“Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out.”
Romans 11:33 makes the old hymn, “We will understand it better by and by” more meaningful. There are many things that happen in our lives that we can understand, but there are always those mysteries that we can never solve, and we will just have to wait for eternity to discover their full meaning. I want to illustrate this by something that I have been reading about in the Bible this week. In Exodus, God came to Moses in a “burning bush” and told him to go get His people out of Egypt. Moses joined his brother Aaron and they told the people that God was going to take them out of Egyptian bondage. The people rejoiced! Problem solved! Right? Wrong. Pharaoh was upset that the Israelites wanted to go into the wilderness to worship, and made their bondage more difficult. If we could put ourselves in the place of the Israelites, we would wonder why, after being told of our pending deliverance, everything only got more difficult. They reacted as we probably react today. As the story unfolds, we discover that God’s plans for Israel were for their deliverance, but that did not mean that things would always go easy for them. If you know the full story, you know that there were many complications, but that God’s will was done. Suffice it to say that Paul was on target in Romans 11:33. We will not be happy in our service for the Lord if we think that we will always fully understand why God lets things happen in our lives that do not always seem to be for our benefit. God explained why we would not always understand His ways in Isaiah 55:8-9: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways says the Lord. 9. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” What we have to conclude is that we are not God; therefore we cannot always understand His thoughts and ways. We also need to conclude that when God’s ways seem to contradict our ways, His way is the right way – period. We just have to accept by faith that God has our higher interests at heart, and that we will be better off ultimately with His ways. That’s what faith is all about. We are saved and sustained always by faith and not by sight. The answers to our prayers are not always obvious to us until we see what God has finally worked out. What we have a difficult time grasping is that suffering is not always bad, and that God works through suffering to strengthen our faith. Why God does what He does is often a mystery to us. For example, why would God, when He wanted someone to witness to the Gentiles, call the meanest Jew He could find, convert him, change him completely and send him out to those whom he previously hated. That’s what He did with Saul of Tarsus, who became Paul, the great Christian apostle. Not only that, but the same man wrote a third of the New Testament, and the Book of Acts is predominantly about his ministry to the Gentiles after Acts 10. Go figure! On second thought – don’t try to figure. Just accept by faith that God’s ways are the best, and that ultimately, things will be better because His ways prevail. We just have to trust God’s will for our lives. What seem like twists and turns to us, are not twists and turns to the Lord. Trust this: It will all work out! The way might seem steep and rough sometimes, but it, whatever “it” is, will all work out. If it doesn’t all work out here, it will all be solved in heaven. We have a promise in Romans 8:28 that we need to hold to our hearts: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose.” His purpose is being worked out in our lives, and we will understand all of it by and by. Hey, just enjoy the journey! Bro. Joe
1 Comment
Margaret M Jones
11/23/2015 08:16:04 am
Sometimes hard to understand---but "by and by"
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