But meanwhile, life is challenging. Walt Disney tells us that in two hours all of life’s difficult challenges are neatly resolved. The Bible gives a different story.1 Samuel 23-24 tells of David running around in the wilderness, being chased by King Saul, who wanted to kill him. As I previously observed, David was very close to God and yet God let David go through that very tough period.

In the midst of being chased, David knew where to look – God. (He wrote Psalm 63 in the midst of that flight. He must have been carrying a few pens and some paper with him in the wilderness.) In verse 1: “I earnestly search for you.” And then that leads to verse 4: “Your unfailing love is better than life itself; how I praise you!” Wow. His longer-term view of reality is amazing in light of his circumstances.

I find it freeing to know that it’s all right that things aren’t always all right. We need God. He wants us to need Him. If you’re in the wilderness today, cry to God and ask Him to show you His presence. He will. Maybe not immediately or in the way you expect, but He will.

Jesus reminds us, “Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am.” (John 14:1-3.)

(Paul Merrill writes here every First Friday.)

Okay, there may have been more than ten, but only ten of The Twelve were there. Judas was dead.  Thomas simply wasn’t present.

It was a gathering of uncertainty. The door was locked. The disciples had heard that Jesus was alive, but weren’t sure what that meant. And they were trusting more in locks than in stories that night.

Suddenly there was another person in the room. Jesus said, “Peace.” Jesus held out his hands. Jesus pointed to his side. The disciples were thrilled.

Sometime during the next few days, the ten tell Thomas, “you should have been there! We saw Jesus! He’s alive!”

And Thomas, with the words everyone thinks should go on his tombstone, says, “Unless I see his hands and touch his hands and side, I won’t believe what you are saying.”

And we talk about doubting Thomas. And we get frustrated with the people around us who aren’t as spiritually trusting as we are, as jumping up and down happy to believe as we are.

But wait a minute.

What was Thomas asking for, other than what the other disciples had already seen? And who was Thomas talking to, other than guys who had wanted to hold back when Thomas followed Jesus into danger at Lazarus’ tomb?

Be honest. You would have been skeptical of Peter, too.

The real measure of Thomas is not his honest skepticism about seemingly unreliable witnesses. The real measure is that, when given the kind of evidence he said he wanted, evidence provided more in Jesus’ words that showed Thomas’ heart than in the actually touching, Thomas acknowledged who Jesus was.

An honest skeptic can see evidence. Thomas, seeing, believed. Still others, believing, see.

A professional skeptic, however, often won’t look.

—

This was first posted April 9, 2009.

If you found this post helpful or challenging, subscribe to 300wordsaday.com for daily words about following Jesus. 

You aren’t sure what’s happening. You can’t see to the end of today. And you are waiting.

It reminds you of that summer before your senior year of high school, the summer that you worked third shift. All alone in the building, all alone working on the computer.  Sometimes alone is okay. But in the hours just before dawn, when exhaustion is setting in, you can see waiting.

It reminds you of the time between you decided to apply for the job and the conversation in your office when they said, “We’ve decided to go the other direction.” Those weeks of wondering, those last minutes of sheer uncertainty about which way your whole life was going.

You are waiting.

And in your waiting, you are trying to talk to God. You make promises and then rescind them and then rescind your doubt and then doubt yourself. It’s so deep, your waiting, that some moments you cannot breath. You cannot sit. You cannot touch the keyboard.

An ancient chant starts playing around the edges of your heart.

More than the watchmen, waiting for the morning.
More than the watchmen, waiting for the morning.

Every bit of urgency and despair and desire and fear pours itself into that line. Because that’s how much you want hope, how much you are aching for this to be fixed.  But you can’t remember where that chant came from.

It came from Psalm 130, which is familiar even if never before seen.  Right before the repeated watchman phrase, the writer tells us the object of desire:

My soul waits for the Lord
More than the watchmen, waiting for the morning.

You aren’t the first to wait.  Or the first to cry out from the depths for mercy. I’ve known the feeling. And found hope.

A lesson I’ve been learning again is how to trust.

One of my favorite passages in the Bible is Paul’s request for us to not worry in Philippians 4:6-7. He gives a great alternative – pray. When we worry, we bring the problems into our own court and say to God, “I can handle this one.” When we pray, we’re giving that worry (or those worries) to Him and saying, “You are the only one who can handle this. So I’m giving it to you!”

When I was a kid learning to swim, I realized that if I fought the water, it would not hold me up. I’d panic and end up sucking in lots of water through my nose and thrash wildly and start to cry. But when I relaxed and let the water lift me up, I could start to glide through the water.

But trusting in God to lift us up in the swimming pool of life is not a call for us to be lazy. Jesus told a parable about talents. The master rewarded the servant who made the most use of the resources he was given. The one who sat back and did nothing was punished. Notice that he worried. He was concerned about losing the resources he was given, so he buried it. He was so focused on himself and his perceived limitations that he didn’t step back to think about what could be done.

Back to Philippians. After telling us to pray, Paul tells us how to pray. Two things: tell God what we need and then thank Him for all He has already done. What a great way to have a positive outlook! If we reflect on what God has done, we’ll remember that He can rescue us. Again.

The reason trusting is on Paul’s mind is that he has just launched a new consulting firm, Greener Grass Media. He can help you with social media, marketing and website visual design, just like he’s helped Jon with some design projects. 

Yet God created many formulas. The universe runs by an infinite set of formulas that govern how physical things work. When two hydrogen atoms are combined with one oxygen atom, water always results. By faith we understand that the entire universe was formed at God’s command, that what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen (Hebrews 11:3).

However, people (and God) are so much more complicated than just a set of formulas. I’d guess that God has countless formulas running in the background that govern how our minds and souls function. And yet there’s that free will thing. God created us to have choice, which indicates He enjoys variables.

Part of the beauty of relating with God is that He has depth and richness of character that takes more than a lifetime to grapple with. If you are married, you can say the same is true of your spouse.

Back to prayer and vending machines… Though we have no guarantees about how God will work in our lives, we can trust that He knows what is best for us – and that He bears our desires in mind too! You parents – if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead? … So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him (Matthew 7:9 & 11).

(Paul Merrill writes here every First Friday.)

“My heart has heard you say, ‘Come and talk with me.’ And my heart responds, “Lord, I am coming.’ ” (Psalm 20:7)

That’s a great way to start a day. Or end a day.

David, the guy who wrote those words, preceded those thoughts by saying, “Hear me as I pray, O Lord. Be merciful and answer me!” So God did respond by asking David to sit down and talk. Then in the talking with God, David would get his answers.

How often are we willing to sit down and talk with God? Talk. Listen. (Not just talk.)

A great time to do that might be on your drive (or train ride) to work. Or on the plane to that next conference, when you just don’t feel like talking to the person next to you. God will listen, without complaining. He usually doesn’t talk till you are ready to listen to Him. That’s not always true. Sometimes He shouts at us when we won’t listen any other way. Often He will talk through events in our lives. The “wake up!” variety.

Sometimes we are in a place where God seems silent. It’s helpful to zip down to the end of that Psalm to see how David responded to that situation: “Wait patiently for the Lord. Be brave and courageous. Yes, wait patiently for the Lord.”

Being patient can be really hard. Maybe it’s one of the hardest things we will face. But David urges us to be brave in the face of the unknown. Maybe you’re waiting on a job. Waiting on your daughter to choose her life direction, on trying for a baby or finding a life partner. Or waiting to see how you can make ends meet this month. Be brave. Wait. And talk to God. And listen.

That’s what I asked five guys the other night. They are studying church administration. I’m the eprof. I wanted a simple case study for talking about change. I picked them.

“What specific skills do you need to develop to make that happen? What attitudes? What habits? What barriers do you need to remove?”

They did well in brainstorming though spoke in vague terms.

I picked on a barrier that one person had identified.

“Give me a specific, concrete, practical set of actions that can help me decrease ___.”

That was a struggle.

We all love people with wonderful reputations. We think, “I want to be known like that.” But when it comes to practical steps that will take us closer to that reputation, we struggle. Can you learn to love, to surrender, to be humble, to be like Jesus? I mean, we talk about it, but what actual steps do we take?

Paul set as his goal

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death…

He outlines some steps in the following paragraphs:

1. I haven’t arrived. (He was honest in evaluating his current status).

2. I’m pressing on. (He was committed to not staying at his current status)

3. I’m doing this one thing. (He was focused on his direction)

4. I’m forgetting what is already behind me. (He was not trapped by past successes and failures.)

We’ll talk tomorrow about what that looks like. For today, consider your answer: “in five years, I …

I constantly seem to forget how important and real prayer is. A few months back, I wrote about a friend who was facing foreclosure because he had not received a paycheck in over a year. I prayed with him for several months. God brought a job! Another friend had been looking for a job for a long time. I prayed with him. He has a job! A third friend – the same.

My prayers are certainly not amazing or special. But God is. He must realize that my trust in Him needs some bolstering right now, so He is clearly answering some of these requests.

I’m asking God to provide a “yes” for another friend who is looking for a job. Heather and I haven’t received an answer to those prayers yet. (Maybe we have received an answer – and it’s “no” – but I still want to keep praying.) Paul reminds me in Romans 12 verse 12 to “Be patient in trouble, and always be prayerful.” The being patient part is hard.

God simply wants us to talk to Him. And a great thing is that He doesn’t mind if all we do is talk about ourselves. I’ve read books and heard sermons about how our prayers need to follow formulas. I don’t think God uses many formulas. He just does things like an artist – effortlessly. He is like a good father who loves hearing what His kids did that day. (What good father would tell his kid, “But you didn’t ask me the right way or in the right order!”) He also doesn’t mind hearing us cry about our problems. As Jon mentioned, David did a lot of crying to God in the Psalms.

So be honest with God. Your earthly father may have rejected you. God won’t.

When you are part of a group and public opinion shifts, what makes you stay? How much attention do you pay to the way people are talking? If lots of people are talking positively about your group, does that make you feel more attached? If lots of people start to raise questions, does that cause you to ask questions? If people in the group start to grumble about what they are hearing, about the demands that are being made on the group members, do you start to join in the grumbling?

Why? What drives our attachment?

John 6 captures a few days of teaching by Jesus. It starts with the amazing feeding of a huge crowd. It ends with the odd teaching about eating Jesus. During this narrative, we first see the Twelve. We then see a huge crowd. We then see this crowd sorted into eaters and disciples. The eaters start to leave. Then disciples start to leave. By the end of the chapter, it seems that we are back down to the Twelve.

And Jesus turns to them and says, “You don’t want to leave too, do you?”

[I don't know his tone of voice as he says this. We could suggest that he's pretty defeated. But John says that "Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him."  There is the sense that this isn't a test of Jesus' will, it's a test of the hearts of the Twelve.]

Peter says, “Lord, to whom shall we go?”

As difficult as Jesus’ words were, he was the only one with words that mattered. As challenging as it is was to be around him, it was even harder to be anywhere else.

I don’t think things have changed.

We have conversations, we watch things happen, we see things in the moment. We think we understand.

• A person is cranky. We think they are mad at us. Or that they just have issues.
• A person moves slowly. We think they are lazy. Or incompetent.
• A person starts laughing. We think they are irrational.

Later, we get more information. We find out that the person just lost a family member to cancer. We find out that the person is living with multiple sclerosis. We find out that the person has is wearing a bluetooth and just heard a joke.

Because we don’t wait for all the pieces, we get the story wrong.

Jesus creates a disruption in the temple, and then tells the leaders that if they “destroy this temple, I will raise it again in three days.”

We have no idea what the disciples thought in the moment. We don’t know whether they were appalled or delighted or amused or confused. What we know is what they understood later.

John says,

But the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.

There are pieces of our lives that we do not understand. There is a disconnect between what we know that Jesus says of himself and what our experience says. It’s challenging to keep walking with him.

That’s what the disciples did. They understood pieces and they kept following, but they didn’t make sense of it until later. They lived with mystery.

They also lived with relationship. Because they knew Jesus, they didn’t have to understand him. Still a challenge. Still possible.