From milk to fruit

I cannot begin to put into words how different I feel.  Meeting God as He truly is, is transforming.  At the beginning of my journey through Disappointment with God I was hurting, bitter, angry, closed off, doubting, striving, struggling, and "shoulding" my way through my walk with God.  By shoulding I mean my heart would say, I should feel this way about God, so I am going to make myself.  I should believe in what this scripture says, so I am going to make myself.  I should be acting this way, so I am going to make myself.  Shoulding your way through life does not produce faith, take it from me.  Job says, "Though he slay me, I will hope in Him."  I can only assume that Job said this out of actual genuine faith.  The faith that is not based on our circumstances.  I have been saying something similar over the past few years, "Throw whatever you have at me God, but I will not give up", but it was felt and said as a challenge toward a God who I felt like was my opponent.  A God who was pitted against me.  How did I end up there?

I have been asking myself that question, but the truth has begun to settle deep within.  I grew up in a home that taught me about God. I grew up among a growing thriving group of young Christians who helped to sharpen my faith.  I learned to spend time with God in prayer and with scripture at a very young age. I have a prayer journal from 4th grade- it is hilarious to read.  God blessed me with child like faith.  It was so easy to believe.  God made himself so real to me in my childhood. 

I literally saw God answer my personal prayers in ways that today would stun me.  Examples of a true loving God surrounded me in a blanket of safety and trust.  I would pray for a friend and then watch as they accepted Christ.  I would ask God for direction and at times His voice was so loud it was as if it was audible.  I went to a foreign country and saw people healed.  I was being fed the sweetest of pure spiritual milk from a God that was lovingly teaching me to trust him with Child like faith.  Philip Yancey says  " The problem is that child like trust may not survive when the miracle does not come, when the urgent prayer gets no answer, when the fog of life does not allow any signs of God's concern. Such times call for something more, for the hang-on-at-any-cost faith."

I learned when the first wave of fog hit that I did not posses the hang-on-at-any-cost faith.  Reading the Bible as a child I often times read the stories with rose colored glasses on. To me, the stories were about people who heard from God, had faith to do what he asked, and God rewarded their faith with good things.  Looking back at those same stories there is a much deeper reality. 

This next section is from the book, paraphrased by me. (don't want to take credit for thoughts that are not my own).  " Many follow this formula tragedy- darkness- triumph.  Abraham was promised to be the father of all nations and he waited nearly a century, to have one son, who he was then asked to kill, although he did become the father of all nations.  Joseph was given a dream by God, but landed at the bottom of a well, then in an Egyptian dungeon, before finding triumph.  Moses was hand picked to deliver the Israelites, and ended up wandering around in the desert for forty years hunted by Pharaoh's army.  David was anointed to be King and spent the next decade dodging attempts on his life, and sleeping in caves.  They all received a clear message followed by a long, silent gap.  But, they all ended up in Hebrews 11 (the hall of faith), and the Bible says "The world was not worthy of them".  "

What I missed as a child is that in the silent gap is where faith was found.  " Where there is no opportunity for doubt, there is no longer any opportunity for faith either. Faith demands uncertainty."
So it is that God has blessed my life with uncertainty, trial, silence, and grief.  That is a crazy statement I know, but if it hadn't been for the tragedy and darkness I would still be craving milk from God instead of having the mature faith, the hang-on-at-any-cost faith.  That kind of faith is what is pleasing to God.  That is what God desires of us, and what is best for us.  That is why we can believe that "all things work together for our good."  In the long silent gaps of pain God is taking us from children to adults, from milk to the fruit of the spirit.  It is not a fun or easy process, but I am finding that it is priceless.  It has changed me. It has changed the way that I read the Bible, relate to God, relate to people. 

Jesus.  That is who it always comes back to.  He hung from a cross, a time of intense tragedy and darkness where He cried out to God "why have you forsaken me?".  Jesus was acquainted with grief and God's silence.  But at the end of that was the ultimate triumph.  Easter Sunday- Jesus rose from the dead and is alive!  " The evils and suffering that afflict our lives are so real and so significant to God that he willed to share them and endure them himself."  I have never been more convinced of the realness of God, and  His love for me, not even when I was a child. 

It is hard to grow up, but I would not change the fruit of the spirit that is growing in my life now for the spiritual milk of my childhood.

Hebrews 5:12-14 (New Living Translation)


"You have been believers so long now that you ought to be teaching others. Instead, you need someone to teach you again the basic things about God’s word. You are like babies who need milk and cannot eat solid food. For someone who lives on milk is still an infant and doesn’t know how to do what is right. Solid food is for those who are mature, who through training have the skill to recognize the difference between right and wrong."

Life is unfair!

I have found myself throughout the last 6 years struggling with the fact that Life is unfair.  I face off against the desire to shout this at God  almost every night at work as I care for the 19 year old who is having her third baby that she says is an "accident".  I hold it in every time I take care of a patient who says to me that having a baby was the last thing she wanted.  I let it make me angry every time I deal with a situation where I know that the baby going home will not be feed, loved, or even safe.  I say it over and over again in my head- life isn't fair!  Dave just got a job and I am so proud of him. He is a middle school teacher who will change the lives of every student he comes in contact with, yet he makes less money than even I do.  To me paying our children's teachers so little is so unfair!  A good friend of mine is possibly saying goodbye to her mother today while she is pregnant with her first child, life is so unfair!

I say all of this because at some point in time we all shout this same phrase, but when it turns dangerous is when we allow that phrase to turn into- God is unfair!  I am recovering from this belief.   I allowed the pain of this world, and unfair circumstances to be my gateway into believing that God is unfair. 

Like I said in my last blog, I have been reading a book called Disappointment with God by Philip Yancey and I have been set free from so many false accusations I have made against God.  I wanted to share with you what he says about believing that God is unfair.
We all look to Job as the ultimate story of human suffering.  Job was one of the holiest men of his time, and life was unfair to him.  He loses his children, everything he owns, and his own personal health.  He has to deal with the fact that life is unfair.  Everyone deals with this reality differently. 

Here are the most common ways that people deal with it: (this is all from the book)

1.  Job's wife tells him "Curse God and die".  These people deal with the unfairness of life by simply saying that a loving God cannot allow life to be this unfair, so they chose to curse God and not believe.
2.  Others choose to believe that God agrees that life is unfair, is hurt by our suffering, but is powerless to change it.
3.The third group of people look to the future to fix the unfairness, like "karma", what goes around comes around, and it will all eventually right itself.
4. A fourth approach is to insist that the world is fair.  These people say things like "God is trying to teach you something. You should feel privileged, not bitter, about your opportunity to trust God.",
 " God is training you to exercise your faith", " Someone always has it worse than you", " Think about your blessings- at least you are still alive."

As a side note for those of us Christians who have lived in #4,  per Philip Yancey, " Such helpful advice does nothing to answer the questions of the person in pain.  It is the wrong medicine dispensed at the wrong time."

These are all the ways he lists that people attempt to reason out life's unfairness, but the truth comes from Job.  He summarizes his belief in one emotion- Life is unfair!  The rest of this blog will be a lot of quotes from the book because they are not my intelligent answers, but I hope that they impact you the way that they impacted me this morning. 

" I learned, not to confuse God with life.  I am as upset about what happened to me as anyone could be.  I feel free to curse the unfairness of life and to vent all my grief and anger. But I believe God feels the same way about it- grieved and angry.  I don't blame him for what happened. I have learned to see beyond the physical reality of this world to the spiritual reality of this world.  We tend to think life should be fair because God is fair.  But God is not physical life.  And if I confuse God with the physical reality of life- by expecting constant good health, for example- then I set myself up for crashing disappointment.  God's existence, even his love for me, does not depend on my good health.  Frankly, I have had more opportunity to work on my relationship with God during my impairment than before.  If we develop a relationship with God apart from life circumstances then we may be able to hang on when the physical breaks down.  I challenge you to go home and read again the story of Jesus. Was life fair to him? For me, the cross demolished for all time the basic assumption that life will be fair."

I don't know where I picked up the expectation that life should be fair, but with stunning clarity I now see that life was the most unfair when God himself allowed the sins of others to hang his son on a cross to die.  God dealt with the unfairness of life by sending His son to experience it first hand.  I can believe in a God like that.  Life is never going to be fair, but having a savior that understands how I am dealing with the unfairness of life is worth the faith it takes to hold on during those hard times.  My relationship with God and his love for me is too precious to be ruined by my circumstances.

We don't worship Santa Clause

I am currently reading a book by Philip Yancey called Disappointment With God.  I have consciously had to hold myself back from wanting to copy and paste the entire book into my blog.  If I could send everyone a copy I would.  It has been that valuable and healing to me, and I am only half way through.  It speaks to the heart of anyone who has ever wondered where God is, why hasn't he answered my prayers, is he unfair?  If you have ever experienced disappointment this is the book for you!
I have had major heart change with each chapter. One of the most important lessons for me has been that God's quick answers to prayer and obvious presence don't lead the people that experience them to loving God more.  It has been revolutionary to me that God desires me to love him above all else.  He desires my love and affection.  That short sentence may not impact you the way it has shattered me, but if you sit and think on it I hope that it will.
In the Old testament God showed himself very obviously in countless stories.  He also gave lavishly in countless stories, and in countless stories people still turned away.  The Israelites had God living among them in a pillar of fire. They could open their eyes at any time and look around and see actual proof that God was with them.  Manna showed up every morning for them to eat, physical evidence that God would provide for them, and yet it says that the people complained that there wasn't a variety of things to eat.  It says that even the physical presence of God didn't draw people into a loving relationship with him.  The Israelites rebelled, complained, refused to believe, didn't offer God their unending love.
Solomon was given every gift he asked for. He built an amazing temple that God actually entered and filled with his glory.  Solomon had every reason to love God with all of his heart and yet it says that in the end Solomon became obsessed with the gifts and power themselves, and not with the giver of the gifts. 
It  struck me that even when God answers every prayer and makes himself so obviously present that people don't love him more and obey him more fervently. 
We don't love and obey Santa Clause.  Santa Clause brings our hearts desires and comes every year, yet it isn't enough to foster love.  I am not going to fall more in love with God by getting what I am waiting for.  I so often wish God would make himself and his plan more obvious to me, but as I have seen in scripture though it may strengthen my emotions, or "faith" for a time it will not produce in me a true love for God that lasts.  I must learn how to fall in love with God and offer him the love that he so amazingly deserves. 
It has been so freeing to realize that my relationship with God isn't tied to me feeling close to God, an emotional experience of feeling God's closeness is not what will sustain me. God's number one desire is to have a relationship with me.  He understands that just showering me with the gifts that I am asking for, or making His presence easy to see isn't in my best interest.  He is sometimes hidden and quiet so that I will have the blessing of learning to love him more.  He doesn't always answer requests right away, or shower me with the gifts I ask for because he wants me to have the gift of a love that doesn't depend on gifts. 
God is not Santa Clause and I am so thankful that He knows what I need more than I know what I need.  I am thankful that God knows what will lead me into true faith and relationship with Him, even when I think he is wrong.  I am thankful that I am learning to have a true love and affection for God. Most of all I am thankful that despite my very small understanding of him and my "disappointment" with him that he has not given up on me.