Your Unrelenting, Undaunted God

You have been in some bad places before.  You know what it is like to have the acrid taste of anxiety flavor everything you are digesting in life.  You know all about fear, dread, worry and defeat.  Seasons of darkness have not been kept from you and there is no doubt that you are not among those very rare people who have not yet wept bitter tears.  Life is not always this tangled for you but, occasionally, the dark clouds blow in and refuse to blow back out.  It is in periods like these that God does not move you forward nor take you backward.  He speaks nothing new to you and sometimes He speaks nothing at all to you.  He does not rush to your immediate aid and does not skillfully move in for the rescue.  His silence and His stillness have more than once tempted to you to believe the biggest lie of all: that you are completely on your own.

“And David remained in the strongholds in the wilderness, in the hill country of the Wilderness of Ziph. And Saul sought him every day, but God did not give him into his hand.” – 1 Samuel 23:14 {ESV}

King David is, by far, my favorite Old Testament saint.  His imperfections are painted all across the pages of our bibles yet he is still marked as a God-hearted man.  I learn from his humility.  I am instructed through his courage.  He is filled with enough testosterone-fueled commitment to cut off the head of a giant yet tender enough to write scores of worship songs which comprise the book of Psalms.  No matter how high God exalted David, he always remained a king beneath The King.  When life circumstances continually kicked David in the gut we see him time and again emitting upward cries for heavenly relief.  In the verse from 1 Samuel 23 above, young David was on the run as wicked King Saul sought his life.  Notice where God’s will led David:  the wilderness.  There was nothing convenient about the wilderness.  Bare necessities would have been at a premium.  Daily survival would have been in question and there were zero luxuries.  Yet in the midst of that wilderness there was the provision of securing strongholds where David would be kept safe.  All the perks were taken away by God, but His preservation remained for David.  Each day David’s enemy was working feverishly to uncover the faithful fugitive but the Scriptures say that God would not give David over to the plan of his enemy’s doom.  What was David learning during that season when nothing was easy, nothing was pleasurable and little made sense?  The same things we learn during times like that if we are discerning God’s work.

• Removal of ease does not always indicate removal of God’s approval
• Even when you live in your wilderness, God ensures preservation of what is essential
• Your enemy will never stop working – he has nothing else to do! Yet he can accomplish nothing that God refuses him
• God does not have to rush to your aid nor speak with clarity to justify His goodness.  Your job is to abide, to wait.  His commitment is to act righteously on your behalf.
• The deepening and purifying of your confidence in God requires wilderness seasons.  Your faith is theoretical without them.

So now let’s think upon this great God who is truly as inscrutable as He feels to you.  He is not the predictable God of your childhood Sunday School lessons.  He’s not the raging God of your fallen, accused conscience.  He’s not the petty God who holds a golden clipboard keeping track of your Prim’s & Proper’s so he can conclude if you are a good boy or girl.  He’s not that detached Deity who shrugs off your alarm and fear.  Who is He then?  Sum Him up for me, Jeff, because I’m struggling to understand Him.

My friend, that is what this whole life is all about.  Your wilderness season is about learning Him.  Your peak victories are about learning Him.  The grace you receive in your miserable failures is about the glory of His name.  The depth that you receive from the slow-migrating answers He sends is nothing short of evidence of His lasting love for you.  You and I are not called to figure Him out or sum Him up.  All of the billions of centuries in eternity future will not be sufficient to exhaust the revelation of the character of God.  I am convinced that He wants our heart for today and requires nothing more of us today.  Those days join each other, end-to-end, and become weeks, months and years which will graciously conclude in a lifetime of knowing Him.  Then we will meet Him and all of the bewilderment associated with living below will be forever banished.  That is when you will “get it”.  Then you will have that ecstatic experience of comprehending everything He has been doing.  When you see Him, you will begin to comprehend it all.  This grand revelation of who God is will not only be His forever-joy…it is to be yours also.