Life Changers, Part One

I've thought often of writing on this blog about a few Biblical concepts that have changed my life. My approach would be to write first about how I was taught the concept and how I first believed and practiced it. Then how life and the Master Teacher corrected my course.

I've been hesitant to do so, and I'm not sure why. For one thing, it takes time and thought to post. It seems I haven't had time to do that lately. But I do know that one finds time to do what one really wants to do. So, I shot that one down.

I think another hesitation is would anyone read it. But my answer to myself on that one is that doesn't really matter. I like to write to get my thoughts out of my head and written. I always learn when doing that. So second hesitation shot down.

With those disclaimers and hesitations exposed, I think I'll start writing this little series of posts with this morning's post.

The first life principle that I misunderstood and think I was taught is this:
If you give your life to God, through trusting Christ and accepting Him as your Lord and Savior, God will bless you and make your life worth living. You will never lack for anything and God is always at hand to answer your prayers. Many other principles stem from this, which will be future posts.

So, right from the beginning, when anything went wrong or didn't happen as I thought it should, I immediately prayed and prayed for God to do it, with the confidence that He was going to. And what I heard and what I taught confirmed this thinking.

Two things in life happened to me that helped this course correction:
First, my pastor husband was called to a church that rejected him. Now, up to this point I thought that any church that had a man like my husband who preached the gospel, who loved his family, who had no hidden secrets, and who really wanted what God wanted, the church would love him. Also if a church had a preacher's family like ours where the wife taught Bible studies, worked with staff wives, and the children though not perfect were good Christian kids, that church would welcome and be excited about having such a pastor and such a family.

Well, the Master Teacher used this situation to teach me a needed life lesson; i.e., to break the thought processes in me that God owed me and that my (our) performance with God guaranteed His blessings and our answered prayers for a good life. This church totally rejected everything my husband tried to do while at the same time setting records in attendance and recorded baptisms, etc. It was a most puzzling situation.

I began to search the scriptures in earnest. Nowhere could I find what I had believed and what I had taught. Lo and behold, God had never said anywhere that He would do what I was begging Him to do. Hmmmm... Instead, I ran headlong into the eleventh chapter of Hebrews. The one verse that grabbed me was verse 16 where it says that God was not ashamed to be called their God, and that's after verse 13 when it says these all died in faith, not having received the promises.

That was totally contrary to my whole thinking. But, as I began to realize what these verses were saying and what the whole context was, I saw that the no pain, no bad things, all blessings, etc., was like making God a Santa Claus and not the God of the Bible. I began to know that God might be ashamed to be called my God because I had Him in a box and needed to break that box and let God be God; i.e., the God He says He is in the scriptures. Another hmmmm...

Later another event in my life happened that helped me solidify my right thinking and belief system. A friend wrote an e-mail and suggested that God wasn't being fair to a mutual preacher friend of ours whose second wife had just died. My friend's comment was something like how could God do that to one of His special preachers who has only tried to live a good life and follow God.

Oops. He said that to the wrong person. I wrote back a pretty long e-mail and explained to my friend my new understanding of some scriptures and how I had boxed God in and was not free in grace and love because I hadn't really met the God as revealed, truly revealed, in the Scriptures. It was at that time that I realized fully the principle that there are no guarantees with God. Actually, there are two: He loves me, and He will never leave me. As I explained this to my friend in the e-mail, I was confirmed that I really now knew the God of the Bible in the way that He had truly revealed Himself. My friend was quite taken aback, but it was a pivotal point for him also. I was confirmed and he was enlightened.

That's the principle or the corrected belief that I wanted to try to explain in this post. There are no guarantees with God (except the two mentioned). And if you listen, and if you are alert, way too much of our teaching and preaching in our churches tell us that God guarantees this or that.

Realizing there are no guarantees with God really shakes some people, and some people think I am really off on this one. But to me it's foundational to all others. It's scary to someone who used God as a security covering, as an assurrance that no bad things would happen in life. In my belief system to let God out of that box gave me freedom and acceptance and love that was denied to me as long as I had such an expectant spirit about what God was supposed to do, and I called it "faith." Sounds funny now, but it was the basis for my entire belief system. As I look back, it's not surprising that I struggled so much.

Now I bask in the guarantee that God loves me and He will never, ever leave me. With that assurance I can face anything that comes my way or anything that happens to me or mine and know that I have a God who loves me and is with me. Expectations are laid aside and are replaced with an excitement and anticipation no matter what. Quite a different way to live.

Well, that's it. That's my first post of several on new conceptions of truths that have changed my life. More to come. MB