The Journey to Trust

Beth Moore said in the Anointed, Transformed, Redeemed study that, “God is not harsh. He is holy” (p. 83). That statement along with a comment from a friend made me think about the magnitude of God’s holiness. That created a desire to really want to understand what holiness is and how He could be holy, yet allow tragedies to occur. When tragedies happen it is hard to believe in God’s goodness and trust Him in those times and sometimes for a long time afterwards.

I have to admit that even now, I have a hard time trusting God. I am fearful. I fear that He will lash out at me to punish me, or He will take away something, or someone that I care about. The reason I think like this is probably due to two reasons. The first one is because my Mother died when I was seventeen. The second reason is because I am human.

In my humanness it is hard for me to understand that when stressful, difficult, or tragic things happens there must be a reason for it. I imagine Job had a hard time believing God had a reason for allowing him to suffer too. However, God is a big God and he uses big sacrifices & difficult circumstances in our lives to accomplish big things, i.e. Esther, Abraham, Job. As a result of Job’s suffering we now have a book in the Bible (Job) that offers comfort and hope to many Christians. So, perhaps, our tragedies are used by God to accomplish His purposes that we cannot see or understand now. Just as Job surely did not know that his life story would be recorded and used to teach many others about God’s character.

When tragedy strikes we can have faith that it is not from His hand (Job 1:12 & Job 2:6-7), as the story of Job teaches. We also know that God is holy, so He will work everything out according to His plan. Understanding His holiness is helpful in being able to trust Him. Since He is accomplishing big things and He is holy, then He can be trusted even during dark, difficult times. (Psalm 46:1)

Holy, Holy, Holy

Verse: Revelation 4:8
“Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under his wings. Day and night they never stop saying: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come."

A godly Christian woman in my church made a great observation. She stated that the bible says that God is holy, holy, holy. We don’t see in the Word that God is mercy, mercy, mercy; or love, love, love, yet we know that He is merciful and loving. However, the bible does repeat the characteristic of holiness three times stressing the magnitude and degree of holiness found in our God.

We often think of God like He is a 'good' version of ourselves, but God does not have our nature. He is Holy. That is His nature. We, on occasion, do good works that He has prepared in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2:10), but He is perfectly holy, always. Perfect holiness is a trait that is difficult to understand because, aside from Jesus, there are no human examples of this holiness. Since we are sinful (Romans 3:23), we cannot fully understand the depths of His holiness. We know that it is not equivalent to the idiom, ‘holier than thou’ which means ‘a person who is obnoxiously pious or self-righteous'
(http://www.dictionary.com/). Perhaps to understand holiness it will help if we discuss what it is not.

Holiness takes no pleasure in degrading another via dirty jokes or racial slurs, it takes no delight in seeing others suffer, there is no amusement in the embarrassment or humiliation of another and no pleasure in condemning someone else. It is not abusive emotionally, physically, or verbally. Holiness is the absence of selfish ambition, conceit, malice, dissentions, envy, fits of rage. Holiness is not obscene. Holiness does not turn a blind eye to injustice. Holiness does not ignore oppression. On the other nail pierced hand, holiness is unconditional love, absolute truth, and eternally merciful.

The Lord is exalted, for He dwells on high!

Prayer:
When everything seems to be working against me, help me to remember that You are holy.

Read More:
Isaiah 6:2-3

Plan of Action:
Today, during your prayer time, take time to confess your sins to Him. He will be faithful and just to forgive them. (1 John 1:9)

Silence

My Sunday School teacher taught something that increased my faith last Sunday. She explained that after the last book of the Bible in the Old Testament, Malachi, was written God was silent for the next 400 years. He was silent, but it is important to know that He was still there. In fact, it was during these 400 years of silence that the miracle of the oil occurred. You may recall that the temple had been destroyed, but the Jewish people went in to rededicate the temple and found a jar of oil. The jar of oil only contained a one day supply of oil. In order to rededicate the temple new oil was needed and that took eight days to make. (This oil was used to provide light in the temple.) Then God allowed this one day supply of oil to burn for eight days until more could be made. That was the miracle behind Hanukah. This is also how Hanukah began. However, I want to focus on God’s silence. He was silent for 400 years, but as you can see by this miracle He was moving.

Have you noticed this in your own life?

I have noticed that there are times when God is silent. For whatever reason He just does not speak. Yet, He is still there and aware of what is happening now, just as He was for the Jewish people during those 400 years. After learning about this, now I can see it in my own life. There are times when He has not been speaking, yet His hand has still been there. In other words, He is still involved in my life, even though I am not hearing from Him. These periods of silence are dotted with His provision. His silence is normal, everyone experiences it. It can be tempting to loose faith during these times of silence. We pray and nothing seems to happen, but keep the faith, God hasn’t forgotten us, He is very aware of what is happening to us and He will speak again, in His perfect time.