The more I have
to do with God, the more I am confronted with who I am. As someone once said, “It takes God to know
man.” Our view of ourselves is
drastically changed the moment He shows up.
Like Isaiah we say, “Woe is me, for I am a man with unclean lips”. Why did the Spirit lead him to write, “I am a
man”? It is not as if he did not know
this. But the moment He came into God’s
presence, he was confronted with the fact that he is a man, standing in God’s
Holy presence.
Apparently it is
hard pressed on the Father’s heart for me to bring this post. I have not been able to get it out of my mind
ever since I wrote it, and the confirmations I have received that He would like
me to post it has been overwhelming. Considering
the subject matter I can only think that it has eternal consequences and that
it is not only for now, but for what is to come. It lays heavy on my own heart as well, as I
see that this world is even now increasingly being confronted with this very
same question. Can we truly define
God? Yes, I suppose we can quote some
scripture about how He is Spirit, He is love, holy and more. But in itself if we are to define Him, that
would be making Him less than what He is, which is God. And because as man, who cannot define God, He
has forever been showing us exactly who He is.
But have we heard Him? Have we
seen? And can we be the same once we
have heard and seen?
One of those
occasions in history that He has clearly spoken is during the holocaust. We have been inundated with literature and
documentaries and interviews about it.
After all these years it has in fact never stopped. And somehow the overall focus has been the
struggle, agony and extreme loss in the face of death at the hands of a
dictator and his people. It is always
heartbreaking to listen to this. When
the Jews came out of the camps, there is one creed that they have said and have
ever been holding on to. “Never Again!”
This was their solemn proclamation over themselves as a nation after the devastation
of the holocaust. And not only “Never
Again!”, but it seems through all the years it is also “Never Forget!” And so I
have to wonder why the question that may or may not have been on their minds
were never answered. A question they did
not dare to consider, because it would ultimately devastate all their
categories and who they are, even now up to this point.
And this
question is, “Why was God silent?” or in
other words, “How come God allowed this?
It is said that even their babies were thrown into the air to be caught
on the baronets of the soldiers as their entertainment. How their scientists and scholars were made to
lay in the middle of the street so that a tank could drive over them, crushing
them whilst still alive. And there are
so many more accounts with the same level of cruel and violent rage. And to answer this question of “Why was God
silent and why did God allow this?” was maybe addressed by secular and
religious scholars, but not by the Jews.
How does one consolidate the heartache of this world with a loving God,
who calls Himself our Father? Many were disillusioned
and many an atheist was born as their view of God changed during this horrific
time. They did not understand the “why?”
And in the same
way this question has to be raised about the greatest holocaust ever, the
holocaust of the Son of Man. We are in
danger of answering this question from a doctrinal view and not from the
reality that it was. A slaughtering of a
son by His own Father. It is easier to
put a religious ring to it and hold the type and shadow of the Passover Lamb right
next to it, and ascribe to the doctrinal truth, yet be devoid of the reality of
it. And yet it behooves us to sit with
this question and to take it apart. To
meditate on it and ask ourselves what this says about God. To allow Him to undo our romanticizing of the
cross and ask the pertinent questions of “What does this say of God?” or more
importantly, the question He wishes to bring to you…”Who do you say I am?”
As I said at the
beginning quoting Isaiah, that it takes God to know man. Because when you know God as He truly is, the
same cry will come from your innermost being…”woe is me, I am a man…” The holocaust of the cross is the statement of
my sin in the same way that the holocaust of the Jews were the statement of
their sin. The magnitude of the
suffering on the cross is relative to the magnitude of my sin. Our presumption upon God, deciding what we
think He will allow or not allow is the issue of our pride, and therefore the
holocaust. The fact that we have made
Him in our image, to the point that He has to say…
Psalm 50: 21
21 These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou
thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will reprove
thee, and set them in order before thine eyes.
And so to disillusion us from this image we have made of Him,
He devastates us in judgment, of which the Cross is the supreme
expression. And in His wisdom by this
demonstration we may both know His judgment and mercy. But we refuse to want to see God like that. Maybe on sinners and those who deserve it,
but surely not His children. Surely not those who love Him, who has given all
and forsaken all? Surely not those who live in holiness? The issue is not whether we have done
something wrong and now deserve the discipline as His children. There is a time for this. What He is addressing is His judgment on our
image we have made of Him.
We refuse to consider Job.
We want to take that account apart and bring a cause and consequence to
the table. After all, is that not how
this world works? But God is not like
us. His ways are not our ways and His
thoughts are higher than ours. We would
like His wisdom to comfort us as our Father.
However, there is also the wisdom of God that exceeds our understanding
that even devastates our view of Him.
And that is the intention of His judgment, also the one to come upon
this world.
The failure to receive the statement of God in the death and
resurrection of Jesus and every subsequent suffering in my life, lies at the
heart of why we do not know Him as He is, and therefore it must happen again
and again in our lives. Every issue of
suffering raises the issue of God. Your
divorce, the illness that racks your body, suicide, murder, child abuse,
poverty and rape. They all ask ‘Why?” And “Where was God?” How can a God who is just, righteous, all
seeing and all powerful allow these things to happen? And in order to settle our distaste and
disappointment in God for not intervening, we revert back to cause and
consequence. I or they did that, so
therefore this must happen. Linear
thinking. But God is all together other! As my close friend said after her husband
died in her arms of a heart attack, leaving her with her broken hearted teenage
girls that adored there father, “And He calls Himself loving! He could have stopped it, but He chose not
to!” And for her at that moment it defined Him and not her. Because she did not consider that as God, by
definition He can do so without her ever understanding why. In fact in that very moment when she cried
out to Him to revive her husband’s lifeless body lying in her arms, whilst
bargaining and making promises of doing whatever He asks as long as He gave her
husband back, the answer came. “You may
not know why now, but one day you will understand”. And anybody who have gone through such trauma
knows that, that answer will just not “cut it”.
We want answers. We want an
explanation. And so we fail to see what
is said the loudest in what has happened – BECAUSE I AM GOD.
Our pride riles against this.
We cry foul and search for answers, but refuse to believe this. Refuse to accept this because when there is a
wrong, there has to be accountability.
But God is God! How many people
turned their back on God because they were unable to console there view of God
with who He is in the time of the holocaust? Unable to accept that
God can do as He wants, answers to nobody and is sovereign in all He does. And does this not actually shed the light on
whether we truly believe and know that our lives are not our own?
Let’s go back to Job.
When all was said and done, when he lost house, family, friends,
possessions and was scraping scabs of his body, racked with sickness too
terrible to look at, and cursing the day he was born, he came to an ultimate
conclusion, written in chapter 42.
Job 42: 5 – 6
5 I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but
now mine eye seeth thee.
6 Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.
At the heart of the book of Job is who Job is and who God
is. And this is the heart of all God’s
dealing with you. Nominal religion,
which is God in our own image, constitute the rejection of God whilst at the
same time seemingly celebrating Him as God.
This is why He has to shatter our illusions. This is why He judge. And this is also why some Christians fall
apart at the seams at ordinary times, but cannot stand in the face of
calamity. Their house is built on the
sandy false perceptions of God and fall the moment the storm comes, like my
friend who lost her husband. We want God
to make nice. We want Him to fit into
our paradigm, our box. And in just whose
box of all the Christians out there, should He fit into?
The question we need to ask ourselves is, “Am I serving God
as He truly is, or in the image that I have made of Him?” “Have I swept this question under the rug of
religious normalcy as all others, or have I wrestled as Jacob with God? Has He won and confronted me with my name. The Angel asked Jacob what his name is. It is not that God did not know what Jacob’s
name was, it was that Jacob had to acknowledge his name and the meaning of
it. Evidently it took him wrestling
right through the night with God. And
what does Jacob mean? Deceiver or
surplanter. In another chapter in
Isaiah, God says, Oh Jacob, thou worm.
We hear the following spoken over Jacob.
Genesis 32: 28
28 And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but
Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast
prevailed.
As a prince he has power with God. It took him wrestling with God to have as a
prince power with God, which speaks of favor and authority. But what did it take? And so Jacob left with a new name. Israel, meaning “he has prevailed with God”
or “He shall rule as God”. Have you
wrestled with God? Do you have the limp
as He touched your side, your side that resembles your strength? Has he crippled you? That limp in Jacob’s walk will forever remind
him that there is One greater who spared his life. He is not His equal, but a worm. And God, is God. Make no mistake about this. This is the issue of the last days.
God is fitting us now and building our characters to be able
to stand in the coming holocaust of this world.
That when the hour comes, and it is very soon, our view of Him will not
collapse, because we have allowed Him to be God as He in fact is in our lives,
and not in our own image. Now is the
time to devastate us. We need to anticipate what is soon coming. Just because we know what is coming does not
constitute that we are ready for what is coming. We will either find ourselves in apostolicity
or in apostasy. Either in our faith or more and more
compromising. And how we view God lies
at the heart of it. And it is at this
time that we ought to be in our inner chamber allowing Him to search our heart and
willingly allow Him to confront us with this issue. As He asked Peter, “Who do you say I am?” And once Peter told Him, He replied, “Flesh
and blood did not reveal this to you, but the Spirit”. Is your image of God based only on your
correct doctrine or does it include His dealings with you? And equally important, have you set the limit
to those dealings? Willing subconsciously
that He may take your husband, but not your child. Willing subconsciously that He may take your
job, but not your house? Willing to lose
and forsake your friends, but not rack your body with sickness? Please do not think I am saying we never have
a say or part in our sufferings. Sin
opens doors and Father disciplines as well.
But what if it is not discipline, but a demonstration of who He is? As is all His dealings with us. Can God be God as He in fact is in your life
or have you subconsciously determined the boundaries of His full expression of
who He is, in your life? Look at the
cross. The cross is the full expression
of who He is – judgment and mercy.
Are you celebrating your security and peace in the Lord, how
your marriage is good and all is going relative well? I think that is exactly where Job was. And still God had an issue with how Job saw
himself and God. He had security with the
hedge of protection around his life, but when that security was taken away, he
was instantly confronted with who he is, and who God is. Do we know Him as that?
God does not see as we see.
Our whole view of justice and responsibility is very different from
His. As my mentor Art Katz says, “Suffering
reveals and ultimate suffering reveals ultimately”. This is the place Job was brought to. And how tragic it is to have suffered
ultimately, like the Jews, and have not seen ultimately, which is the failure
to understand the intention of God in His dealings. How much more for us in our consideration of
the cross and His dealings with us? We
attribute these dealings and suffering coming from man or even the enemy, when
we should understand that it is coming from the hand of God. To say it was Hitler is much easier than to
say it was God.
Nothing of this will make sense if we do not see this in the way
that God sees it, which is an eternal perspective. Art also says, “If the fire of the gas
chambers will save us from the eternal fires of judgment, it has an eternal
perspective”. In the context of time
itself it will not have its full meaning.
And God is eternal. And so, in
His dealings with us, eternity is at stake.
It will be an eternal loss if we do not get it in the here and now.
God has an issue with our perception and view of Him. At the
heart of it lies that we want a God of our choosing. At the heart is our pride. Like Job, Jacob and many more, He has to
bring us to nothing, to ashes, so that we may as a prince have power with
God. We serve an ultimate God that
cannot be defined on the basis of our own understanding, but only on His
terms. To be dealt with by God in this manner
is know Him as He is, as He intended, and central to this is the holocaust of
the Son of Man on the cross.
Hebrews 12: 25 - 29
25 See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they
escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape,
if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven:
26 Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath
promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.
27 And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing
of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things
which cannot be shaken may remain.
28 Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be
moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence
and godly fear:
29 For our God is a consuming fire.
Psalm 103
Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy
name.
2 Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits:
3 Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all
thy diseases;
4 Who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth
thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies;
5 Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy
youth is renewed like the eagle's.
6 The Lord executeth righteousness and judgment for all
that are oppressed.
7 He made known his ways unto Moses, his acts unto the
children of Israel.
8 The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and
plenteous in mercy.
9 He will not always chide: neither will he keep his
anger for ever.
10 He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded
us according to our iniquities.
11 For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is
his mercy toward them that fear him.
12 As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he
removed our transgressions from us.
13 Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.
14 For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are
dust.
15 As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the
field, so he flourisheth.
16 For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the
place thereof shall know it no more.
17 But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them
that fear him, and his righteousness unto children's children;
18 To such as keep his covenant, and to those that
remember his commandments to do them.
19 The Lord hath prepared his throne in the heavens; and his
kingdom ruleth over all.
20 Bless the Lord, ye his angels, that excel in strength, that do his
commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word.
21 Bless ye the Lord, all ye his hosts; ye ministers of his, that do his
pleasure.
22 Bless the Lord, all his works in all places of his dominion: bless
the Lord, O my soul.
