When God Hides

Why, God, Why?

Have you ever asked God, Why?

Trusting God means always being content to live with no more than God in his wisdom wants to reveal, when he wants to reveal it.

We’re currently looking at how God both reveals and hides. In this post we see how to respond when God hides things, when there are mysteries he does not explain, when his ways are inscrutable (Rom. 11:33).

For there is much that God does not tell us. Proverbs 25:2 says, “It is the glory of God to conceal things.” Deuteronomy 29:29 says, “The secret things belong to the LORD our God.”

Life is full of mysteries and secrets. We all have questions. We all are curious. One of the biggest words in English is “why.” We want to know the future.

Unbearable knowledge

God knows there is much that we do not need to know, much that would actually be harmful for us to know. We are not God. Even if we had the capacity to know all, we could not bear it.

Jesus said, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now” (John 16:12).

Although the knowledge God reveals and wants us to have is good and helpful, other knowledge can be a great burden. Solomon himself discovered that in some ways “he who increases knowledge increases sorrow” (Ecclesiastes 1:18).

The apostle Paul said, “I want you to be wise as to what is good and innocent as to what is evil” (Romans 16:19).

It was the desire to gain knowledge independently of God that caused Adam and Eve to stumble. When Satan tempted Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, he said,

“You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. (Genesis 3:4–6)

It was the desire to know the future that led King Saul to the fortune teller (1 Samuel 28).

The desire for wisdom and knowledge is good (Proverbs 1:1–4; 2:1–11), but the desire to get them in a way that involved disobedience, excluded God, and trusted Satan was not good.

Trust fills the gap

God created us to be in his image, but not to know all things. Rather, he created us to trust him in all things.

Thank God for limited knowledge. Partial ignorance is a gift to us, but only because God rules our lives and world. If God did not exist, ignorance would never be good. But because of his loving providence over all and in all, we can trust him for what he hides from us.

As long as we know that in all things he is working for our good and he is in control, we can trust him and accept our limitations.

David understood this. He wrote,

“O LORD, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me.” (Psalm 131:1–2)

To be human is to see only so far

Most tests that God ordains for us require that we not know some things. Our faith would not be tested if we knew when and how God would fulfill his promises.

Even Jesus was kept in the dark until the Father wanted him to know something. For example, Jesus did not know when his Second Coming would occur, and he accepted that (Mark 13:32).

So limited knowledge is part of our human nature. God limits our knowledge because he wants us to rely on him, not on ourselves. We have to accept that, and we have to let limited knowledge lead us always to depend on the one with unlimited, complete knowledge (1 John 3:20).

God wants us to pray for knowledge and wisdom (James 1:5) and trust him for what he chooses to reveal. Don’t get frustrated if you seek him and he keeps secrets or makes you wait for understanding.

God’s ways and our ways

God’s ways: He knows all things but reveals only what is good for us.

Our ways: We want to know all things. We do not want to live by faith and trust in God. Instead we want God to explain himself and justify his ways. We do not want to wait for God’s perfect time to reveal his wisdom and knowledge. We can be too curious.

April 2, 2018March 8, 2018

To Whom Does God Talk?

God loves to share knowledge, wisdom, and understanding.

How can I know more about God?

This is the fourth article in a series on what is required of those who want to know more about God and his ways. In the previous post we saw that he both hides and reveals himself. Let’s look today at what that requires of us.

Jesus said, “If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.” And he said to them, “Pay attention to what you hear: with the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you. For to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” (Mark 4:23–25)

These enormously important words from Jesus about what we can know about God and his ways come in a chapter about the Word of God and how we need to respond to it.

Jesus is teaching his disciples that when they hear the Word of God they need to pay full attention, and they need to receive wholeheartedly all that God says—and desire more. This is what he means by “the measure you use.”

How hungry are you?

It’s as if God drives a truckload of apples into a farmer’s market. He parks and posts a sign that says, “Free apples—all you can carry.”

And he means it. If someone brings him an empty knapsack, he fills it with apples. If someone brings a paper bag, he fills it. To the one who has no container but wants one apple in each hand, he gives two apples. If someone wants to fill their car’s trunk with apples, they get hundreds of them.

Jesus says whatever container you bring, whatever measure you use, he will fill it. And he tells every person as they leave that if they will come back later with another container, a larger one, he will fill that too.

One woman who filled her car trunk with apples came back later driving a pickup truck and said if the farmer meant what he said she wanted a payload full. He smiled and clapped his hands and got excited. He loved people who loved apples. Gladly he filled her truck for free and told her to come back later for more.

God is willing and generous

The apples are divine knowledge, wisdom, and understanding. And God loves to share them.

He knows some people want all they can get of spiritual truth. Others want a bagful. Others want less because apples are heavy and require work to carry home. Some gladly receive one apple, eat it, and are full. Others want a sample like you get on a toothpick at the grocery store, but decide that’s enough. Others say, “No thanks.”

God is willing to give; what varies is the appetite of those who hear, and whether they wholeheartedly believe God’s Word, and whether they are willing to exert themselves to think about God’s Word until they understand it, and whether they choose to obey it.

Hunger. Belief. Thinking. Obedience.

Do you have ears to hear?

Jesus said, “If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.” In other words, if you are willing to hear what I say, then pay attention and receive my words because I am now revealing God’s truth and ways.

When God chooses to reveal himself and his truth, we are responsible to get as much as we can. Those who have a big appetite, belief, the willingness to persistently exert themselves to understand, and obedience to what they hear, God gladly gives more knowledge, wisdom, and understanding.

Those who prefer other things get what they prefer. In fact, Jesus warns: “from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”

We are responsible for what we know, but God ultimately controls the supply of apples. He owns all the trees. He hides and reveals. We are utterly dependent.

God’s Ways and Our Ways

God’s ways: He is super generous with wisdom and knowledge. He approves of those who want more of what he reveals. He faults those who have no interest in it.

Our ways: If we are foolish, we pay little or no attention to what God has revealed in the Bible, nature, and the church. If we are wise, we make every effort to learn, understand, and apply God’s words.

God keeps talking to those who are listening.

More next week on the crucial topic of how we know more about God.

March 26, 2018March 3, 2018

Humble Learning Required

What can we know?

God requires us to make every effort to learn what he has revealed, and to trust him when he keeps secrets.

“The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever” —Deuteronomy 29:29

You have decisions to make, but you’re not sure what to do.

Things are happening in your life and world that don’t make sense.

You want to understand God, his will, and the Bible, but some things are not adding up.

You really want to know

What you can know is a super important and relevant subject because we need knowledge and we all want to know everything. We are all curious. Literally, if we could, we would be like God and know everything about everything.

We want to know how to do everything with perfect skill and success. How to find perfect happiness, relationships, and peace. How everything works.

And how every event in history actually happened.

We want to know.

The details about how the universe and life began. What the future holds.

When our prayers will be answered. Why something bad happened. How long we will have to wait for that job, marriage, child to be conceived, success on the job, visa approval, breakthrough, healing, baptism in the Spirit, promotion, or answer to our question. Or is our wait in vain?

We want to know what every verse in the Bible means. Why God does what he does.

On and on it goes. So many books, so little time. We want to know.

What God wants us to know

Unfortunately, at least from our perspective, God doesn’t want us to know everything. That’s what the opening Scripture above from Deuteronomy says. There are “secret things,” and then there are “things that are revealed.” And Moses says the one who controls that is God.

In fact it all begins with what God is willing to reveal about himself. You need to know two things about God: He hides himself, and he reveals himself. The Bible says:

“Truly, you are a God who hides yourself, O God of Israel, the Savior” (Isaiah 45:15).

“He who forms the mountains, creates the wind, and reveals his thoughts to man, he who turns dawn to darkness, and treads the high places of the earth—the LORD God Almighty is his name” (Amos 4:13, NIV).

That means he doesn’t completely hide himself. And he doesn’t completely reveal himself.

At this point there are some things he wants us to know about him and his ways, and so he has revealed those things in the Bible, in nature, in the church, and elsewhere. Otherwise, on our own, we could not know them.

That’s because knowing God is not like studying scientific questions such as how trees grow. No matter how hard we explore, humans cannot know anything about God—literally zero—unless he chooses to reveal it.

But there are other things God has actually chosen to hide. He doesn’t want us to know them now. They are divine secrets. They are mysteries. And no one can uncover what God has hidden.

Mysteries

For example, the two most important things for any human now to know were locked up in a vault called mystery until 2,000 years ago: namely, Jesus and the gospel.

The Bible talks about “God’s mystery, which is Christ” (Colossians 2:2).

And, “the mystery hidden for ages in God” (Ephesians 3:9).

And, “the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints” (Colossians 1:26).

Let’s continue this crucially relevant subject next week. For now, let’s close with these two foundations:

God’s way: He hides, and he reveals.

Our way: We may or may not pay careful attention to what God reveals. Or we may or may not trust God when he hides himself and his purposes. We want to have control over what we can know. We would like to know everything.

March 19, 2018February 24, 2018

Faith Required

believe in God_why God does not make it easier to believe

God’s way: Believe in God and his Word.

Our way: Believe only what we understand. Believe only when we know the future. Trust our own mind and human understanding. God must be and do what we think is reasonable.

“And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” —Hebrews 11:6 (ESV)

Believe in God

Have you ever wished that God would make it easier to believe? That he would do for you and everyone else in the world what he did for Saul, as recorded in Acts 9? Give you a vision of Jesus in dazzling light and speak with you telling you what to do? Even perform a miracle?

Before that vision Saul was an ardent unbeliever, an enemy of Christ, but that vision made it nearly impossible not to believe. So if God wants everyone to be saved, if God wants every Christian to trust and obey his Word, why not just do for everyone what he did for Saul?

The Lord requires faith

The answer: Because God loves our faith. And therefore he relates to us in a way that requires faith. He supplies abundant grounds for our faith, but he almost never does anything that makes it impossible not to believe.

For instance, he spectacularly and unmistakably displays his glory in nature, but unbelievers can choose to explain our world with something like the theory of evolution.

He puts into the heart of every human a moral conscience and an awareness of God, but unbelievers can choose to explain that with theories of sociology, psychology, genes, and DNA.

He inspired men to write his Scriptures. The Bible is the most astounding book in the world, a revelation of truth about life and reality that bears the unmistakable stamp of divine authenticity and authority. But unbelievers can choose to avoid God’s Word, and those who do read can choose to harden their hearts to it.

He sent his Son to the world as a man. Jesus taught the truth and performed astounding miracles. He fulfilled Old Testament prophecies. He predicted his death on the cross and resurrection from the tomb. Then God did indeed raise him from the dead, and Jesus appeared to his followers numerous times. They proclaimed that resurrection throughout their world, and many believed, but many more could choose to dismiss the reports and the evidence.

God still does miracles today. Yet unbelievers can always choose to explain them away as something less than evidence of God’s existence.

As God intends

So God gives more than ample reason to believe, but one thing he does not do is show up visibly, audibly, and indisputably in a way that science and all could verify. That is, not since his appearance to Moses and Israel at Mount Sinai and Jesus’s post-resurrection appearance to the disciples. And not more than occasionally to individuals or a small group, as he did with Saul.

That is God’s deliberate way of doing things. He always leaves those who do not want to believe an open back door to escape the truth. And he always gives those willing to believe more than enough reason to believe. (See Romans 1:16–23; John 3:14–21; John 18:37)

He always conducts our relationship with him in a way that requires faith.

Romans 1:17 says, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

So, obviously he must love our faith. Hebrews 11:6 (the Scripture that opened this post) shows he is indeed pleased by our faith and dislikes our unbelief so much that we cannot please him without faith. Jesus always commended people who had faith and chided those who did not believe. He talked about it regularly because it matters so much to him.

Unfortunately, if we had it our way, we would never need faith in God. We would always know what the future holds and have full control of it. And everything God does would make sense to us ahead of time. What faith requires is actually offensive to our pride, to our proud minds. It takes us out of the driver’s seat. It makes us dependent, like children. We won’t understand everything. “Unless you turn and become like children,” said Jesus, “you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3).

God’s Ways: He loves our faith and so relates to us in a way that requires us to believe him.

Implications

For all who want to know God and walk and work closely with him, this means five things:

We must never be okay with our own doubt and unbelief. (But we are to be merciful toward others who See Jude 1:22) (See John 20:27; James 1:6–8)
We must choose to believe what the Bible says and resist our Western scientific training that has left a bias in our mind against the supernatural. This is a choice based on who we think is more reliable. (See Luke 1:37; Matthew 22:29; 1 Corinthians 1:17–31; Proverbs 28:26)
We must believe in Jesus Christ. (See John 3:16; John 6:27–35)
We must do the things that strengthen faith. Read and memorize the Bible daily. Attend a church weekly that believes that the Bible is inerrant and that God still does supernatural miracles such as healings. And pray continually. (See Romans 10:17)
We must understand that for all our lives, growing in faith is God’s spiritual curriculum for us as much as growing in love, holiness, and knowledge. Therefore God will allow situations in your life to draw out more faith. So you need to respond to those situations as God intends—with faith in him and his Word. (See Hebrews 12:2)

Question: In the comments area, tell us: What would you add to this list?

March 12, 2018February 15, 2018

When God’s Ways Are Way Not Our Ways

You’ll never know God better if you don’t recognize how different he is from you.

“My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” —Isaiah 55:8–9 (ESV)

God’s ways are not our ways. Think about that. Fix it in your mind. Let it sink in deeply because knowing and believing that is critical for anyone who wants to know God and his ways.

God’s ways are not your ways. That is the default human condition according to God.

It is critical to recognize that because most people assume the opposite. People think they know what God is like, so they don’t press in to know more about him. They don’t exert themselves to learn if they have wrong beliefs about him. They are satisfied with what they already believe.

Our default beliefs come from our own reasonings about what we have grown up seeing, hearing, and reading from family, movies and shows and music lyrics, ads, school, friends, religious background, teachers, writers.

These are influences that may or may not be right. But how can we know? There are thousands of various, contradictory beliefs on God and his ways. How can you confirm your beliefs are correct or discover your beliefs are wrong?

I believe that the only authoritative source for knowing God and his ways is the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. I’ll explain why in a future article. But my starting point is the belief that I cannot figure out God and his ways on my own, nor can humanity, and that in love God has revealed the inspired, inerrant words of the Bible so we can know and walk with him.

How to close the gap between your ways and God’s ways

Since the Bible says, as we saw above, that the default human condition is ignorance about God and his ways, how should that shape our pursuit of God?

We should read the Bible daily with an open, curious mind. Regular reading of the Bible is necessary because the influences we experience most tend to shape our thinking most.
We should read the whole Bible, both Old and New Testaments, because we need to form our beliefs on everything the Bible says on a subject, not on isolated verses. This is necessary because we can find an isolated phrase in the Bible, take it out of context, and adopt almost any wrong belief or practice.
When we read something that contradicts our beliefs, we should confirm it with the full context of the Bible, and then believe the correct interpretation of the Bible instead of ourselves. For Proverbs 14:12 says, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.” And Proverbs 3:5 says, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.”
We should be humble, teachable, and obedient to God. The uniform testimony of the Bible is that pride and stubbornness lead us astray. Proverbs 16:18 says, “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
We should know that God relates to us on his terms, not ours. God is infinitely merciful and kind to reach down to us and meet us where we are, but when we turn to him, he never leaves us as we are, and he never changes. He says, “You shall be holy, for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16).
We should know that the more we have been submerged in our world’s way of thinking, and the less we have been exposed to the full message of the Bible, the more foreign and shocking God’s words in the Bible will seem to us. Western culture has veered farther and farther from its Judeo-Christian roots. The verses from Isaiah above are becoming increasingly true. To paraphrase: Your ways are way not my ways.

Some would label this approach to faith fundamentalism, using the word in its pejorative sense. But anyone who believes that a document has divine authority and takes it seriously will be labeled a fundamentalist by those who do not agree.

But this is the only rational approach given what the Bible says and what human experience shows.

Not to take this approach is relativism in its full, pejorative sense. It is putting trust in limited human perspective and experience and even majority opinion, all of which the Bible says are deeply flawed. It is putting our trust in contemporary trends in thinking, which history shows always change and thus cannot be absolutely true and reliable.

Life principle: If you want to grow in your knowledge of God, you begin by recognizing that your ways are not God’s ways.

What does God require?

This post is the beginning of a series on what God requires of us if we are to know him and walk according to his ways. Don’t miss the next post, which is on the necessity of faith.

Let’s conclude with a typically spicy and forthright assessment of the situation from God’s perspective: Proverbs 28:26 says, “Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool.”