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."