In my previous post, I wrote about the growth that we experience as we stand between the place where God is calling you and the obstacles that keep you from getting there.
There are five questions that are important to ask in those in-between places.
1. What do I know?
We feel like our situation is a thread that could be pulled and our whole world would unravel like a knitted scarf. We need to know that God is holding the thread. We aren’t and the circumstance isn’t, God is holding us and keeping it all together. We need to know that God has called us and has authored our story and his calling comes out of love and goodness and kindness that he has shown us in Jesus. He didn’t call you to drop you, he called you to love you.
When the Apostle Paul stood facing death in a Roman prison and the hope that he had been promised by Jesus that he would care for his life and bring him into an eternity of perfection he told his young friend Timothy this:
“I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day” 2Tim 1:12
Paul had entrusted his life to Jesus and knew and was convinced that Jesus was good on his promise and his life was secure whatever happened to him.
It was his knowing the nature and character of Jesus that allowed him to trust that in the in-between Jesus would pull him through even if that meant death, because Jesus had overcome death too.
2. What do I trust?
This is where what we know gets put into play in the arena of our hearts. Our emotions are temporary in these times. Don’t let them have the final say in what you are trusting in. Jesus is orchestrating your life with a sovereign hand and he is doing it perfectly for the glory of God. Emotions become untrustworthy paths to let your trust walk down. Trust that Jesus is in the middle of it all. Trust that where you are is part of your particular story of redemption and God is able, present, irreducible and incomprehensible in this place. We don’t know what he is going to do but we do know that we can trust him.
3. What am I hoping in?
I hope in his promises to me
I hope that he has given us a reason to hope?
I hope that if all fails or goes away Jesus is still with us and He is enough
I hope in the fact that I am not alone
I hope in the reality that he understands us and we understand enough of him
I hope that in the lonely in-between place he is making himself real
I hope that this refining of my faith leads to a deeper placing of knowing God
4. What am I depending on?
God is our resource. In this place I have come to realize that I am unable to change the circumstances. There are things going on that are way beyond my control. I am able to put the ability of people in their proper place and realize humbly that I need something more. I need God. He has to show up or I’m a goner. God is enough, he is all I have and I am depending on his ability, his resource, his knowledge, his salvation, and his presence.
5. What can I change?
I can’t change much in the in-between, but I can repent. I can offer up to God that I know I need to change personally in this place and I want to change, but I admit that I don’t have the ability to do the changing. I need the changer to come and do that for me. I need Jesus through the Gospel and by the Spirit to come and shape me here. He makes that change.
These five questions have been critical for me in these in-between times. They call me back to the reality that I am just a man. They call me to the largeness of God and more than that they show me that God is teaching me deep truths as I face the insurmountable obstacles. Above all of this I find myself learning the art of detachment. The gift of these in-between places is that God is deeply at work in our formation. We are learning to let go of lesser gods and lesser hopes, depending less on others and ourselves and more on him. As we let God loosen our grip on the lesser things that he is detaching our hearts from, we discover that our grip on Him is tightening.
The false belief that always creeps into my thinking is that the most important thing is to get out of these in-between places and quickly get to the place where life is all blessing. That is normal for us to want. But it is not the normal path to holiness. The times where we stand between the promises of God and the great obstacles to entering into them are crucial. These are the times that God in his grace will keep leading us into, so that we can continue to learn to trust ourselves to God alone. Until one day in a frail body we breath our last breathe and commit our spirit into the hands of the one who will breath into us his eternal life and welcome us into his presence. God is making us a people for himself and our hearts are finding rest in him.
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August 5th, 2010at 6:21 pm(#)
This is incredible. With everything that happens in life it’s so good to know that He is near.
August 5th, 2010at 7:31 pm(#)
The discovery of that we are caught in these moments as Christians is one of the hardest things to teach about in community. In America, we need to own our story as a nation as it relates to hardship/conflict and how it has impacted our feelings of entitlement to happiness. Thanks for articulating the struggle in new words and good words.
August 6th, 2010at 12:51 pm(#)
I cried as I read this, but I cried when I let the dog out this morning and he took off after a rabbit too. I guess I’m in that place between the sharp pain of the breath that won’t come, and the realization that He must breathe new life into me.
It is good to hear someone say, “God is holding the thread.”
thank you
August 6th, 2010at 2:36 pm(#)
I’ve learned this lesson SO much the past 3 years, some of the hardest in my life (thought I had been through some doozies before!..) God has definitely shown me that “He didn’t call you to drop you, he called you to love you.” Thanks so much for this encouraging reminder!
August 11th, 2010at 2:16 pm(#)
Rick thank you so much for sorting this out. For me I tend to trust and be influenced by a lot of wrong things. My emotions can throw me around. I can think my talent will get me out of this, but if God is not leading it is just a stench. I could think my good looks will save me, if you evry saw me you know that’s a joke, but everything seems to cloud the beautiful truth that you told,’I hope that if all fails or goes away Jesus is still with us and He is enough’. That’s a tough one, may everything fail, so that I may see Jesus clearly. Yikes!
August 17th, 2010at 6:34 am(#)
One of the primary fears I face in these times is the temptation to believe that my sin has disqualified me. That I have forfeited my place as His son. And, truly, there are times when my sin has caused great disruption in my relationship with Him. However, the radical point of the Gospel is that alienation from God has a cure. A costly cure that I did not invent and no poor power of mine can maintain. One that, at times, is accompanied by His discipline or, at least, His loving willingness to allow consequences to find their way to me, and play their part in leading me to repentance.
This fear of being “un-adopted” comes from a place of doubt, of fear that the one I trust will prove unfaithful. That the human history I have experienced is ultimately true. In this, I miss the reality that God holds me in His family. Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice… No one can take them out of my hand”. Christ is true. He is the truest true there is. My place as His son is secure and no circumstance, or momentary pain, or yearning for better can ever change that.
December 28th, 2010at 12:31 pm(#)
I’m not sure if anybody is still reading this, but how do you read and follow the above five questions without giving into fatalism, that everything is preordained and that nothing we do matters? God loves the whole world, and his intent for creation is far bigger than us…if we are just a cog in the machine, then this present suffering is a very little thing…but what hope, then, do we present or believe in for this life? Merely that we may die at any time?
February 7th, 2011at 2:52 am(#)
Thanks Rick. There are times when it is really hard, but we have to trust God. We have to trust in these promises. It does not mean we understand or it doesn’t hurt, but we have to trust him that he loves us and he knows what he is doing.
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