Master 245: The Pattern
Rafting Reflections, Part 2
In my last entry I made a suggestion about how we ought to understand "encountering God". Encountering God involves recognizing His presence and activity in our lives. We do this most clearly when we notice that our lives (or aspects of our lives) are taking on a shape that accords with the particular patterns that God has revealed in Scripture.
In this entry I want to expand on that basic idea and try to say something more about that pattern. My comments will still be very general and may not fit well with everyone's experiences, but I think they will be helpful.
The pattern of life that, I think, is presented in Scripture as the model is something like this:
Life with God involves a series of peaks and troughs. I take it that this accords with most people's experience. There are good times and there are bad times. The question is, how are the good and bad times related. Are they just random? Do the good and bad times come as a result of my choices or are they just a matter of luck? Two things to say at this point: (1) the experience of good and bad times is not random (although we may not be able to appreciate their point at the time and (2) the peaks and troughs do not correspond just to the difference between good and bad times. In trying to represent the course of life with just a single line, obviously, I am oversimplifying. But even as I do oversimplify, I hope that I can draw our attention to some very real patterns and things that are happening in our lives.
On the model that I am recommending, the periods of decline do not just represent periods of hardship or suffering. Certainly it makes sense to represent times of suffering as a downward trend, but I think it is also useful to represent times of submission and of sacrifice by this sort of downward line. These are going to be the times when we are most challenged--challenged to remain faithful with God, challenged to be obedient, challenged to surrender ourselves to God. Submission often involves setting aside our own desires in order to pursue what God calls us to. Sacrifice involves letting go of things that I want in order to pursue what God wants. And suffering comes when we make God's will a higher priority than our own comfort and sense of well-being. Of course suffering comes as a natural part of being in a fallen world and as a result of our sin. But that is not the kind of suffering I want to focus on. The suffering that is most clearly a part of the pattern that we're interested in is suffering that comes, from whatever source, in the midst of our actively pursuing God's will.
The periods of increase represent the ways in which God responds to our faithful submission, sacrifice, and the suffering that we endure. God takes our acts of obedience and brings good things out of them. He takes our experiences of hardship, the things that we've lost, and He works them to good results. He redeems the dark times, restores what has been damaged or broken (usually making it better and stronger than it was before), and generally reacts to what we have done in various, often miraculous ways.
Life, then, on this model, is a series of movements like this. Sometimes we find ourselves being obedient without much in the way of tangible assurance that God is with us and working. Sometimes we find that God's blessings are very evident. And it's usually in hindsight that we're best positioned to recognize how God has used our past submission, sacrifice, and suffering to bring about better results.
A few more things to point out about this initial diagram before moving on. Notice that even while there are periodic ups and downs, the overall trend of the life represented here is upward. That is the way it is with those who are faithful in walking with God. The hard times may still be hard, but through each successive experience, we are drawing closer and closer to the ultimate redemption, restoration, and divine reaction. Also, one should keep in mind that even within each of these cycles, there will often be smaller cycles. If you were to take a magnifying glass to one of the sections, you would see that it is composed of a series of smaller peaks and troughs. Even in the midst of tough times or times of great sacrifice or submission, God still reminds us in small ways that He is present and working. And even in times when things are moving up and up, there will still be challenges that we face and continual opportunities for submitting to and obeying God's will and instructions.
My suggestion is that this may serve as a general model for understanding how life with God is supposed to work. God calls us to faithful obedience and as we enter into that, as we submit to Him, even in the midst of hard times, He will work in our lives. His work in our lives and the results of our obedience that we see throughout our lives assure us that God is real, working, and present with us. This will be so, especially, when it is clear that the results of our obedience are more than we could account for by our own effort and energy. When God takes our gift of submission and sacrifice to Him, He is the one who multiplies it 30-, 60- and 100-fold.
--
Now the main reason for highlighting this pattern is that it helps us to make sense of our own lives and enables us to more easily make intelligent decisions about how to act and respond to the different things that life throws our way. I'll talk more about that later.
What I want to do now is to draw our attention to the fact that this really is the pattern of how God works as revealed in the Scriptures. We can point to the lives of many, many biblical figures to see this pattern.
The history of the people of Israel matches this pattern. Even though Israel was a small nation, surrounded by powerful enemies who were constantly threatening them, when the Israelites obeyed and submitted to God, He took care of them and gave them victory over their enemies. Joseph's life, which is recorded in the book of Genesis, fits this pattern. His brothers hated him and sold him into slavery, but he was obedient to God and eventually he was made the steward of his master's household. His master's wife framed him and he got thrown in jail, but he was obedient to God and eventually was put in charge of the entire prison. He was abandoned by close friends, but he remained obedient to God and was actually made the second highest ruler in all of Egypt. Down and up, down and up, down and up.
King David's career followed this pattern. He was the youngest son in his family but God raised him up to be king of Israel. Before he was appointed king he had to live in the wilderness and hide from various ones who wanted to kill him, but he was faithful to God and God took care of him. At a few places he disobeyed God and betrayed his people's trust, but whenever he returned to following God, God took care of him.
Daniel was one of the Jewish exiles to Babylon. He and his friends were held captive there for over sixty years. They experienced many of these troughs and peaks but since they remained faithful to God, God carried them through all of that. At one point, Daniel was under a death sentence, but after God helped him to interpret King Nebuchadnezzar's dream, he was appointed to be one of the king's chiefs. When Daniel's friends refused to bow to the king's golden statue, he threw them into a fiery furnace. But God preserved them and they were given all sorts of honors as a result. King Nebuchadnezzar had some kind of nervous breakdown late in his reign, because of his refusal to recognize God as sovereign, but when he submitted to God, his entire kingdom was restored to him. Daniel's faithfulness to God was so well-known that his enemies used it as a basis for throwing him into a den of hungry lions, but God protected him and showed the King of Persia that Daniel's God was the one true God.
--
These are just a couple examples from the Old Testament. The ultimate example of this pattern though is found in the life of Jesus Christ Himself. To see this look at one of my favorite passages in all of Scripture (and one that I've referenced in a number of other places): Philippians 2:5-11.
"Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
Here's how this description of Jesus' life and work lines up with the pattern I've described:
Jesus began as being equal with God. He was and is God, co-eternal and of the same substance with the Father and the Holy Spirit, but He submitted Himself to the will of the Father, emptied Himself, became human, took on Himself the sins of the world, came under God's curse; and in that act of submission, sacrifice, and suffering He went as far down as one possibly can go. But since He did all this in obedience to the Father, that trough did not mark the end of the story. Through Christ's sacrifice, the way was opened for the redemption of all humankind. Not only that but God restored Him to His rightful place on the highest throne in heaven.
And did you catch Paul's opening words: "Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus." Paul is exhorting the Philippian Christians (and us as well) to follow the example of Jesus, to follow that model or pattern that He set out for us. Jesus modeled what it is like to live in perfect harmony and relationship with God. He trusted completely in His heavenly Father, submitted obediently to the Father's will, and the Father responded by bringing incredibly good things from Jesus' acts of submission, sacrifice, and even from His suffering.
Notice, then, how each of the downs-and-ups that we experience in life, matches the basic pattern of Christ's life:
And as we remain faithful to submit to God continually as Christ did, God will move us ever upward toward the place that God has prepared and appointed for us.
--
Now I already referred to some Old Testament examples of this pattern. Are there any New Testament examples of people who followed the same pattern that Jesus did? There are. One example can be found in the ministry of the Apostle Paul as recorded in Acts 13 and 14. There Luke tells of Paul's first missionary journey. The Holy Spirit directed him to spread the gospel and he obediently set out. First he went to the island of Salamis. There, as he preached the gospel, some opposition arose against Him, but God miraculously intervened so that even the Roman proconsul came to believe. (13:1-12)
From there Paul moved to Pisidian Antioch where he began to teach in the Jewish synagogue. But some of the Jews didn't like what he taught and opposed him to such an extent that he left there and decided to go reach the Gentiles instead. (13:13-52)
So he went to Iconium and began to preach there. He had some success there until some of the embittered Jews from Pisidian Antioch came and turned the Iconians against Paul. They even made plans to kill Paul so he fled to the cities of Lystra and Derbe. (14:1-7)
In Lystra and Derbe the people misunderstood Paul's work and message completely and they actually did stone Paul. They dragged his apparently-dead body outside of the city and left him there. But the disciples prayed for Paul and he got up and continued with his preaching. (14:8-19)
After Paul finished there, he went back through all the cities that he had visited. He encouraged the Christians in each city and helped all the churches that he had founded. Eventually he returned to Antioch and reported all the good things that had happened. (Acts 14:20-28)
In looking at this diagram, do you see how Paul's ministry followed the pattern of Jesus' ministry. Paul was obedient to God--even to the point of death. After beating his body with large rocks, the people of Lystra and Derbe were certain that he was dead, but God restored him in the same way that he restored Jesus. And God brought great good out of Paul's faithful obedience in the same way that He brought great good out of Jesus' obedience.
--
My suggestion is that God wants for all of us to walk in this same pattern of life. We may not end up enduring suffering to the same degree that Paul or the other Apostles did, but we need to carefully consider whether we are willing to submit to God's will, as they did, no matter how much it costs, in confident hope that He can and will work all things together for the good.
Can you imagine what would have happened if Paul had stopped ministering after the second city. Suppose he had thought about the opposition that he faced and decided that this was too much for him to handle. Or suppose that he had lost confidence in God's faithfulness and plans. He would never have reaped the good harvest that he finally did.
This is, unfortunately, what many people end up doing.
They enter into a period of trial or begin to follow God's call to obedience. They may do so with the expectation that God will work and redeem and bring good things out of their sacrifice. But if it doesn't happen quickly enough, or the amount of suffering or difficulty is greater than their willing to take, they may step out of God's plan. They may refuse to continue to submit and sacrifice. And what's the result? They miss out on what God had for them. They may be able to avoid serious hardship or difficulty, but they will also miss out on God's best for them. (And the, still harder, truth is that the life not submitted to God is slowly and gradually moving downward and farther away from God's purpose and intention.
Remember, I said earlier: "[T]he main reason for highlighting this pattern is that it helps us to make sense of our own lives and enables us to more easily make intelligent decisions about how to act and respond to the different things that life throws our way. I'll talk more about that later." This is where I want to talk about that.
How should we deal with challenging times, times of suffering, and times of trials? If we don't have any sense of how God works, then we may interpret suffering as a form of punishment or as the result of dumb luck or as the result of our own failings. If we take seriously that God can use suffering and our obedience and submission in the midst of suffering to bring about great good, we will have greater confidence. But we should remember that our one responsibility is to faithfully submit to God. God is the one who takes care of redeeming, restoring, and using our obedience to bring great good. If we are too confident in our ability to judge how God should work, then we will become impatient when God does not respond quickly enough. And if we become impatient, then we may lose confidence in God's good purposes. That is the point at which we'll step out of the process; we'll do whatever it takes to get out of our difficulties, we'll stop being obedient and stop submitting. And when we stop submitting, God can no longer work in our lives in the way that He intended.
Of course, even if we understand how God works, that doesn't mean that the process will be easy or painless. But understanding the process can give us hope. God the Father took Jesus from the very lowest place possible (he was under God's curse, bearing the punishment for all the sins of the world) and He raised Him back to the very highest place (at the right hand of the throne of God). The God who can bring that much good out of that much bad can certainly bring good things out of our lives. The key is that we must trust in Him. It's not enough to trust Him until He does what we don't like or to trust Him just as long as what He's doing makes sense to us. After all, God knows a lot more about what's going on and what's good for us than we do. If we are going to move in the upward direction that God has for us, then we must be willing to submit to Him and trust Him completely. That trust is manifested in faithful obedience. Of course there will be times when we'll fall out of the pattern, but from Scripture we learn that as soon as we get back into the pattern, God is ready and eager to continue working with us. He really does have a good plan and purpose for us.
--
One additional note before wrapping up: A friend's comment alerted me to the fact that I really have not said enough about how acts of service--especially to the poor, the needy, the outcasts, etc.--provide an important point of access to this pattern. I've talked about submission, sacrifice, and enduring suffering, but I haven't said much about service. The ways in which God works alongside us as we humble ourselves before others, as we follow Christ's example of love for others, and as we look out for the "least of these" are absolutely central to our experience of God's reality, presence, and action with us. Maybe people would make that connection anyway, but because it is so easy to focus just on "spiritual experiences," it's a good idea to draw our attention explicitly to the importance of service. I may try to say more about this in a later entry.
--
God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.
In my last entry I made a suggestion about how we ought to understand "encountering God". Encountering God involves recognizing His presence and activity in our lives. We do this most clearly when we notice that our lives (or aspects of our lives) are taking on a shape that accords with the particular patterns that God has revealed in Scripture.
In this entry I want to expand on that basic idea and try to say something more about that pattern. My comments will still be very general and may not fit well with everyone's experiences, but I think they will be helpful.
The pattern of life that, I think, is presented in Scripture as the model is something like this:
Life with God involves a series of peaks and troughs. I take it that this accords with most people's experience. There are good times and there are bad times. The question is, how are the good and bad times related. Are they just random? Do the good and bad times come as a result of my choices or are they just a matter of luck? Two things to say at this point: (1) the experience of good and bad times is not random (although we may not be able to appreciate their point at the time and (2) the peaks and troughs do not correspond just to the difference between good and bad times. In trying to represent the course of life with just a single line, obviously, I am oversimplifying. But even as I do oversimplify, I hope that I can draw our attention to some very real patterns and things that are happening in our lives.
On the model that I am recommending, the periods of decline do not just represent periods of hardship or suffering. Certainly it makes sense to represent times of suffering as a downward trend, but I think it is also useful to represent times of submission and of sacrifice by this sort of downward line. These are going to be the times when we are most challenged--challenged to remain faithful with God, challenged to be obedient, challenged to surrender ourselves to God. Submission often involves setting aside our own desires in order to pursue what God calls us to. Sacrifice involves letting go of things that I want in order to pursue what God wants. And suffering comes when we make God's will a higher priority than our own comfort and sense of well-being. Of course suffering comes as a natural part of being in a fallen world and as a result of our sin. But that is not the kind of suffering I want to focus on. The suffering that is most clearly a part of the pattern that we're interested in is suffering that comes, from whatever source, in the midst of our actively pursuing God's will.
The periods of increase represent the ways in which God responds to our faithful submission, sacrifice, and the suffering that we endure. God takes our acts of obedience and brings good things out of them. He takes our experiences of hardship, the things that we've lost, and He works them to good results. He redeems the dark times, restores what has been damaged or broken (usually making it better and stronger than it was before), and generally reacts to what we have done in various, often miraculous ways.
Life, then, on this model, is a series of movements like this. Sometimes we find ourselves being obedient without much in the way of tangible assurance that God is with us and working. Sometimes we find that God's blessings are very evident. And it's usually in hindsight that we're best positioned to recognize how God has used our past submission, sacrifice, and suffering to bring about better results.
A few more things to point out about this initial diagram before moving on. Notice that even while there are periodic ups and downs, the overall trend of the life represented here is upward. That is the way it is with those who are faithful in walking with God. The hard times may still be hard, but through each successive experience, we are drawing closer and closer to the ultimate redemption, restoration, and divine reaction. Also, one should keep in mind that even within each of these cycles, there will often be smaller cycles. If you were to take a magnifying glass to one of the sections, you would see that it is composed of a series of smaller peaks and troughs. Even in the midst of tough times or times of great sacrifice or submission, God still reminds us in small ways that He is present and working. And even in times when things are moving up and up, there will still be challenges that we face and continual opportunities for submitting to and obeying God's will and instructions.
My suggestion is that this may serve as a general model for understanding how life with God is supposed to work. God calls us to faithful obedience and as we enter into that, as we submit to Him, even in the midst of hard times, He will work in our lives. His work in our lives and the results of our obedience that we see throughout our lives assure us that God is real, working, and present with us. This will be so, especially, when it is clear that the results of our obedience are more than we could account for by our own effort and energy. When God takes our gift of submission and sacrifice to Him, He is the one who multiplies it 30-, 60- and 100-fold.
--
Now the main reason for highlighting this pattern is that it helps us to make sense of our own lives and enables us to more easily make intelligent decisions about how to act and respond to the different things that life throws our way. I'll talk more about that later.
What I want to do now is to draw our attention to the fact that this really is the pattern of how God works as revealed in the Scriptures. We can point to the lives of many, many biblical figures to see this pattern.
The history of the people of Israel matches this pattern. Even though Israel was a small nation, surrounded by powerful enemies who were constantly threatening them, when the Israelites obeyed and submitted to God, He took care of them and gave them victory over their enemies. Joseph's life, which is recorded in the book of Genesis, fits this pattern. His brothers hated him and sold him into slavery, but he was obedient to God and eventually he was made the steward of his master's household. His master's wife framed him and he got thrown in jail, but he was obedient to God and eventually was put in charge of the entire prison. He was abandoned by close friends, but he remained obedient to God and was actually made the second highest ruler in all of Egypt. Down and up, down and up, down and up.
King David's career followed this pattern. He was the youngest son in his family but God raised him up to be king of Israel. Before he was appointed king he had to live in the wilderness and hide from various ones who wanted to kill him, but he was faithful to God and God took care of him. At a few places he disobeyed God and betrayed his people's trust, but whenever he returned to following God, God took care of him.
Daniel was one of the Jewish exiles to Babylon. He and his friends were held captive there for over sixty years. They experienced many of these troughs and peaks but since they remained faithful to God, God carried them through all of that. At one point, Daniel was under a death sentence, but after God helped him to interpret King Nebuchadnezzar's dream, he was appointed to be one of the king's chiefs. When Daniel's friends refused to bow to the king's golden statue, he threw them into a fiery furnace. But God preserved them and they were given all sorts of honors as a result. King Nebuchadnezzar had some kind of nervous breakdown late in his reign, because of his refusal to recognize God as sovereign, but when he submitted to God, his entire kingdom was restored to him. Daniel's faithfulness to God was so well-known that his enemies used it as a basis for throwing him into a den of hungry lions, but God protected him and showed the King of Persia that Daniel's God was the one true God.
--
These are just a couple examples from the Old Testament. The ultimate example of this pattern though is found in the life of Jesus Christ Himself. To see this look at one of my favorite passages in all of Scripture (and one that I've referenced in a number of other places): Philippians 2:5-11.
"Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
Here's how this description of Jesus' life and work lines up with the pattern I've described:
Jesus began as being equal with God. He was and is God, co-eternal and of the same substance with the Father and the Holy Spirit, but He submitted Himself to the will of the Father, emptied Himself, became human, took on Himself the sins of the world, came under God's curse; and in that act of submission, sacrifice, and suffering He went as far down as one possibly can go. But since He did all this in obedience to the Father, that trough did not mark the end of the story. Through Christ's sacrifice, the way was opened for the redemption of all humankind. Not only that but God restored Him to His rightful place on the highest throne in heaven.
And did you catch Paul's opening words: "Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus." Paul is exhorting the Philippian Christians (and us as well) to follow the example of Jesus, to follow that model or pattern that He set out for us. Jesus modeled what it is like to live in perfect harmony and relationship with God. He trusted completely in His heavenly Father, submitted obediently to the Father's will, and the Father responded by bringing incredibly good things from Jesus' acts of submission, sacrifice, and even from His suffering.
Notice, then, how each of the downs-and-ups that we experience in life, matches the basic pattern of Christ's life:
And as we remain faithful to submit to God continually as Christ did, God will move us ever upward toward the place that God has prepared and appointed for us.
--
Now I already referred to some Old Testament examples of this pattern. Are there any New Testament examples of people who followed the same pattern that Jesus did? There are. One example can be found in the ministry of the Apostle Paul as recorded in Acts 13 and 14. There Luke tells of Paul's first missionary journey. The Holy Spirit directed him to spread the gospel and he obediently set out. First he went to the island of Salamis. There, as he preached the gospel, some opposition arose against Him, but God miraculously intervened so that even the Roman proconsul came to believe. (13:1-12)
From there Paul moved to Pisidian Antioch where he began to teach in the Jewish synagogue. But some of the Jews didn't like what he taught and opposed him to such an extent that he left there and decided to go reach the Gentiles instead. (13:13-52)
So he went to Iconium and began to preach there. He had some success there until some of the embittered Jews from Pisidian Antioch came and turned the Iconians against Paul. They even made plans to kill Paul so he fled to the cities of Lystra and Derbe. (14:1-7)
In Lystra and Derbe the people misunderstood Paul's work and message completely and they actually did stone Paul. They dragged his apparently-dead body outside of the city and left him there. But the disciples prayed for Paul and he got up and continued with his preaching. (14:8-19)
After Paul finished there, he went back through all the cities that he had visited. He encouraged the Christians in each city and helped all the churches that he had founded. Eventually he returned to Antioch and reported all the good things that had happened. (Acts 14:20-28)
In looking at this diagram, do you see how Paul's ministry followed the pattern of Jesus' ministry. Paul was obedient to God--even to the point of death. After beating his body with large rocks, the people of Lystra and Derbe were certain that he was dead, but God restored him in the same way that he restored Jesus. And God brought great good out of Paul's faithful obedience in the same way that He brought great good out of Jesus' obedience.
--
My suggestion is that God wants for all of us to walk in this same pattern of life. We may not end up enduring suffering to the same degree that Paul or the other Apostles did, but we need to carefully consider whether we are willing to submit to God's will, as they did, no matter how much it costs, in confident hope that He can and will work all things together for the good.
Can you imagine what would have happened if Paul had stopped ministering after the second city. Suppose he had thought about the opposition that he faced and decided that this was too much for him to handle. Or suppose that he had lost confidence in God's faithfulness and plans. He would never have reaped the good harvest that he finally did.
This is, unfortunately, what many people end up doing.
They enter into a period of trial or begin to follow God's call to obedience. They may do so with the expectation that God will work and redeem and bring good things out of their sacrifice. But if it doesn't happen quickly enough, or the amount of suffering or difficulty is greater than their willing to take, they may step out of God's plan. They may refuse to continue to submit and sacrifice. And what's the result? They miss out on what God had for them. They may be able to avoid serious hardship or difficulty, but they will also miss out on God's best for them. (And the, still harder, truth is that the life not submitted to God is slowly and gradually moving downward and farther away from God's purpose and intention.
Remember, I said earlier: "[T]he main reason for highlighting this pattern is that it helps us to make sense of our own lives and enables us to more easily make intelligent decisions about how to act and respond to the different things that life throws our way. I'll talk more about that later." This is where I want to talk about that.
How should we deal with challenging times, times of suffering, and times of trials? If we don't have any sense of how God works, then we may interpret suffering as a form of punishment or as the result of dumb luck or as the result of our own failings. If we take seriously that God can use suffering and our obedience and submission in the midst of suffering to bring about great good, we will have greater confidence. But we should remember that our one responsibility is to faithfully submit to God. God is the one who takes care of redeeming, restoring, and using our obedience to bring great good. If we are too confident in our ability to judge how God should work, then we will become impatient when God does not respond quickly enough. And if we become impatient, then we may lose confidence in God's good purposes. That is the point at which we'll step out of the process; we'll do whatever it takes to get out of our difficulties, we'll stop being obedient and stop submitting. And when we stop submitting, God can no longer work in our lives in the way that He intended.
Of course, even if we understand how God works, that doesn't mean that the process will be easy or painless. But understanding the process can give us hope. God the Father took Jesus from the very lowest place possible (he was under God's curse, bearing the punishment for all the sins of the world) and He raised Him back to the very highest place (at the right hand of the throne of God). The God who can bring that much good out of that much bad can certainly bring good things out of our lives. The key is that we must trust in Him. It's not enough to trust Him until He does what we don't like or to trust Him just as long as what He's doing makes sense to us. After all, God knows a lot more about what's going on and what's good for us than we do. If we are going to move in the upward direction that God has for us, then we must be willing to submit to Him and trust Him completely. That trust is manifested in faithful obedience. Of course there will be times when we'll fall out of the pattern, but from Scripture we learn that as soon as we get back into the pattern, God is ready and eager to continue working with us. He really does have a good plan and purpose for us.
--
One additional note before wrapping up: A friend's comment alerted me to the fact that I really have not said enough about how acts of service--especially to the poor, the needy, the outcasts, etc.--provide an important point of access to this pattern. I've talked about submission, sacrifice, and enduring suffering, but I haven't said much about service. The ways in which God works alongside us as we humble ourselves before others, as we follow Christ's example of love for others, and as we look out for the "least of these" are absolutely central to our experience of God's reality, presence, and action with us. Maybe people would make that connection anyway, but because it is so easy to focus just on "spiritual experiences," it's a good idea to draw our attention explicitly to the importance of service. I may try to say more about this in a later entry.
--
God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.
posted by Metaphysician_delta | 5:41 PM
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