"The Unpredictablility of God"

[I Love Bagpipes]

Recent circumstances in my life have impacted me on how God is unpredictable...and the lengths He will go to grab my heart. I read the following excerpt this morning. I walk away with, "Keep asking the hard questions."

I hope one of my dearest GSC friends gives it a read.

From Cry of the Soul by Allender & Longman

Chapter 16: "The Mystery of God"

Subtitle "The Unpredictability of God"

God is unpredictable. He will neither permit us to know our own future nor allow us to foresee when the Lord returns. There isn't any moment of life that we can look at and say: "I know what God is going to do here, and how He is going to accomplish His will." But it is possible to observe, participate, and marvel in the mystery of God.

A good friend attended one of my (Dan's) sexual abuse seminars. The material provoked a strong reaction in him, and he felt compelled to take a walk around the church struggling with the question, "Where are You, God--why don't You seem to do more for those who have been betrayed and violated?" He was also battlling with loneliness. He wanted God to engage him, comfort him, and draw him into His love.

As he sat there, he noticed a small bird only a few feet away. He thought to himself with good humor and slight cynicism, "I wonder---is this bird perhaps an agent of God, sent to encourage my heart?" He recalled Dr. Doolittle talking to the animals. He thought about Elijah being nourished by the birds. He looked away.

A moment later he noticed that the bird was moving slowly toward him. To his utter astonishment, it hopped onto his hand. He was stunned. He felt oddly alive, as if he were in the presence of an act of God.

In an instant he blinked, and the bird defecated on his hand and then flew away. It left a large splotch of whitish liquid all over his hand. At that very moment, he recalled, he felt as if his other hand suddenly caught on fire. He looked at it and saw that it was coverd by a mass of red ants. In pain, he began wiping away the ants with his free hand.

After knocking most of the ants off himself, he noticed that his hand was swollen, his shirt was now covered with bird excrement, and his body was wet with sweat.

He sat there on the pylon, stupefied. He had longed for God's comfort, but what he had just experienced felt like an assault of nature orchestrated by God. What gives? he wondered. He sat for a time and then began to laugh.

"I laughed less at the event," he later told me, "and more at the irony of how God dealt with my demands. I thought I wanted comfort. What I really wanted, however, was not so much His comfort but His acknowledgment that I am a little boy who needs to be taken care of, not a man who has the courage to face life. Thankfully, God responded to what I deeply desire--to be respected and honored--rather than to what I thought I wanted. In an odd sense, I felt invigorated to move back into life."

Part of the mystery of God is His disruptive intrusion to provide us with what we desperately desire, no what we think we require. He does so by the use of paradox: He draws us to darkness and, in the midst of what appears awful, He shows something of His awe-full, bright goodness.

God's methods are indeed mysterious. He is the eternal artist who orchestrates horizontal circumstances to provoke us to ask hard questions about Him. And, oddly, those questions invite us to know and trust Him with a depth unavailable without asking those questions.

[pond]

Bag pipe

can i print this? so wonderful and so right. and so truthful.

about twenty years ago i had the prayer that twi said we are never to pray...

God if your real get me out of this massive trouble IM in...

I will never deny you again I promise i will always know that there is a God and He can and does answer prayers.

I was delivered from my massive trouble very akin to sitting my hand in a butch of fire ants and i was also sweating and had a butch of crap in my life.

Well the good news is i was delivered from that one specific prayer it was a miricle to me.

Yet in the following two decades i have had more trouble.

go figure. I was not always helped or had "answered prayer the manner i saw it should be".

and sometimes i didnt understand and sometimes i was angry.

On those days weeks and maybe even months on end when i doubted God , i would say to God I made a promise a long time ago to KNOW your real.

If i can make that promise and stick to the fact i know how He and His Son helped me then , it will be enough . and i would end my prayer with a thank ful heart. even tho not understanding and angry and sad and overwhelmed. I said it was enough once and it was.

BECAUSE Jesus Christ Died once and it was enough for all of us.

life now is a perspective of just living every day and being thankful for HIS promises .

[I Love Bagpipes]

Sure thing Pond..print away. You may want to take a gander at the book as well. It is full of depth and a different perspective on emotions....different from other books I have read.

Geez.....I hope I never get bitten by the fire ant.!!!