For the last couple of weeks I have been asking God a lot of questions. Some legit questions, some just whining. Why me? Why not me? Why does this happen? Why doesn’t this happen? How come? You get the idea. I have lots of opportunity in my life to be a better person and to do the right thing, to really honor God and be a blessing to people in my life. I just don’t always want to. See, I don’t think life is fair. I know mine never has been. And I’m okay with it most of the time. Periodically though stuff piles up. Notice I said piles up, this really is the problem. And it’s a problem of my own making. I don’t deal with stuff when it happens. I let it pile up (like my laundry.) When stuff piles up it becomes harder to deal with. It also gets nastier (like my laundry, when there are wet towels on the bottom or heaven forbid Nate’s gym clothes.) And until I deal with it, it stinks. And it makes everything else stink too. A couple weeks ago my daughter uncolored her hair, she stripped the dye out of it. The chemicals used to do this stunk. REALLY STUNK! The house smelled terrible, even worse than salmon night. I scrubbed the bathroom. Febrezed the shower curtain, her bedroom, took all the trash out, lysoled; I tried everything short of taking a brillo pad to her head. A few days later, I could still smell the stuff, and IT SMELLED BAD. I was sorting through laundry, and moved some towels to wash, and one of the towels had this chemical on it. The smell had permeated to all the laundry. Once I washed everything, the smell was gone. Cleaning hadn’t helped. Spraying Febreze didn’t help. Burning candles didn’t help. Making Ashley leave the house didn’t help. I had to search out and find the root of the problem and deal with it.
This is true in my spiritual life as well. I can cover the outside with a pretty dress and make up and fix my hair, I can shower and wear perfume. But that’s not the problem. It’s the inside me. It’s a selfish heart. It’s thinking life should be fair, that something is owed to me when it’s not. This is not fun to admit. And today, as I wrestle with doing the right thing for someone else, which will be a big deal for them, and several others as well, and mean a lot to many many people including my husband, but will make me uncomfortable, and truthfully hurts, and will cost me more personally than I have to spend, AND REALLY, IT IS UNFAIR TO ASK ME TO DO THIS. I would say that God leads me to the right passages on the days I need them, but I believe if I’m reading the Word everyday, the answers are there, in whatever passage I am in. Its God’s Word, I will always find Him there. I read Habakkuk. Yep, God even speaks through the Minor Prophets. Habakkuk asked hard questions of God. In Habakkuk 1:2 (from the Amplified) he asked “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help and You will not hear? Or cry out to You of violence and You will not save?” Here I have to say that I am very glad he tolerates wrong, because, that means he tolerates me in my rebellion. Then in 1:13 “You are of purer eyes than to behold evil and can not look [inactively] upon injustice. Why then do You look upon the plunderer? Why are you silent when the wicked one destroys him who is more righteous than [the Chaldean oppressor] is?” Do you ever feel like you are getting swallowed by the wicked? Not a fun concept to think about. As I read the book (twice) I don’t find that God really gave Habakkuk a direct answer to his question, the closest thing I could find is in God’s reply when he said in 2:4 “Look at the proud; his soul is not straight or right within him, but the [rigidly] just and the [uncompromisingly] righteous man shall [a]live by his faith and in his faithfulness but the righteous will live by his faith”. Also 2:20 says “But the Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth hush and keep silence before Him.” At this point in my life, my faith has to carry me. There doesn’t need to be anything else. The Lord is in his holy temple. Nothing needs to be added to this. He is where he always is. The last few verses of Habakkuk 3:17-19 are very moving to me. Somewhere between Habakkuk’s questions in the first chapter and these four verses Habakkuk gets it. I don’t know if he managed to get some stuff in the rest of the book that escaped me, or if God spoke to him and it’s not recorded, or if he realized (like me) he’s not going to get an answer. God really doesn’t owe me an answer for what he does in my life. I know my life needs work, and life is not fair, you just move forward with your faith in an unshakeable God. You move forward knowing he is in his holy temple, and knowing that you don’t need the answers, you just need God. 3:17-19 “Though the fig tree does not blossom and there is no fruit on the vines, [though] the product of the olive fails and the fields yield no food, though the flock is cut off from the fold and there are no cattle in the stalls, Yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the [victorious] God of my salvation! The Lord God is my Strength, my personal bravery, and my invincible army; He makes my feet like hinds' feet and will make me to walk [not to stand still in terror, but to walk] and make [spiritual] progress upon my high places [of trouble, suffering, or responsibility]!”
No matter what the situation in my life, no matter how hard it is, how can I fail when The Lord God is my Strength, my personal bravery, and MY invincible army? I love these verses in the Amplified. I CAN walk forward and make progress.
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