A Mighty Strong Thread

I see you sitting on the edge of your seat, shoulders slumped and a furrowed brow.
Defeated doesn’t begin to describe the gravitational pull on your heart. Despair sinks down deep, opening up and pulsing through your veins and arteries, permeating every cell with a heavy ache. It’s a long-winded ache, one that’s been flowing beneath your skin for so long you’re don’t remember how to feel without it.

If one more thing goes wrong, if one more fire demands to be put out, if one more hope comes back wearing disappointment, you might crumple up and die.

Well, maybe not really die, but you’re hanging on to hope by such a very thin thread these days.

There’s some poor advice out there that may sound helpful at first blush. If you’ve received it, it may sound a little like this:
Believe it in Jesus’ name, and it will happen.
Visualize what you want until you get it.
Say it out loud, and as long as you believe it hard, your prayer will be answered.

False. All false.

You know how I know? Because if I could believe stuff into being, I would be God.
(Also, I’ve tried and failed.)

The Bible doesn’t support or suggest any of this kind of stuff. God doesn’t operate according to how much or little faith I have. There’s no faith-o-meter that dictates how acutely He can respond to my prayers.  I’m 100% sure He’s autonomous. And to be perfectly honest, when you’re barely holding on to hope, it’s not real helpful to hear that the reason your prayers haven’t been answered in your desired manner is because you haven’t believed it deeply enough. “If only you’d had more faith,” really just means: “It’s your fault your womb is closed, your fault you’re still single, your fault you have a serious illness, your fault your loved one died.”

In all likelihood, it’s probably not your fault, you know? Barring direct consequences for sin, most of the things we seek God for are things so beyond our realm of control–that’s why we’re asking Him.
You’re not in control, and delayed hopes or prayers that seem to go unanswered aren’t your domain.

Only God sits in the heaven, doing what He pleases. God is the One we’re encouraged to go to in Scripture with our needs and hurts. Not you. Not me.  Not the well-meaning person who may have told you to just keep believing in what you want.

It is helpful to know you’re not God. Freeing, actually.

You can pray with faith that God can and hope that God will, but ultimately it is His call. And when He doesn’t bend to your will, it’s not because He doesn’t love you.

It’s because He does.

If God was malleable, He wouldn’t be sovereign.
If God was docile, He wouldn’t be king.
If God was manipulable, He wouldn’t be trustworthy.
If God was only you-serving, He wouldn’t be wise, nor kind.
If God was changeable, He wouldn’t be the dependable, safe, holy, just, same God our hearts are desperate on for every breath.

It IS in our best interests for Him to remain who He is and to keep working out His plans for our lives (not ours for His)  though it may feel He is holding out on you at times. He isn’t forgetting you or arbitrarily saying, “no.”

“God is always doing ten thousand things in your life, and you may be aware of three of them,” John Piper once said. I remind myself of this when I struggle to see the good in my present circumstances. I can’t see what God is always, sovereignly orchestrating. Sometimes He lifts the veil a bit, and we get the tiniest glimpse of His purposes. But mostly, we just have to trust Him—trust that He has our our good and His glory at heart. (He does.)

That’s hard to do, though, when despair is piling up so high that you’re neck deep in reasons to just fold in on yourself.

This is when faith does it’s work, but don’t fruitlessly put your faith in what you’re praying for. You put your faith in the God who loves you, sent His Son as payment for your sins to redeem you, and who will work to sanctify you until He takes you home to be with Him. You put your hope and faith in Him, trusting that what He desires for you is far better than what you desire. Sometimes those desires line up, and sometimes they don’t. Trust that He knows better. Sink into the safety of His unseen multitasking.

And when you feel weak, so weak—when that microscopic strand of hope you’re hanging on to feels like it’s all that’s left inside you, remember that you are holding fast to the One who holds fast to you.

And that’s a mighty strong thread.

My goal is to know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, assuming that I will somehow reach the resurrection from among the dead. Not that I have already reached the goal or am already fully mature, but I make every effort to take hold if it because I also have been taken hold of by Jesus Christ. (Philippians 3:10-12)

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