Wrestle
It’s been over fourteen years since God first gave me what has now become one of the most important lessons of how truly finite I am and how infinite He is.
It has been over eleven years since I first started this blog and shared that lesson here.
It’s been over four years since I last found myself sitting down with my laptop, with words trapped in my heart and this sense of urgency to get them out.
I am not the same person that I was fourteen, eleven, and four years ago. I’m prefacing with that because, of the people that will choose to click on the link to read this blog, the ones who truly know me is beyond few. And without knowing me, you cannot begin to know my heart.
My faith does not look the same as it did when I was a child. My faith does not look the same as it did when I was in bible college. My faith does not look the same as it did when I served in churches. My faith does not look the same as it did when I stopped attending churches. And while the trajectory of that points to a specific conclusion that I am sure many of you are thinking, I can assure you, it’s not what you think.
There is no one I love more in my heart than God. There is no one else that I will serve.
No man. No church. No ideology. No ministry. No book. No public figure. No friend. No family.
There is no one that can replace Him.
And I’m saying this for a very specific purpose. I want to make it abundantly clear where my allegiance lies. And that is fully in God’s Camp. In His Glory. In His Honor.
I have operated under a strict policy. I will not speak unless God tells me to, and only when He tells me too.
The past couple days I have had two things spinning in my mind and I have been trying to figure out how to verbalize the words into something palatable and easily digestible for my fellow believers. I’m not sure if I have figured out how to.
So this is the warning I’m giving. I’m ready to flip some tables.
My feeds over the past week, month, year even, has not only broken my heart but angered me.
And it’s not for why you think.
God is in control.
He is Sovereign.
Those are things we hear from a pulpit all the time. They are phrases we proclaim without a second thought.
But if I had to wager, I don’t think the majority of people are willing to confront following that belief to its very logical conclusion.
Which is that it truly means God is in Control of everything. Every. Thing.
That’s a difficult pill to swallow. I know. I’ve been wrestling with it for over a decade.
Does that mean God was in control when * insert tragedy of your choosing * happened?
Yes.
Does that mean God was in control when * insert blessing of your choosing * happened?
Yes.
God is not someone that things happen to. He is not taking a smoke break when tragedy ensues. The devil didn’t “one up” Him and sneak a tragedy past Him.
He wasn’t looking the other way.
He was in the trenches. He was staring the pain in the eyes.
He signed off on it.
We only want to praise Him when it’s good. We never give Him the glory when it’s ugly.
I can hear you now. “We shouldn’t be blaming God just because bad things happen”
This isn’t blame. Its honor. Its respecting that I am not God. That I do not have the full story and I do not see the full plan. It’s true belief that He is Sovereign. And it’s firmly mounted on the foundation that above all, I know He is good.
It’s hard. I know it is. To wrestle with knowing fully that He is good when there is pain and suffering. I can’t begin to tell you how many years and tears I have spent wresting with knowing His kindness. Too much for me to even begin to try and verbalize here.
But the conclusion of all of those years is that I can confidently say, He is good. And if you can’t say you fully believe that yet, then I think that’s where you should start. I think you should get in the boxing ring with God and fight it out. I think you should ask the hard questions. I think you should wrestle.
But if you have done that wrestling and you know He is good, then don’t do Him the disrespect of not honoring Him in the things you don’t like. It’s naive at best and hypocritical at worst. Don’t shout that God is in control of everything while simultaneously giving credit to people for the good happening from an outcome and pointing fingers at others for the bad.
God should be getting the credit for it all. He is an active participant in our lives. All of our lives.
I know this feels hard to grasp. There is so much violence in the world. We have been hearing about it not only just the past couple weeks but everyday.
1.8 people die every second globally.
Today, there were about 153,000 people that have died.
This past year, there were about 56 million people that have died.
And that doesn’t even touch on the people that are currently living and enduring violence, injustice, disease and poverty.
It is an extremely broken world. I know. And the weight of that can feel so heavy.
I started this post saying that fourteen years ago God gave me some insight into my own limits. I wrote about that very lesson on this blog in 2013.
If I were to measure the capacity in which I could feel any emotion - anger, joy, sadness, grief - it would be one grain of sand.
If I were to compare that to God, who is infinite, it would be more than every grain of sand in the entire universe.
Humans aren’t built to process infinite suffering. If we attempted to spread our attention across every injustice equally, not only would we effectively dilute our ability to be of any help anywhere, but we would quite literally be crushed under the weight of it.
Yet God not only feels everything in a way that we can not even conceptualize, but He also is the only one who truly can and will redeem it all.
If we say we trust God fully, then we have to trust Him when it’s hard to understand. And if we don’t know how to do that, then start with being honest about it.
I can tell you in the last decade of me chasing intimacy with God this is what I have learned.
Be honest. Brutally honest. Always.
When it’s hard, when it’s ugly, when it’s messy, and when it’s vulgar.
I truly don’t think we as followers of Christ can fully grasp and truly understand the magnitude of knowing He is fully in control if we first aren’t willing to admit when that very belief is hard to understand.
If we can’t wrestle with the not knowing, the questions, the pain, the suffering, then I don’t ever think we can experience true intimacy with Him.
So I guess this is my final challenge.
Get in the ring with Him. Fight it out it out with Him
Throw your questions at Him. Give him brutal, vulgar honesty.
His shoulders are broad and strong enough to face the weight of your questions.
And if I had to wager a guess on where the wrestling match will end, it’ll be with you knowing less but loving Him more.
Because you’ll learn that there is peace in the unknowing when it’s coupled with the assurance that He is good.
So wrestle.