Is there any difference between a 16 year old telling her daddy “If you love me you will buy me this car”, and us telling God, “If you love me you will do _______? You know there are times God has to take a risk in order to bring about in our hearts what is necessary for us to become what He has created us to be. The risk I am talking of is the risk of losing our love forever or even temporarily if we allow a situation to cause us to be deceived about Him and His love for us.
Do you ever find your self in circumstances that are such an assault on your heart that it just wants to retreat, wants to hide? That you desire even if only briefly, to just survive? Are there times when it seems so dark around you and you just feel forgotten and forsaken by the Lord? These are the times I am referring to when I say He has to take the risk of losing us. Often it is in order to bring about what is an answer to a prayer we have prayed in our desire to be what He has created us to be. Yet He loves us enough to take the risk.
Lately my heart has felt that way, being assaulted by life, walking through circumstances that don’t make any sense, don’t line up with any formula or principle that I have adhered to in my understanding of Christianity so far. The unfortunate thing is that when we allow our heart to retreat because of feeling unsafe or threatened it doesn’t just retreat from the outside world, it retreats from the very one that created it in the first place. Have you ever known someone who allowed that to happen during a severe test or trial only to find they never let their heart come back out? They embraced the lies the enemy whispered in their ear about God’s heart and His love towards them allowing the circumstances to be the proof that the lie was actually true. That is the risk God takes every time He steps back and allows some things in our lives with the intention of bringing about a higher good in us, one of them being that we would be drawn closer and be more intimate with Him in the process. It is unfortunate that the outcome isn’t always what He desires.
I have to be honest and say that is really where I have existed myself recently. I would read things that I have written in the past about Him and His love and feel as though I was reading something that was written by someone else. Even though I wrote it, the truth is that for a season that just was not my reality in my heart. We often question how God could allow some things to happen if He really loves us, me included. I have held on to the experience of knowing that the problem isn’t my situation, it isn’t God, but my perception and perspective on it. That is the real problem with allowing our heart to retreat during a test or trial, it causes our perception and our perspective to be formed more by what we feel and understand than what we know to be true based on the Word and the past experiences we have had with Him. The good thing is He doesn’t leave us there, unless of course we continue to reject the hand He extends to us to lead us out of the cave we have crawled into. Hopefully we will respond by allowing Him to bring our heart back out where we can experience His love we knew before we allowed a situation or circumstance to cause us to retreat in the first place. I don’t know about you but I for one am exceedingly glad that my God isn’t afraid of the dark nor is He afraid of allowing himself to look foolish if necessary to rescue my heart from it either, all one has to do is look at Calvary to see that.
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