It is good to approach God, but we must not forget the importance of the heart with which we approach Him. The lens of humility. As I see in new depths the insufficiencies in my life and character and knowledge, and understanding, it is a hard and dirty process of self-discovery. The next step is allowing the gospel to come deeper into my heart.
In middle school, my youth group would have a “mud night” each year. We would meet at the church and carpool to a ranch north of Bismarck where there was a bare field that had been systematically soaked with water to make it a giant mud pit. Activities ranged from a tug of war and water balloon tosses to an all-out mud war where we succumbed to just throwing mud at each other. After a couple hours, we were covered with mud. Not in splotches, but in between our toes, and in our ears, and caked to each strand of hair on our heads as it quickly dried to clumpy dirt in the North Dakota summer.
When we had finished our fun, we were nearly unrecognizable. Black forms, mine smaller than the others, with white eyes and crooked teeth, we crowded around our youth leaders, waiting with pitchers of warm water and sidelong glances towards their towel-lined min-vans. They gently poured water over our faces- taking each student out from the group to let the water splash out from the pitcher and fall from our foreheads down to our chins, taking with it the caked on dirt, leaving first, rivers of skin on a black canvas, then finally revealing a new identity. Rather than an unrecognizable blob with teeth, my face could be seen; unobstructed by the mud. I could be identified as me.
This first, gentle process is like salvation. The mud and muck of my sin were removed from my life, and I was given a new identity. “That you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24). It was a gentle realization of how vast the grace of God is.
The process doesn’t end there, though… When our faces were gently wiped clean, they brought out hoses. And the water was cold. And the spray was hard. And it hurt when it hit you directly. It got in your eyes, so you couldn’t see clearly. And that is the process we call sanctification. And it’s long, and it’s hard. Miles J Stanford talks about that process in Green Letters when he says,
It seems that most believers have difficulty in realizing and facing up to the inexorable fact that God does not hurry in His development of our Christian life. He is working from and for eternity!”
We are all on this process of sanctification, and it is a journey we will be on until the day of Christ Jesus. So we cannot come to the Lord in our pride, but in the brokenness of our not understanding. He gets it.
More than that, though, we can expect an answer. Habakkuk doesn’t question if the Lord will show up. He doesn’t wait on the rampart to see IF God will show up, but he waits to see what will happen WHEN God shows up. That faith is important. Because it opens your heart to see the places that God is working.
The next part of this, though, is that God showing up doesn’t always look like we expect. When I was in high school, I was paralyzed by indecision about where to go to college. I was not only accepted to six universities, but I also was assigned a roommate and registered for classes at three of them come August. I was struggling because I didn’t know God’s will for my life, and what I really wanted was a letter from him detailing the next four years of my life: where I should go, what I should study and where that would lead me to in his purposes for my life. That letter never came. It also never came my junior year when I was considering switching my major. And it never came my senior year, as I processed through what I was going to do with my life, and if I should be marrying the penguin that I was dating. Rick James explains it like this, we are hungry for God’s provision, for God to speak, but God is much more interested in the relationship with us. If he gave us what we sought in full, we would not have to continue to come back to him. So, rather than the whole loaf of bread, or even the recipe to make it, he gives us crumbs, and those crumbs will lead us back to him, letting us rest in him, in his vastness, day after day after day, and our faith is put into practice day after day after day.
In the same way, there are lot of times the doubts we wrestle with are big. They don’t have easy answers. Why do the bad things happen, why are people not saved for eternity? Why do we not see God’s justice? When Habakkuk asked God that question, God answers by saying,
“Look among the nations and watch- Be utterly astounded! For I will work a work in your days which you would not believe, though it were told you. For indeed I am raising up the Chaldeans, a bitter and hasty nation which marches through the breadth of the earth to possess dwelling places that are not theirs. They are terrible and dreadful, their judgment and their dignity proceed from themselves… they all come for violence” Basically, He says, “You haven’t seen anything yet, you think this seems unjust, just wait til you see the other evil nations that are going to rise up.” And he never really answers Habakkuk’s question. Never tells him his plan for Israel, and the world’s, redemption. All he says is, “The just shall live by his faith” and “the LORD is in his Holy temple, let all the earth keep silence before Him.”
God sees all, knows all, and his perspective is much bigger. Habakkuk couldn’t see that God would restore His temple, and that the pagan kings would provide for that to happen. Habakkuk couldn’t see that all of these things had to be done to fulfill the prophecies in Daniel and Isaiah about the Messiah coming. He couldn’t see that ultimately, God redeemed his people. What he could see was that God was still in control. Still sovereign and powerful. And his prayer at the end of Habakkuk is one of my favorite passages in the Bible.
“Though the fig tree may not blossom, Nor fruit be on the vines, though the labor of the olive may fail, and the fields yield no food; though the flock may be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls- yet I will rejoice in the LORD. I will joy in the God of my salvation. The LORD GOD is my strength, he will make my feet like deer’s feet, and he will make me walk on my high hills.”
I don’t know what doubts you’re wrestling with right now. What questions you’re asking of the LORD. Is he real? Is he holy? Just? Powerful? But I want you to know that it’s okay to be where you’re at. It’s okay to be in process with him. To ask your questions knowing that he’s big enough to respond. He knows your heart and delights when you have the humility to come to him with it. And he’s not going to give you the whole answer, but He is going to let himself be revealed to you, ever so slowly, because his timeline is eternity, and as you see him, I hope that you can join me in this prayer.
“Though the fig tree may not blossom, Nor fruit be on the vines, though the labor of the olive may fail, and the fields yield no food; though the flock may be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls- yet I will rejoice in the LORD. I will joy in the God of my salvation. The LORD GOD is my strength, he will make my feet like deer’s feet, and he will make me walk on my high hills.”
There’s more. Start at the beginning with Part 1 and Part 2.
