A few days back I was reading My Utmost For His Highest and was really struck by Oswald Chambers' reflection on John 16:23, "And in that day ye shall ask Me nothing." Chambers says:
"When is 'that day'? When the Ascended Lord makes you one with the Father. In that day you will be one with the Father as Jesus is, and 'in that day,' Jesus says, 'ye shall ask Me nothing.' Until the resurrection life of Jesus is manifested in you, you want to ask this and that; then after a while you find all questions gone, you do not seem to have any left to ask. You have come to the place of entire reliance on the resurrection life of Jesus which brings you into perfect contact with the purpose of God. Are you living that life now? If not, why shouldn't you? There may be any number of things dark to your understanding, but they do not come in between your heart and God. 'And in that day ye shall ask Me no question'--you do not need to, ou are so certain that God will bring things out in accordance with His will. John 14:1 has become the real state of your heart, and there are no more questions to be asked. If anything is a mystery to you and it is coming in between you and God, never look for the explanation in your intellect, look for it in your disposition, it is that which is wrong. When once your disposition is willing to submit to the life of Jesus, the understanding will be perfectly clear, and you will get to the place where there is no distance between the Father and His child because the Lord had made you one, and 'in that day ye shall ask Me no question.'
I don't know about all of you, but I ask God A LOT of questions. Sometimes subconsciously, often consciously, sometimes spoken, often not...still I ask Him questions. How? Why? When? Where? What? Who? It's like I'm a CSI agent interrogating my suspect because I want answers! The ironic things is that if all I'm looking for is truth, Jesus must just look himself up and down, arms extended, with a loving smirk back at me and say, "Daughter, here I am. Here is my Word. Here is my Spirit. This is your answer." I think it's incredible to imagine being able to ask God absolutely anything and in the moment not needing to or wanting to anymore. It's not a case of being lost for words, it is complete trust. Like Chambers said, so much is a mystery and will remain in the dark, but this shouldn't in any way separate our hearts from God. Believing that God is in control and trusting His purpose for all of us brings us to a place of "entire reliance on the resurrection life of Jesus."
This summer Kaleo groups are distributed into different churches for the 9 weeks we are here and for the first time I am attending a Southern Baptist Church. It's a change from my nondenominational church back at school, but I am glad for a look at a different method with the same truth. I don't know if any of you have ever seen The Iron Giant, but it's an amazing animated film about a metal alien robot who comes to earth, unaware that he was actually created as a great weapon, who is discovered by a boy who becomes his best friend and must protect him from himself and the government. The Iron Giant is good and sweet, but as time goes on his instincts start to control him and he must suppress the violent nature that he so desperately wishes he didn't have. Hate to ruin the movie for ya but He ends up sacrificing himself to save the boy's town, but it's okay because he has this really cool ability to be broken up into a ton of parts and a little light on top of his head signals for all the parts to come back together again. Long summary for a very simple movie, but it's so legit! How is this relevant? Well I was just thinking how if the church is all one body, then right now we are like a discombobulated iron giant with our head being our united belief in Jesus that blinks and wants to restore all the parts to be made whole again. What unites us is far more important than what divides us.
So anyway, today our pastor talked about slandering God's power. It was such a difficult subject to listen to that I admire the truth and conviction the pastor preached from in his message. It took courage to address this topic, and it helped 2 of our guys answer some really tough questions for a nonbeliever during beach evangelism today. He was looking at natural disasters from a biblical perspective and asking where is God in all this? Is God really in control? Can we trust in Him? Can God really be loving and allow these things to happen? Deep, deep, difficult, agonizing questions. The recent tragedies from tornadoes are still such fresh wounds, so I was initially taken aback when the pastor launched in to this topic. I thought to myself at first, how can he talk about this when people haven't even had time to heal? Right now people are grieving and we don't want to talk about these questions right now because we don't want to hear the answers. I thought, how dare I have any sort of perspective on this when me and my loved ones are safe at the moment? The question, if God has control over everything, why does He not step in to stop these natural disasters? What is worse, to believe God is in control and He does allow these things to happen and does not step in, or that He is really not in control of it all? We cannot hope and believe that He is in control of your life and mine and at the same time wish that He didn't have control of the weather and disasters so that we wouldn't have to blame Him for the bad things or ask why He didn't stop them. It's so hard. It's a catch-22. I do not have enough life experience to have a completely legitimate perspective, but the absolute truth that is not relative because it never changes and I can subsequently be completely confident in even at this point in my life is that GOD IS IN CONTROL. I'm so glad I'm not.
We have so many questions and always will, and God always opens up the floor for questions, but He wants us to recognize that in our human states in our time on earth we cannot comprehend His eternal perspective. His ways our not ours, but they are perfect and infinite whereas ours are flawed, ignorant and finite. There is pain, there are questions with no answers. But there is hope, always hope. Always a flicker of it and that hope is found in Jesus who unites the body and promises us eternal life. No guilt in life, no fear in death, this is the power of Christ in me!
Jesus is the peace that calms the storm. He speaks to the wind. Trust Him to carry you. Cling to Him. In these raging storms at sea He is the Rock we can hold on to.
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