The Formula That Doesn't Work
For some reason it seems popular to Christian thought that obedience garners exactly what we have asked God for. That, if we just “let go,” God will give us back exactly what we’ve relinquished. That sheer submission will mean that He’ll answer our prayers as we’ve strategically laid them out before Him. As though God were formulaic. As though we discerned our best.
Such a train of thought leaves me incensed.
Obedience doesn’t make life “better.” It left Christ in a garden with His face in the dirt. It left Peter hanging from a cross as well. And Paul, in prison countless times because he was compelled to preach the Gospel (1 Cor. 9:16). It seems more a message of mainstream Christendom that ‘life is golden’ when we start obeying.
I’ve seen the opposite.
Instead of greater ease, obedience will lead us down a road of greater sorrow, where our heart comes to break more like Christ’s did… for the student whose parents are reticent to show him any love, for the teenager who has to raise her own parents, for the church leadership that is under constant attack. Obedience identifies us more with the Suffering Servant. Why do we, as Christians, “market” our faith as making this earthly life easier?
Obedience steps us into that foreign realm, where we can’t stridently demand from God what we initially cling to. Instead, a submissive attitude leaves us open to two possibilities, and both blow the “formula.”
The first is unconditional relinquishment, where we leave in God’s hands what we think we most fiercely need; where He withholds from us what ultimately wouldn’t have been to our wellbeing. The second potential which obedience opens us up to, is that we are favored with an unmerited grace so exceeding our ability to pray that we are drawn more fully into the knowledge of His grace.
God is indeed a “rewarder of those who seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6). The difficulty is in distinguishing that God’s rewards come in different forms than will fit the boundaries we’ve tried defining. While I can’t recall a time when He’s given exactly what I’ve prayed, there are innumerable times in which He has mercifully prevented me from the harm which my ignorance would have rendered, and has exceeded my most hopeful expectations which my short-sightedness could never have perceived. The things I’ve let go were what He sought to use for different purposes; the things I haven’t yet thought to pray, He’s preparing.
We are foolish to trust in God’s answers on our own terms. We serve a God who doesn’t conform to our finite thinking; whose refusal to be “formulaic” leaves us with the unfathomable certainty that He, who ‘supports our lot’ (Psalm 16:5), is the same who does ‘abundantly beyond all that we ask or think’ (Ephesians 3:20). “To Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen” (v. 21).
Such a train of thought leaves me incensed.
Obedience doesn’t make life “better.” It left Christ in a garden with His face in the dirt. It left Peter hanging from a cross as well. And Paul, in prison countless times because he was compelled to preach the Gospel (1 Cor. 9:16). It seems more a message of mainstream Christendom that ‘life is golden’ when we start obeying.
I’ve seen the opposite.
Instead of greater ease, obedience will lead us down a road of greater sorrow, where our heart comes to break more like Christ’s did… for the student whose parents are reticent to show him any love, for the teenager who has to raise her own parents, for the church leadership that is under constant attack. Obedience identifies us more with the Suffering Servant. Why do we, as Christians, “market” our faith as making this earthly life easier?
Obedience steps us into that foreign realm, where we can’t stridently demand from God what we initially cling to. Instead, a submissive attitude leaves us open to two possibilities, and both blow the “formula.”
The first is unconditional relinquishment, where we leave in God’s hands what we think we most fiercely need; where He withholds from us what ultimately wouldn’t have been to our wellbeing. The second potential which obedience opens us up to, is that we are favored with an unmerited grace so exceeding our ability to pray that we are drawn more fully into the knowledge of His grace.
God is indeed a “rewarder of those who seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6). The difficulty is in distinguishing that God’s rewards come in different forms than will fit the boundaries we’ve tried defining. While I can’t recall a time when He’s given exactly what I’ve prayed, there are innumerable times in which He has mercifully prevented me from the harm which my ignorance would have rendered, and has exceeded my most hopeful expectations which my short-sightedness could never have perceived. The things I’ve let go were what He sought to use for different purposes; the things I haven’t yet thought to pray, He’s preparing.
We are foolish to trust in God’s answers on our own terms. We serve a God who doesn’t conform to our finite thinking; whose refusal to be “formulaic” leaves us with the unfathomable certainty that He, who ‘supports our lot’ (Psalm 16:5), is the same who does ‘abundantly beyond all that we ask or think’ (Ephesians 3:20). “To Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen” (v. 21).
posted by Purple at 10:09 AM
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