You may be saying to me by now, All this stuff about wrestling with God, Colin, I don’t get it. God is Love, isn’t He? Why would I have to wrestle with Him? Are you telling me that He doesn’t really want to bother with me so I have to fight with Him to get His attention, or something?
Well, take a closer look. What makes you think that any of us really understands God in the first place? I mean, the way you ask the question suggests you think that knowing God’s Love is as natural as breathing.
Most of us, you see, approach the question of God from our natural mind, that is to say, our reason. God is Love, we say, so that must mean He loves me, and I now love Him. I can understand wrestling with sin. But wrestling with God? Why that?
Now, if you want to approach this with your understanding, or as it’s sometimes called, naturalistically, go ahead, but let me tell you what will happen if you do. You will slowly have to reduce God to a “little god” Who shows His love to you when nice things happen, like sunny days and happy feelings, or when you get a bonus at work, or a friend calls you when you’re lonely, or someone sends you a care package when you’re sick. You’ll believe in God’s love then, you see, because that makes sense. Remember? You’re working from reason, your understanding?
So far, this approach seems pretty easy. Loving God this way is fairly natural. Millions do it. But then…bad things happen.
I mean really bad things, like wars and famines or tragic things in your childhood; or a tornado that turns your mobile home into sticks of firewood, or leukemia that takes a beloved child, or your wife doesn’t get back from work at the usual time and the police come knocking at your door. Now this is where reason says, “God, move over. This can’t be You.” So reason starts calling it, “an accident”, “a freak of nature”, “chance”, “misfortune” or “the way things are”. And if reason can bear a little religiousness, it will insist this was the devil, not God.
Now, stop a minute. Do you see what has happened here? Because you’ve tried to know God from your reason and seen Him only in the good things that happen, there’s no room for Him in the bad things. So what about all those bad things (and, face it, we seem to get more of them than the others)? Well they’re either blind forces of fate or endless attacks of the devil.
So what’s wrong with that, you say? I can’t buy the idea that God’s going around clobbering me with tornadoes, leukemia, death or abuse. I couldn’t love a god like that, and anyway I’d feel guilty every time something bad happened, as if God was punishing me.
I understand. It’s hard to believe God’s involved in everything. We’ll get to that a bit later; hold on. First you need to see what you’ve just sold down the river with this little god of yours. You’ve opted for a god no bigger than your puny reason with a love simple enough to prevent any conflicts between him and you that might make you feel guilty. Understood.
But all that other stuff you know, all the troubles in the world, let alone all the endless, daily frustrations and disappointments—you’ve got an awful lot of “chance”, “bad luck”, “freaks of nature”, “accidents”, and just plain “natural causes” coming your way, haven’t you, not to mention all the stuff the devil’s heaping on you if you take him into account? Now, take me seriously. I know I’m bantering with you here, but I’m dead serious in what I’m trying to get at.
In other words, your world (apart from the little pocket of good things that come from your pocket-god) is an endless, blind chaos of fate. How do you deal with that?
I’ll tell you how you deal with it: for a while you stick your head in the sand, with the hopes your world of fate won’t notice you’re there. But it has a way of catching up with us. And when it does—with only that little god by your side, remember—the only reactions you’ll be able to come up with are fear, frustration, anger and helplessness, because life will be too big for you, and your god is too small.
So look at the trade-in. You’ve got a god you can handle, who’s only in charge of good things, so you don’t feel guilty when bad things happen, as if they were coming from him. But where your little god’s limits come to an end, you’ve got a whole world of chaotic forces to face, and in exchange for guilt you’ve got fear and anger and helplessness in your world because your god’s too weak to do anything about all the bad stuff that’s going on around you. Some trade!
Now, at this point, do you see the irony of your situation? We started off this discussion with your conflict over the idea of wrestling with God. But, look, you’ve been wrestling all the time! Trouble is, you wrestle with the blind forces of “chance”, “natural causes”—or the devil. That’s what all your anger, frustration and feelings of helplessness are all about, don’t you see? When you lose your job, or you have to spend your vacation money on a new basement boiler, or some mindless driver rear-ends you and you’ve had neck-pain ever since, the anger and frustration you feel is your anxious wrestle with the world, battling with it to try to control it. And, of course, if you include the devil in the chaos, you go about wrestling with him, too—rebuking him, binding him, and whatever else is needed to keep him in check. The question is not, after all, whether to wrestle with God or not, but, who are you wrestling with? If you don’t wrestle with one, you’ll wrestle with the other. To wrestle with God is to win the battle of Life. To wrestle with Life is to lose life and God. The one builds up, the other destroys.
All right, so now let’s pick up where we started. Do you see now why the idea of wrestling with God just doesn’t make sense to you? What is there to wrestle with him about when he’s just a little god who comes through with only nice things? And what need is there to wrestle through feelings of doubt and guilt in regard to him if he’s the celestial Santa Claus who’d never visit you with any bad stuff? That, after all, is the business of chance and natural causes—or the devil. You can wrestle with them over that. So you see, then, where reason takes you. It just can’t make any sense out of a man’s struggle with God because reason comes up with a false god.
You may be mad at me for suggesting you’ve been worshipping an idol, but face it: it’s not just pagans who worship idols. If we don’t let the Word of God tell us who God is, then even a Christian will lapse into idolatry through the reasoning of his mind. You see, God has to give us a revelation of Himself through the men He inspired by His Spirit in Scripture because human reason is just too limited to grasp the greatness of Almighty God.
And that Word says:
“Am I a God near at hand only, not a God when far away?…do I not fill heaven and earth?” (Jer. 23:23, 24). “I am the Lord, the God of all mankind; is anything impossible for me?” (Jer. 32:27). “Do you not know, have you not heard, were you not told long ago, have you not perceived ever since the world was founded, that God sits enthroned on the vaulted roof of the world, and its inhabitants appear as grasshoppers…Lift up your eyes to the heavens; consider who created these, led out their host one by one, and summoned each by name. Through his great might, his strength and power, not one is missing. Jacob, why do you complain, and you, Israel, why do you say, ‘My lot is hidden from the Lord, my cause goes unheeded by my God’?” (Isa. 40:21, 22, 26, 27). “If disaster strikes a city, is it not the work of the Lord?” (Amos 3:6). “From him and through him and for him all things exist” (Rom. 11:36). “In him [Jesus] everything in heaven and on earth was created…and all things are held together in him” (Col. 1:16, 17). “He disarmed the cosmic powers and authorities and made a public spectacle of them, leading them as captives” (Col. 2:15). “In the world you will have suffering. But take heart! I have conquered the world” (John 16:33). “Give thanks whatever happens; for this is what God wills for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thess. 5:18). “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ give thanks every day for everything to our God and Father” (Eph. 5:20).
Now you’re looking at the God of Scripture, the Big God, the God your reason cannot fathom. And if you’ll let your faith believe it, you’ll see there are no “accidents” and “chances” and “luck”. He’s big enough to take it all in. God’s at work in disasters. He holds everything together, the good and the bad. It’s all from Him and through Him and for Him. It’s not that He causes evil. Satan does, but God’s “disarmed the principalities and powers” and “conquered” the world.
So nothing can ultimately harm you. It all works together for good (Rom. 8:28), and we are called by faith to be thankful for all things, under every circumstance.
Now, let me tell you, faith trusts God when He says this. Reason can’t fathom it, and if it tries, it’ll land in the ditch. But when faith does trust God for it, two things will begin to happen, and both of them are good:
You will begin to see more order in your world. You will be more at peace. The anger and frustration over life that we talked about earlier will start to subside. If you’ve got any tendency to paranoia, it will gradually go away. You’ll get a handle on your depressions, because you’ll begin to see that nothing can be against you. And you’ll take an entirely different view of your struggle with addiction. You will stop struggling with it as if it were a destructive enemy. In fact, you’ll quit making Satan the major target of your attention. You’ll begin to see that your struggle with addiction is an instrument in God’s hands for your blessing. All right, that sounds wonderful doesn’t it? So what’s the other thing?
You guessed it. Instead of anger over a chaotic world, I guarantee, if you take the true Scriptural revelation of God, and believe it, you will begin the doubt-, guilt- and confidence-wrestle with God. It’s inevitable. And the only reason you haven’t done it before is that you’ve been living with that little god of yours.
You’ll struggle with God over issues like, “God, if You’re Big, if You love me, if You’ve won the victory, why are You bringing this great sorrow and struggle to me. How could you let this happen? Are you angry with me and punishing me?
Some switch, you say. But listen to me. If you haven’t taken in anything I’ve said so far, take this in. Listen, it’s wonderful. You will have Christ. That Great, Big God Who’s going about His Thing in the world knows that you’ll be overwhelmed by everything He’s doing unless He gives you Jesus, Who is One with the Father, Who has taken all your sins upon Himself, and Who has won the victory for you.
You see, when the really bad things happen you will be able to face all your doubt about God, and all your fear of guilt and despair, with the One Great Fact of Christ. “No Lord, this tragedy is not against me. Nor are You, because Christ is my righteousness. He’s my peace and shows me Your Heart and He’s won for me. I’m going to praise You for this.” And you’ll be led to a more humble, repentant place, and a place of growth.
Now, do this for me. Go back and re-read the Faith In Focus articles, “The Kingdom Of God Is Upon You”, “The Soul’s War” and, “When God Takes A Man To The Mat” (Volume 1, Issues 5 and 7, and Volume 2, Issue 2). I think they will make more sense to you now—faith-sense, I mean.