February 3, 2006
One of two great perils in the world that we face today is the ever present danger of “missing” God at work. There is nearly no greater tragedy that we might suffer than, when in our neglect of God’s Word (the Bible), we fail to recognize His presence in our lives, His activity in our circumstances, and His invitation to join Him in His work of redemption in our homes, communities, and world.
If we are a people who take His Word lightly, perhaps inwardly yawning as we flip through its pages or openly yawning as we sit under its proclamation, we can’t help but be a people who fail to recognize Him when He comes a callin’.
Several years ago, I had decided one night to shave off my beard for a change. I shaved, cleaned up, and then went to lie down for the night. When I pulled back the blankets I found one of our children, who was not quite three years old at the time, nestled up snugly against his sleeping mother’s side. He evidently had awakened at some point in the night and climbed into our bed, already nearly deeply asleep. I quietly lay down beside him and started to drift off as well. His little hand stirred and reached up to touch my face as he often did. When he touched my chin and then felt my jaw, he jerked his hand back and sat straight up in the bed. “Mom-e-e-e-e!” he screamed. “There’s a man in the bed!” My wife bolted upright and looked around startled while I fumbled to switch on a bedside lamp. It took several harrowing minutes, but we finally convinced him that I really was his father.
Because I came to him in a way that he did not expect, he had a hard time recognizing me and accepting me for who I was. In a (vaguely) similar way, we are frequently in danger of missing out on God’s work to constantly blow the fresh winds of renewal and growth into our lives for the simple fact that He moves in ways that we, according to our limited human perspectives, fail to recognize.
“Jesus said to them, ‘My Father is always at His work to this very day, and I, too, am working’” (John 5:17 NIV). A wonderful promise, don’t you think? For if He is indeed at work in the world today, we have an assurance that the power of God Himself is still infiltrating the bastions of powerlessness and despair that are always being built up by humanity’s tendency to try to make it through life without Him. We as Christians seem to have a great deal of trouble in taking it for granted that God is truly on the move today in the world and in our lives. Thus, when His Holy Spirit moves and stirs our hearts to respond to His invitation to know Him by taking His Word to heart, we fail to recognize His presence. We shrug off such movements and promptings, suffocating the faintly glowing embers of passionate worship and heavenly service that He would fan into roaring and glorious flames. And failing to recognize Him means failing to experience a unique blessing that He would pour out upon us if we only we are ready to acknowledge Him and embrace His work in our lives.
Perhaps we are often simply too preoccupied with our own plans and ambitions or maybe we’re too afraid that such whole-hearted devotion to Him is excessive or “weird” and that it can’t REALLY be His love stirring our hearts. Maybe we “feel Him out” a little, enjoying the happy and obviously encouraging aspects of being Christians, but sometimes pull back when what He impresses upon our hearts fails to match what we always envisioned He’d do, because what we had envisioned is either too little or too selfish for an infinitely graceful God.
Of course, the other great tragedy (but related to the one mentioned above) is the occasion of our having recognized Him but in the end simply having no room for His Word in our hearts. During the days of Jesus’ physical incarnation on earth (between His birth and His crucifixion), some folks listened closely to Jesus’ words, nodding their heads at things they liked but criticizing Him and even condemning Him for things that they didn’t like. Instead of looking inside their own hearts, eager to let the transformative power of God challenge and remake their ideas of Who He is and What He’s like, they rejected things He said that simply “didn’t fit.”
“… You are ready to kill Me, because you have no room for My Word” (John 8:37 NIV). How terrible when we have no room for His Word in our hearts! It’s not that our hearts are too small (God’s love enlarges hearts, after all)… it’s rather that they’re too cluttered with pride, selfishness, fears, and resentments. But the Savior still looks into our world, into our lives, and into our hearts, and He still offers us hope through His Word. “‘Who are You?’ they asked. ‘Just what I have been claiming all along.’ Jesus replied. ‘I have much to say in judgment of you. But He Who sent Me is reliable, and what I have heard from Him I tell the world. I do nothing on My own but speak just what the Father has taught Me. The One Who sent Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do what pleases Him” (John 8:25-29 NIV).
Perhaps we all would do well to look at the great big heart of Jesus! Why, for instance, would He wander from village and town to village and town, healing and teaching people who were fickle with their loyalties and were frightfully less interested in genuinely reconnecting with God than with having some want or short term need being met? He graciously poured out love and grace upon them (as He does upon us) knowing that they’d reject it far more often than they’d embrace it, yet SOME would turn… SOME would listen… SOME would respond… and SOME would say yes to His invitation to life.
And if we also would dare to make room in our hearts, if we’ll really dare to love Jesus, we are given the promise that God Himself will reach down into our lives and meet us, lifting us out of worldly worries and all its defeatism and bring us into a spiritual fellowship with Himself. “Jesus replied, ‘If anyone loves Me, he will obey My teaching. My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with Him’” (John 14:23 NIV).
(Thom Mollohan and his family have ministered in southern Ohio the past ten and a half years. He is the pastor of Pathway Community Church. For comments or questions, he may be reached by email at pastorthom@pathwaygallipolis.com).
