I’ve been thinking lately on my
forgetfulness of God. I used to covet the miraculous. I used to
think to myself, “If God would just use me in this way or show me
His power in this way…there’s no way I would ever forget Him or
doubt Him.â€� The Israelites’ struggles in the desert never
registered with me. They were led by a pillar of fire at night and
were faithfully fed manna and quail everyday. And still they lacked
faith and doubted God. Or the audience to the miracles of Jesus.
Who were there to see him feed thousands with a few loaves and a fish
and heal the leper, and who also showed up to shout “crucify Him!�
I am fickle and selfish, but not
forgetful. In my mind I know that God has done incredible things,
but I actively put them behind me. God has shown off to me in some
amazing ways, and I still disregard Him. I don’t submit to Him as
Lord, even though my mouth proclaims it. Because the truth is, I’d
rather simply know things about God than to know Him personally. To
know about Him is to think you’ve mastered Him. If you can learn His
secrets and His ways without knowing Him, then you’ve beaten Him.
The times have changed, but the heart
of man hasn’t. Satan wanted to be on the
throne, not prostrate before
it. Adam and Eve weren’t content with God’s limitless love and
generosity; they wanted the authority and divinity that were
rightfully and exclusively His.
This
tells me that we are not as forgetful as we think. The author of
Hebrews warns repeating the forgetfulness of the Israelites, stating
“So we see that they were unable to enter[God’s rest] because of
unbelief.� (Hebrews 3:19) He warns us as if we had a choice in the
matter. He does that because we do. We choose to forget because
deep down in our hearts we know that to know things about God is to
think you’ve mastered Him, but to actually know Him is to be
destroyed.
To
know Him is to allow Him to unravel what we think we already know, to
show us the folly of “our wisdom�, to show us the weakness in
“our strength.â€� It is to relinquish control…ALL
control. It is to be shown that our desires and pursuits are much
too small to measure up to the God that is outside of time and
physical law.
But
to know God is to rest. To rest in His love, sovereignty, goodness,
pleasure, presence, grace, joy, strength…infinitude. Knowing and
trusting God is rest for us. And knowing God is knowing His son
Jesus, and to know the Son is to know the Spirit that is promised to
dwell within us and be our great Helper and the guarantee of our
salvation. To know them, is to know their words and works. And to
rest in the confidence in their truth.
–
Much of this blog was inspired by a portion of the book ‘All and
Only’ by Martha Kilpatrick
