Thou Our Guide

I had some open time this evening and picked up my copy of Knowing God, which I have still yet to finish. My marker, where I last left off, was in the chapter called "Thou Our Guide." Pages 239-240 contain the following:

No Simple Answers

But it does not follow that right guidance will be vindicated as such by a trouble-free course thereafter. Here is another cause of deep perplexity for Christian people. They have sought guidance and believe it has been given. They have set off along the road which God seemed to indicate. And now, as a direct result, they have run into a crop of new problems which otherwise would not have arisen - isolation, criticism, abandonment by friends, practical frustrations of all sorts. At once they grow anxious. They recall the prophet Jonah who, when told to go east and preach at Ninevah, took a ship going north to Tarshish instead, "away from the Lord" (Jon 1:3), and was caught in a storm, humiliated before unbelievers, thrown overboard and swallowed by a great fish - in order to bring Jonah to his senses. Is their own present experience of the rough side of life (they ask themselves) a sign from God that they are themselves like Jonah, off track, following a path of self-will rather than the way of God?

It may be so, and the wise person will take occasion from his new troubles to check his original guidance very carefully. Trouble should always be treated as a call to consider one's ways. But trouble is not necessarily a sign of being off track at all; for as the Bible declares in general that "many are the afflictions of the righteous" (Ps 34:19 KJV), so it teaches in particular that following God's guidance regularly leads to upsets and distresses which one would otherwise have escaped. Examples abound. God guided Israel by means of a fiery and cloudy pillar that went before them (Ex. 13:21-22); yet the way by which he led them involved the nerve-shredding cliffhanger of the Red Sea crossing, long days without water and meat in "that vast and dreadful desert" (Deut 1:19), and bloody battles with Amalek, Sihon and Og (Ex 17:8; Num 21:21-23) - and we can understand, if not excuse, Israel's constant grumbling (see Ex 14:10-12, 16:3, Num 11:4-6, 14:2-3, 20:2-5, 21:4-5).

Again, Jesus' disciples were twice caught by night in bad weather on the Sea of Galilee (Mk 4:37; 6:48), and both times the reason why they were there was the command of Jesus himself (see Mk 4:35; 6:45).

Again, the apostle Paul crossed to Greece "concluding" from his dream of the man of Macedonia "that God had called us to preach the gospel to them" (Acts 16:10), and before long he was in jail at Philippi. Later he "resolved in the Spirit to . . . go to Jerusalem" (19:21 RSV), and told the Ephesian elders whom he met on his way, "I am going to Jerusalem, bound in the Spirit, not knowing what shall befall me there; except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me" (20:22-23 RSV). So it proved to be: Paul found trouble on the grand scale through following divine guidance.

Nor is this all. For a final example and proof of the truth that following God's guidance brings trouble, look at the life of the Lord Jesus himself. No human life has ever been so completely guided by God, and no human being has ever qualified so comprehensively for the description "a man of sorrows." Divine guidance set Jesus at a distance from his family and fellow townsmen, brought him into conflict with all the nation's leaders, religious and civil, and led finally to betrayal, arrest and the cross. What more can Christians expect, while they abide in the will of God? "A student is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master . . . If the head of the house has been called Beelzebub, how much more the members of his household!" (Mt 10:24-25).

By every human standard of reckoning, the cross was a waste - the waste of a young life, a prophet's influence, a leader's potential. We know the secret of its meaning and achievement only from God's own statements. Similarly, the Christian's guided life may appear as a waste - as with Paul, spending years in prison because he followed God's guidance to Jerusalem, when he might otherwise have been evangelizing Europe the whole time. Nor does God always tell us the why and wherefore of the frustrations and losses which are part and parcel of the guided life.

But I am glad for what he does tell us. He will never leave us nor forsake us. He is working all things for our good. He only gives good gifts to his children. If he is for us, who can be against us? In him is perfect peace, and at his right hand are pleasures forevermore. We can hope in him and rejoice! Strength rises for those who wait on the Lord.

I praise and marvel at a God of grace and peace who extends the same to his children.

photo: Chicago; 6/11/11