You’ve heard it- Jesus died and took away your sins. He rose and broke the power of sin, making the exchange so that you could share resurrected life with Him instead. Is it almost too good to be true?
Or is the bad so real that there’s just no way that all that bad can be gone, broken, unstuck from you, made dead and apart from you? You look at your flesh and say “It’s sticky. I can’t imagine, no matter how hard I try, that I might be completely clean. I look at this thing and think, ‘There’s no way that it can’t be mine anymore.’”
You want to believe, so badly. You want to look at Jesus and know Him, know His heart, to breathe and taste it as a reality that you simply live in. You want it to be everything, you want it to be real. You want to understand and really securely know that He loves you deeply and personally, that His heart is eternally steadfast and unchanging- and therefore your new life and freedom from sin is secure, never to be undone, because His heart will never undo it. You want to know Who He is and believe that He is risen like they say, and all the rest that comes with it. Maybe you believe that you are free and He did all those things and He is real and He does love you, but you just can’t see it. You’re not questioning if you’re saved- you just can’t experience it as a reality right now, and you can’t see HIM, His HEART, your FREEDOM. You can’t believe it right here, right now, not fully anyways; not in the way that lets you breathe freely. Not in the way that allows you to simple walk in that as a simple all-encompassing reality.
That’s how I feel right now. That’s how a lot of us have felt and even still feel. And guess what- you can feel this even if you’re truly saved! John Piper noted once in one of his 'Ask Pastor John' episodes that in this life, theoretically, we never reach a spiritual maturity where it is not possible for doubt to challenge us and tempt us. Doubt and deceit cries out to us, and sometimes it seems louder than the blood of Christ that cries out to conquer and overcome such things. In the cloudiness, in the mist, in the dark of night, it seems like God doesn’t have all of you and you don’t have all of Him. Maybe you’ve pleaded and begged a thousand times, cried till your eyes have felt bruised, prayed until your head ached and body trembled with weakness and extremely real pain. All excruciating, all making you want to go Home. And still- it seems that God withholds Himself from you. Why won’t He give you what you ask for? Why would He wait?
At this point many of us are tempted to (and often do) take things into our own hands. We seek answers on our own strength. We try to think our way into belief (which will really give you a headache, trust me). And it’s more than frustrating. You exhaust yourself and suddenly it feels like you’re in hell because your attempts aren’t working, and it just doesn’t seem like God is going to give you what you want (which seems ridiculous because aren’t you asking for something that’s supposedly in accordance with His will?!?!).
Some things He has revealed to me:
1. I love and seek out my own ways, my own plan, my own idea of how God should save me and when, more than I actually seek God Himself. It’s not that I don’t seek or yearn for God Himself, I do, but not as much as my flesh pridefully and stubbornly desires for God to reveal Himself on my own terms rather than on His. Because, Pride says, how could this way that I imagine not be good?
2. I can’t make myself believe. It has to come from Him. He has to do it. Yes, so that He gets all the glory, but what does God getting all the glory mean? Well, when we think about what is most glorious about God, most spectacular, most “other” and holy, it’s quite honestly the fact that He loves in a way that none of us ever could. His love for us tied to His glory. “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him”, John Piper famously pens. He wants us to be satisfied, to be loved, and He freely pours Himself out for us in love because He is love. God is just being Himself when He desires you, loves you, gives everything to you in His time (because His time is perfect and in love He will only give you what is best for you, whether you agree or not). In being Himself, the Holy One, He glorifies Himself, and being Himself very much includes loving you genuinely just because He simply loves you.
Not convinced? Here’s one key passage that ties God’s holiness and glory to His love that is so unlike ours. It comes after God has described His people’s unfaithfulness and evil.
How can I give you up, O Ephraim?
How can I hand you over, O Israel?
How can I make you like Admah?
How can I treat you like Zeboiim?
My heart recoils within me;
My compassion grows warm and tender.
I will not execute my burning anger;
I will not again destroy Ephraim;
For I am God and not a man,
The Holy One in your midst,
And I will not come in wrath.
Hosea 11:8-9
So a TLDR: It is because God is Holy, glorious, and NOT a man, that He loves tenderly and warmly and chooses not to come in wrath towards His Beloved. Conclusion? God is glorious, God is God, God is NOT us, because He loves in such a way as we cannot.
So if we accept that God’s glory is inarguably tied to His love for us, then it is not so biting or upsetting if we say that God has to be the one to make us believe, to turn our hearts, by grace alone, so that He may get all the glory or be glorified. Another way of putting it is “because He loves us”, which is not in opposition to or even separate from God getting the glory. His heart is not torn here between giving Himself glory and loving you selflessly; the paradox may seem strange, but He is perfectly for you. Perfectly doing it for you, to love you. That is simply Who He is; God is Love, true love, and by simply being Love and loving you in the most passionate and selfless way (Jesus gave up the most precious thing He had, communion with God, for us) the natural result is that He is glorified. And if we let Him love us the way He wants to, the perfect way, we shall also be most satisfied. Perfect grace and love will be communicated to us, which is, after all, what we want- to be loved, to see and know Him.
3. He does not withhold Himself from His beloved. He is continually pouring out onto me and I am in fact receiving in my secret heart, whether I realize it at the moment or not. Key verses:
For the Lord God is a sun and shield;
The Lord bestows favor and honor.
No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly.
Psalm 84:11
But I don’t walk uprightly all the time?!?! Okay, slow down. If you are in Christ, you’ve got Romans 8; take a read through and see how it explains the work of the Spirit to help you walk rightly. Remember, there is grace now and finished work in Jesus which exchanges every sin for greater righteousness in Him. You are covered. For your encouragement, we also have this:
He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?
Romans 8:32
Well if He will give me all things, why won’t He give me my solution in my timing? Because God only gives you good things. He wouldn’t be a very good Father if you asked Him for meth and He just dished it out to you. Our hearts our deceitful and desire things that lead to our death, even if it is not readily apparent to us. God sees this, and gives us the better share, the true kingship of Narnia instead of cheap Turkish Delight. And what is the best thing He gives to us, something that is definitely good? Himself. His love. This He will not withhold and He will give Himself to us always, whether we realize it or not. Jesus promises that if we seek Him, we will find Him; even amongst human fathers there is a desire to give good gifts to children- and so much more with our heavenly Father (Luke 11:9-13).
As I said before, He is always pouring Himself into me by the Spirit. Period. This is why I will never truly thirst again, though I have the sensation of thirst. This is why “I shall not want” when my shepherd takes care of me, because He is actually taking care of me and meeting my needs, whether I recognize that reality or not. Well, what about my need to recognize and live and enjoy that reality of Him loving me? That is a true need, one He does meet, in the best way: His way. If you’re still grappling with the timing of it all, go back to Number 1 and go to Jesus. Tell Him. I promise He can handle it with all gentleness. His very heart is “gentle and lowly,” and He invites your honesty and openness.
God has been telling me that He wants to give me more. More of Him. More than I even asked for or have the capacity to imagine (Ephesians 3:20). This trend in His intentions is made clear to me as a I read Matthew. He keeps having to tell me, because I forget, but He still tells me, “I will give you more.” And He will give me eyes to see. He will help me believe. I will have Him, more of Him than I did in those previous seasons in which I already thought I had it good with Him, those seasons in which I was already so in love and so confident in Him. I think of the apostles and Pentecost. It seemed like Jesus had left them, but when He gave them His Spirit, their faith in Him and intimacy skyrocketed beyond their previous experience, beyond their faint recognition of Him back in the days when they were with Him physically yet still asked “Show us the Father”; those days where they squabbled amongst themselves regarding God’s favor and doubted. God gave them more of Himself.
I was reading John 20 today and I was surprised, not because I hadn’t read it before, but because it seemed so strangely relevant. When Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene after His resurrection, she didn’t recognize Him. She had walked with Him, known Him truly. Yet He stood right in front of her face and still she was crying “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him.” She wept bitterly. She asked, “Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have laid Him, and I will take Him away.” She sounded like me. Begging to see Jesus, though I had known Him before. Jesus was right there the whole time, but she couldn’t see until Jesus spoke in power over her. He called her by name- “Mary.” An intimate call, one in which HE revealed His love for her. And it is only when He initiated, when He spoke, at the right time (note that He did not reveal Himself right away), that she recognized Him. And though He would ascend later, His Spirit would not leave her as an orphan.
I still cry. I still shake. I still hyperventilate and feel the throbbing pain in my head and in my stomach. I still have sleepless nights. It’s still hard in the waiting. But if I ask, I know God will give me more faith. He’ll give me eyes to see, and I know He will speak over me as He did with His Mary. Like Thomas, I will suddenly know and fall down on my knees and cry, “My Lord and my God!” once He shows Himself. And in the meantime, my deepest heart knows that my good Shepherd feeds me, and is Himself my daily bread which I receive, even when my mind and most apparent heart does not know this. And I know that even for Jesus, there needed to be some trial before more could come. Before He got to call His disciples and start His ministry, before He got to spend time with the ones that He so longed for and yearned for and loved, He was tempted in the wilderness and had to endure the company of the literal Devil. But afterwards, God opened His hands, and gave His Son more of Himself, sending angels to minister to Jesus. And then again at the cross- pain I will never know, and then for the joy set before Him, Jesus received His Bride and the presence once again of His Father.