Spiritual Secrets

Making Sense of Jesus and the Bible The Greatest Spiritual Discovery

God’s Mysterious Ways

The Designer of every molecule in your brain might know a thing or two.

The God who could use as marbles suns more powerful than a billion nuclear bombs, might just be big enough to meet our needs. And yet . . .

Jesus’ teaching – in fact the entire Bible – has dire consequences if ignored, yet God’s way seems so illogical and unworkable that few of us dare try it. Even among devout believers much of the Bible gets left gathering dust on the “nice sentiment but impractical” shelf. Our brain flashes, “Does not compute,” and fails to program the instructions into our daily living. It is easy to become so familiar with the words of Scripture and so conscious of the importance of revering the Word of God, that we are barely aware that we are not actually living according to its directives.

After staking virtually everything on God’s method we will gradually begin receiving personal confirmation that it really works. We must first, however, reach that critical point where we are willing to risk this plunge into the unknown. Much of what follows is therefore devoted to building confidence in God’s way of doing things. To assist in this, a goal of the webpage is to make the relevant mysteries as easy to understand as possible. We will pursue this from several different angles, using as a main tool simple illustrations from the world we live in.

Let’s be frank

Most biblical revelation is the exact opposite of what any sensible human would come up with. This should come as no surprise. There would be little point in God giving us a Bible if it were filled with truths that mere common sense tells us. A helpful way to understand why spiritual principles seem illogical and unworkable is to consider many tragedies that have occurred in Australian deserts.

A rule of survival in the harsh Australian Outback is if your only vehicle breaks down in a remote place, stay with the disabled vehicle. That seems dangerously out of touch with reality if you have no means of raising an alarm, you are somewhere that does not see a human for weeks at a time, and your water supplies can keep you alive for only a few days. So people in this predicament often disregard the warning and try walking the long distance to where help is more likely to be found.

Eventually, they are reported missing, a search locates their vehicle, but no one is there. The Coroner’s investigation later confirms that vehicles are more easily located than walkers, there was more water in the vehicle than walkers can carry, and the extra exertion demanded of walking hastened the dehydration and sunstroke that led to their death. They died because they tried to save themselves. Had they done nothing except trust that they would be saved, they would have lived.

They dismissed advice that would have saved their lives because such instructions only make sense to people who can believe that rescuers will arrive in time.

Likewise, whether Jesus’ advice seems reliable enough to bet your life on it hinges on whether you can believe that someone – in this case, God – will come to your rescue. This is why faith is so critical to Christianity. If the Almighty will powerfully intervene for you, the best course of action is usually the exact opposite to what you would do if you are in this predicament alone.

The tragedy is that most of us, petrified that God might let us down, usually suppose we are playing safe by choosing whatever option would work best if God doesn’t care enough to intervene. We would dearly like to have a bet each way – hoping that God will act, while covering ourselves in case he doesn’t. With the God who knows our every motive, however, hedging our bets is as impossible as surviving by walking in tight circles half way between a stranded vehicle and a very distant source of help.

Signed in Blood

Since the Bible is the Word of God, every statement in it is backed with an iron-clad guarantee from Almighty God. To ratify his pledge, the One who put the stars in space and who keeps your heart beating, put his guarantee in black and white, and signed it in the blood of his own Son. He who cannot lie, then had his guarantee published around the world in thousands of languages so that the Holy One’s entire reputation with humanity hinges on him keeping his word.

Whenever Scripture says something that seems out of touch with reality, the One who runs the entire universe is pledging his integrity and power on the fact that he will make it happen. It means the Creator and Sustainer of every law of physics is announcing a new law.

Unless God’s physical laws are correctly understood, they will be thought to fail. It is not always true, for instance, that what goes up must come down. The law of gravity is more complex than that. Likewise, whenever the Almighty establishes a spiritual law, the conditions must be accurately understood or we will sooner or later discover what we mistakenly think is God’s failure to keep his word. What we would actually be discovering are defects in our understanding of God’s promise.

A common error is to misunderstand the time frame. The Eternal One’s timing often shocks us. Even before Abraham plunged the knife into his son, he got his son back. On the other hand, the fulfilment for God’s promise to Abraham about the birth of his son had dragged on and on for so long that the situation seemed utterly hopeless. Moreover, it was not until centuries after Abraham’s death that some of what he had been promised was fulfilled. It might have happened after the end of his earthly life, but Abraham will be rejoicing over it for all eternity.

Another error is failing to realize that most of God’s pledges apply only to people who are in true, intimate fellowship with God. Some promises have even more conditions attached. Tragically, some people have been devastated by what they imagined was God letting them down but was actually a tragic misunderstanding of God’s words. For more on this see When Promises Aren’t Promises.

I will give just one of many possible examples to illustrate how easy it is to imagine God has promised every believer something, when we have merely ripped a verse out of context and forced into God’s mouth a promise he has not given us. I chose this example because it is popularly believed. At the same time, however, I dare not imply that God can never take words out of context and use them as a promise to an individual. It is not for me to tell the Almighty what he cannot do!

But it is also not for us to tell him what he must do, unless he has specifically promised it to us. For example, I do not consider it impossible for God to want someone to go Macedonia and one day that person is reading Acts 16 and suddenly Paul’s call to Macedonia leaps out of the page at him and God uses it to speak to his heart that he should go there. Nevertheless, it is obviously ridiculous to claim that God is telling every Christian to go to Macedonia just because Scripture says God told Paul to go there.

I therefore find it easy to believe that God could speak to you personally through a few verses later (Acts 16:31) and promise you that all your family will be saved. Nevertheless, this would have to be a dramatic personal revelation direct from God because this is not a promise that every Christian can claim. Paul was speaking specifically to one man – the Philippian jailer. The apostle immediately preached to the jailer’s entire household.

They all responded and were baptized on the spot. If this simple statement were a promise for every Christian, it would be stated clearly elsewhere in Scripture. In contrast, 1 Corinthians 7:15-16 implies that it is uncertain whether or not an unbelieving partner will be won to the Lord, even though, of course, it is not God’s desire that anyone should perish.

Your loved ones might indeed come to the Lord and you should faithfully pray and gently work toward that goal. The point, however, is that without God specifically and unmistakably promising you salvation of your loved ones, you cannot claim that Acts 16 guarantees it.

Jesus proclaimed, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” He then raised Lazarus from the dead. If we do not claim this as a general promise to all Christians whose loved ones have been dead for four days, what right have we to do it with other statements that are directed at an individual and not taught throughout the rest of Scripture?

God-honouring faith in a divine decree is a spiritual world away from presumptuously stuffing words into God’s mouth. Until we hear from God we can do nothing but act like Peter staying in the boat and saying, “If that’s you, Lord, tell me to come.” Unless we submissively wait and ask, what we claim to be faith is nothing but arrogance that exposes us to the need to be taught a lesson. Once Jesus gives the word, however, we can step out on that word, and participate in a miracle.

Even personal words from God, whether they come direct from God or through someone else, need prayerful interpretation. Is it truly from God or is some human fallibility mixed with the word? John Bevere’s Thus Saith the Lord? (Creation House, 1999) expounds several reasons why a “word from God” might not be from God, regardless of how undeniably supernatural it is and despite the high reputation of the person claiming to speak for God. In addition, even a personal word from God often comes with conditions that are not spelt out. For instance, the prophet Jonah’s pronouncement that in forty days Nineveh would be destroyed made no mention of any possibility of avoiding this fate.

The mere fact that they were being told ahead of time, however, implied that there was still a chance to avert destruction. The people repented and the city was untouched. Anyone not understanding the nature of prophecy would conclude that Jonah’s word could not have been from God since it never happened the way he said it would.

The infallible Lord always keeps his promises, but we do not always infallibly interpret his promises.

It would be ridiculous to expect spiritual laws to be easily verifiable. When, for instance, the Bible says, “it is more blessed to give than to receive,” it is not implying this is a readily observable fact – if it were obvious it would hardly be a significant revelation. By placing it in the Bible, the Almighty is declaring he will ensure that ultimately – not necessarily this side of eternity – those who give will end up more blessed than if they had received.

Obviously, the frequently stated biblical truth, “He who humbles himself will be exalted,” comes with a similar guarantee that the Lord will ensure it happens in God’s time. That’s a scary path to honour. It is most unlikely to work unless there really is a Holy Lord whose integrity makes it impossible for him not to keep his promise. So the pressure mounts for us to disbelieve the Word of God and try to boost ourselves rather than leave it to God. The Lord of heaven and earth, however, not only expects you to stake your life on the fact that he will keep his side of the deal, he has already staked his Son’s life on it. Moreover to disregard this directive is to risk your eternity on the presumption that the Word of Almighty God is a lie when it says that God resists the proud.

Next Part “Nothing but Dirt”