I find more often than not when I’m discouraged by life, when I’m hurt by those that are close to me, when confusion settles, and when hurt permeates; I am also discouraged in my faith, feel hurt by God, confused by His purpose and hurt by His distance. I compare God to those that I look up to in life, I compare my faith to what I understand here on earth, I base my knowledge and logic on the examples and experiences that I encounter on a daily basis. We compare what we know with what we can’t comprehend.
While I have felt God’s presence in my life, I have not physically sat across from Him in a coffee shop talking about my feelings, my passions, sharing with Him who I am and being able to look in His eyes and see Him physically next to me. When God says, “I will provide,” I compare His provisions to the examples in my everyday life of those who tell me they will provide—whether that be a parent, a spouse, a boss, a friend. When God says, “I love you and will never leave you,” I can’t help but compare that to those I once trusted, those I trust now—both positive and negative in my life. We put God in the box of our own understanding based on the earthly examples and experiences we have lived through and built our experiences from.
A Faith based on the comparisons of earthly experiences strips God of what makes Him the one we worship, the one we praise, the one we believe in. When I am disappointed and hurt by God I have to step back and ask myself if I have made something else the god of my life, and if I am basing my feelings and devotion to the things of Heaven or the things of earth.
Why would we follow after a God who isn’t bigger or more powerful than our own human logic and understanding? There is no point in a God if our belief does not allow for Him to break the mold of our own comprehension. We follow a God who is bigger than the hurt and mistakes of those that are around us, we follow a God who does not compare even to the greatest of examples in our own life.
Faith is the belief in the things unknown; in the things we can’t comprehend, in the things we have no understanding or experience to draw from. We may never sit across from God physically in a coffee shop but there are moments in my life when I have felt the presence of God. I know this without a shadow of a doubt because His presence, His moments with me, exceeded and went beyond any understanding or experience I could ever draw from knowing on my own. It’s in the moments that we cannot understand, it is in the moments where the hurt feels more than we can bare, it is in the moments when the loneliness overwhelms, that God breaks down the barriers of our heart. He says…I am more, I am greater, I am bigger than any feeling you have, any comparison you make; I am the God who brings peace that passes all understanding and who reveals Himself to you when all is silent and when all hope seems lost.
God cannot be compared. When you don’t understand, when you can’t comprehend, when you can’t make sense of the senseless---those are the opportunities for Faith and to allow God to fulfill His promise to you that He is greater.
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