The Unpredictability of God

Hebrews 13:8 - "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today and forever..." - NKJV

Do you like adventure? What is an adventure anyway? Webster's primary definition of adventure is: "an undertaking usually involving danger and unknown risks" Now take a minute and reflect on your life. How much energy and resources do you spend trying to make your life more comfortable, stable, consistant, predictable, etc. How well do you handle the unknown variables that show up out of nowhere in your life? Do you live a life of danger seeking and risk taking? So...let me ask you again. Do you like adventure?

I would challenge anyone of you to find a person in the Bible who knew, from beginning to end, every step that God was going to lead them through in the process of completing His purpose for their lives. I would even suggest to you that you won't find a person in the Bible who didn't have everything on the line many times over...they were in that wonderful and fearful place where all they could say was: "though He slays me, I will still trust Him..." And that reminds me of Job. Here's a guy who is walking through life and has the testimony of being the most righteous man on the face of the earth...from God's own mouth I might add. He has done everything he knew to do in order to honor God with his life. He had a lifestyle of integrity that blessed and honored all who came in contact with him. And then out of nowhere God allows him to be stripped of everything; and I mean everything. Not just finances and property mind you: all of his children were killed, his health destroyed, and his helpmate transformed into the embodiment of bitterness.

Everything that Job held dear and had worked his whole life to secure vanished in a moment as the devil, walking under God's permission, reduced Job to an oozing, broken down piece of humanity. I don't know about you, but I have had my faith in God rattled by circumstances far less exasperating than Job's were. I wonder if God were to give us a preview of our life, and the trials that would come from serving Him, if we'd still follow Him. What if God said: "Thanks for following me. Now I am going to let you go through what Job did..."; would that change you willingness to follow Him? Oh, don't be so over-spiritual...it's easy to say yes when it is a hypothetical question. Unfortunately for the majority of Western Christianity, our walk with God has become a series of predictable elements. The only hick-ups in our perfect world Christianity is when we face the trials of human existence on this earth (illness, death, financial trials, etc.). Then we run to God for His intervention to set us free from our circumstance. Don't get me wrong here...God delights to provide for ALL of our needs. Yet, I get the sneeking suspition that if we are following the Lord as we should be that there would be a greater sense of mystery, unsurety, and well...adventure.

If Moses standing before the read sea, or Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, or Paul surviving a shipwreck and a viper bite or Jesus forgiving the woman taken in adultery isn't adventurous then what is? I have heard many Christian talk about how Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever as though that "sameness" refers to the fact that He always acts the same, does the same things and is in a word...predictable. I recently had lunch with a good friend of mine, Eric Enns. Eric is the pastor of City Light. While we were talking today he mentioned something about God's creation of man that I felt was pretty profound. To paraphrase our conversation, he said: "What does it say about God that he didn't just put man on earth with a free will by himself, but put us all together with the potential to impact one another's lives...for good or for bad?" Take a second and think about that. God put us here on the earth knowing that we would hurt, betray, reject, and deceive one another. It began with Adam & Eve when "she gave the fruit to her husband who was with her." By the way, Adam was there and did nothing to protect his wife from the deception of the serpent. I don't know about you, but I would honestly not choose to be a part of such a potentially hazardous environment.

We try in life, and also the church, to create "safe places" where people are never wounded, rejected, or abandoned. No matter how hard we try I don't think it will ever be possible to have a church environment that is free of danger. I may not be sure that God wants it that way... We often find as Christians that we are reaching for this spiritual utopia where we have become immune to the sufferings of life and relationships. It becomes increasingly frustrating when something happens that shakes up our "perfect world". This may be anything from being slandered to someone sitting in our favorite pew. I believe the enemy has taken advantage of this to bring us into condemnation and guilt by thinking "If I was only walking closer to God, these things wouldn't be happening to me..." This perpetuates a mode of striving to be better, more faithful, and safer. The cycle can often derail believers into a sense that God has abandoned them or that following Him is too hard. Anyways...this whole dimension of God as creator begs the question: "Why? Why did God set it up this way?" I am not sure I know that answer. As my friend Eric suggested: "God must have an end product in mind for us that can't be reached another way". What does that product look like? Paul suggests in Romans 8:28-30 that "we have been predestined (through opportunity/potential not predetermined fate) to be conformed to the image of God's dear Son..." Now consider Hebrews 2:10, which states "Christ was made perfect through the things that He suffered"?

The flip side of this issue is that God also knew that man would have the capacity to love, bless, encourage, serve and sacrifice for one another. Maybe the best that we can be is to do good, even when we are treated badly. To love when we are hated. To encourage when we are torn down. To sacrifice when we have been taken advantage of. Jesus demonstrated a supernatural love in the middle of intense hatred, deception, and betrayal. Perhaps true love cannot express itself fully without the presence of suffering.