel a whisper of something touching my heart. I’m still way messed up inside, and it’s going to take a long time to fix and heal. But with God’s help, I know it will continue to get better. So for now I’m doing what the song says: “I’m hanging on another day just to see what you threw my way. And I’m hanging on to the words you say. You say that I will, will be okay.”
So those are just some of my thoughts. I’d like to end this with a bit of encouragement. If you will, take a look at the first two chapters of the book of Job. In the first chapter, Satan asks God’s permission to hurt Job. God gives him permission to hurt whatever Job has, but forbids Satan from touching Job himself. Later in the chapter all of Job’s possessions and children are taken from him, but he himself remains unhurt. In the second chapter Satan comes back and asks permission to strike Job himself. God gives him permission to hurt Job so long as he does not kill him. Job comes down with a horrible sickness and painful boils on his skin, but he does not die. Most of us know that story. But I think often times we overlook the incredible truth of those two chapters. First of all, before Satan could do anything to Job, he had to ask God’s permission. He had to ask! How incredible is that? He couldn’t lay so much as a finger on Job unless God gave him permission! And even then he had to obey the boundaries God placed upon him. That’s pretty cool. In fact, it’s beyond cool. It’s pretty awesome! Think about it. Nothing in this universe can touch us unless God allows it. And God never does anything without a reason. Now, while that thought doesn’t always help during the hard times, it’s still nice to know. God has a plan, and apart from it nothing at all can touch us.
A while back I was having a particularly rough day and one of my closest friends texted me and told me to never forget that God loves me and that He’s crafting me, “warrior-training” me to be who He wants me to be. You guys are all incredible people, and God has incredible things planned for your lives. But, like clay (Isaiah 64:8), sometimes we requires a little shaping first. Once He’s done shaping, however, we’ll be incredible tools that he can use to do great things. But in order to see those incredible things, we first have to survive boot camp. But in the end that just makes it all the more beautiful. Nichole Nordeman’s song “Sunrise”, another beautiful song that you should all hear, talks about experiencing all of the hard times in life and then looking back and deciding that you wouldn’t trade any of it in for the world, not even the hard and broken parts, because, as Nichole so profoundly puts it, “how would I know the morning if I knew not midnight? You’re my horizon. You’re the light of a new dawn. So thank-you, thank-you that after the long night, you are sunrise.”
Whatever’s going on in your life, remember to stick with God. He really does know what He’s doing, even when we can’t always see it.
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