Have You Considered...

"How are you really doing? How has this whole baby ordeal affected your walk with God?"  she asked without hesitation.  I knew the question was coming, and I knew because of our long history of friendship, support, accountability, and you-know-my-crap-and-love-me-anyway-ness, I had to actually answer.  Not with Christianese, not with pleasant "doing ok," platitudes, but nitty gritty get to the heart of the issue thoughts.

I side stepped a little, and then the real truth leaked out. I took a deep breath and spilled.

A few weeks ago, I realized that in every trial I face, walking away from faith doesn't cross my mind.  Each struggle, each heartbreak presses me to the feet of God.  "Help me understand," "Teach me to love like you do," "Give me peace."  There is beauty in that blessed assurance...I'm not going anywhere, and, more importantly, neither is God.

But I've found myself sincerely struggling with the idea of what else might God allow to happen to me in order to "test" my commitment.  For example, I'm "okay," with what we've endured (although I wouldn't want to live it again), but find myself getting super anxious about what else  might happen.  What's scarier, is I know there is pride and distrust at the root of this issue.  Distrust is a form of disobedience, and I'm grateful that all of this craziness is coming to the surface so it can be dealt with.

In fact, yesterday, I came to the conclusion that the six scariest words in the Bible "Have you considered my servant, Job." This feeling of God somehow choosing Job's suffering.  God knew that Job would persevere and still choose faith in the end, and the most horrendous things to happened to Job.

And so, there on the phone through my tears, I started listing some terrible things that could happen to me.  I ended with "Why would God NOT do that stuff to me?"

Then, as one does when faced with a conversation that's just a little too real, I quickly changed the subject to my new babysitting job, and how perfect it is for Levi and I, and how I kind of prayed for this exact scenario, but didn't really think much about it, and then it literally fell in to my lap.

"Michelle, I am going to tell you some things you already know," she inserted into the conversation when I stopped to breathe.  "God is a good father.  He loves you, and He does not delight in your pain." She was right.  Even in the juxtaposition of presenting the facts of feeling like a spider in God's fingers just dangling over the fire next to the answer to a prayer I barely breathed out, there was evidence of God's goodness, His faithfulness, His love for me.

Of course I chewed on this all day.  I texted Herb about my cry fest, and felt at peace.  But later was feeling down again, and couldn't shake my "Job Complex."  I'm so freaking dramatic.  

"No more Adele on Pandora," I texted my brother.  "Every song is making me cry today," I wrote, thinking about all the crappy things that have happened in the last few years.  The lowlight real was playing strong in my mind and like a broken record was stuck on some continuous loops.  When he pressed me a little bit about my sadness, I tried to explain the "Job Complex."

Almost instantly, he wrote back, "I'm not convinced that we are all Job.  Does God let us suffer, or is that just life?" 

With one text, he diffused the bomb I had been wiring all afternoon.  Suddenly head knowledge started flowing in, replacing irrational emotions, reminding me in the dark what God had previously taught me in the light.

I heard a pastor say recently, "God is such a genius at taking evil and turning it into good that will be tempted to look at the good that comes from evil and think that He willed the evil to get the good."

But He didn't.  He can't.  There is no evil in Him.  Life is hard and suffering is real, and it sucks and we want to avoid it.  And we don't know why God intervenes sometimes, and not other times, and that's ok to not know the answer to that.  The struggle is real, and it's going to happen whether I am a Christ follower or not. In that same sermon (seriously, check out Mike Erre preaching about "When God Doesn't Answer" if you have time), he read Romans 8:28 and surmised these three things:

1. God is always good

2. Evil is evil (not pretend good)

3. God's relentless commitment to bringing good from evil

I love this verse in Romans, where Paul writes about the faith of Abraham, "Against all hope, in hope Abraham believed." (Romans 4:18)

This morning, that brings so much peace to my heart. Trusting God to do and be what He promised, even in the face of a broken heart and a weary soul. Sometime in the last month, I kind of forgot that.  He has allowed free will, which has made way for sin, and, as a result, pain in this life will happen. But HE is incapable of evil.   He is a GOOD father.

Against all hope, in Hope I will believe.  I will rest my burden on Hope.  Hope looks a lot like Jesus.