The God I Do Not Understand

I will wait for the Lord… I will put my trust in Him.

Isaiah 8:17

It is one thing to trust in the God I understand. But it is a very different matter to choose to trust the God I do not. #faith #NewYear Share on X

As a new follower of Jesus, I understand that if I confess my sins and ask God’s forgiveness, I will be forgiven. New life will be mine. New spiritual birth is promised, and I will leave the old nature behind, the new work of the Holy Spirit beginning in me His work of regeneration and sanctification. The Lord Jesus will dwell in me, giving me the power to live a new life of hope and strength.

With this new life comes a new expectation. If I obey His commands, if I serve Him, if I seek to honor Him in all I do, I will be blessed.

And thus we begin our walk with the Savior.

We settle into a comfortable understanding of the God we follow. If I do this, that happens. If I believe this, that promise will come true.

The God we understand is quite easy to follow. He is benevolent, He is good, He is somewhat safe and predictable as long as I do what I am supposed to.

But what happens in the dark night of my rest when tragedy strikes? When bad things happen to good people, making good efforts seem futile and evil seem permissible? 

How am I to understand the God I have known so intimately when my formula for blessing seems to have been turned on its ear in a single moment of devastating loss? #faith #NewYear Share on X

My mind spins and swirls, the waters rise, the feet of my heart desperately scramble to find sure footing again as the world I thought I understood, the God I was sure I did understand, appears utterly mysterious and confounding. Betraying.

It is one thing to trust the God I understand. But to choose to trust the God I do not understand is an entirely new frontier of faith. This frontier demands as sure a choice, as determined a decision as the first time I chose to leave my old life of sin and shame behind and follow the Man of the Cross.

The choice I make about the God I do not understand is like a massive door, looming over me, demanding I respond. Everyone must respond; no one can be neutral in its shadow. Some will run from it, back into the comfort of logic and predictability, perhaps exchanging the Lord for another lord who can be better understood. Others arrive at its stoop as though thrown there, discarded and broken by suffering that cannot be explained or understood by the logical mind. But all arrive. This door is one of the crucial junctures of life.

How I respond will set the trajectory for the rest of my life.

It is right to wrestle honestly with the choice. Jesus Himself, on the eve of His crucifixion, wrestled with the choice to submit His will to the will of the Father. Being fully man and fully God, Jesus fully understood the struggle of the flesh as well as the will of the Father. Unlike us, He had the advantage of understanding God, yet He demonstrated the human struggle, the real struggle, of choice. The choice to trust. The choice to yield. The choice to submit His temporal suffering to the eternal wisdom and purpose of the mysterious Father who is eternally and faithfully good.

It is relatively easy to trust the God I understand. But the God I do not understand challenges me to my core. He exposes my faith and takes measure of me. Will I choose to trust Him even when I do not understand His ways? Can I entrust myself, my loved ones, my purpose, my future, into His hands and wait in stillness and faith for Him to do the marvelous work only He can do?

I choose to trust Him. The choice comes at a cost. In exchange, I lay down my control, my expectations, what I think I deserve, my interpretation of how I think He should work out all my problems. I will pay up. I have a strong hunch that this is one of the most important investments of my life.

If you are facing the new year at this door of choice, if you are wrestling with the God you do not understand, you are not alone.

What is true about this confounding circumstance in which you find yourself is that you are beloved, and you have been issued an invitation to climb to the high places with the Savior. He beckons you onward and upward to a place few agree to climb, a place where you will learn to walk so closely with Him that the distance between your feeble footsteps and His strong, sure ones becomes indiscernible. 

Let us declare our choice with King David, in a Psalm titled “Unshakable Faith”:

I am standing in absolute stillness, silent before the one I love, waiting as long as it takes for him to rescue me. Only God is my Savior, and he will not fail me.

Psalm 62:5, TPT

Lord, I don’t understand your ways, but I choose today to trust You. Amen.

@audreycfrank