If God explained everything to us, or even suggested that He might do so, we would lose all faith in Him.
"Without all contradiction, the less is blessed of the better" (Hebrews 7:7).
God made the human psyche to require someone greater than itself in order to achieve and maintain peace, sanity, and equilibrium. We must believe that One better than ourselves exists and involves Himself in our lives. Little wonder then that we live in times wherein the poet's "quiet desperation" characterizes multitudes who forsake any notion of God because He primarily declares rather than explains Himself. The human heart is no vacuum. If God does not dwell therein, something else will. Whatever it may be will not suffice to deliver from desperation. It rather delivers unto desperation, the desperation of disbelieving in a Better and Greater.
As a preacher of old once suggested, we "make room for mystery" in our understanding and proclamation of the living and true God. Truth demands this. The Infinite cannot completely define Himself to the finite. Our hearts also demand a God beyond their full comprehension. He is the Creator. We are His creatures. Such a relationship necessitates His vast superiority, as well as our awareness of it. As the writer of Hebrews declared, there must be "no contradiction" in our acquiescence to the truth of His excellency and our lowliness. "Put them in fear, o Lord, that the nations may know themselves to be but men" (Psalm 9:20).
There can be no genuine faith in hearts that reject the truth of "the less is blessed of the better." There can be no "better" if the Greater can fully explain Himself to the lesser. Thus, we make room for mystery in our understanding and in our lives, rejoicing in that which we can know, and in that which we cannot. Such awareness assures us there is Someone to trust. We also proclaim without apology that faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, while most assuredly involving the mind, speaks most directly to the heart. Indeed, the Lord Jesus does not save by offering explanations to be understood, but by declarations to be believed. Certainly, we can understand some, and in some cases, even much about our Lord and His way. At the end of the day, however, truth and faith demand that supplicants kneel before the throne of God, seeking grace rather than explanation. The heart humbled before the Lord Jesus knows this, and thereby finds deliverance from desperation because it joyfully discovers there is Someone to trust.
"The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law."
(Deuteronomy 29:29)
Weekly Memory Verse
"For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."
(II Corinthians 5:1)
"Without all contradiction, the less is blessed of the better" (Hebrews 7:7).
God made the human psyche to require someone greater than itself in order to achieve and maintain peace, sanity, and equilibrium. We must believe that One better than ourselves exists and involves Himself in our lives. Little wonder then that we live in times wherein the poet's "quiet desperation" characterizes multitudes who forsake any notion of God because He primarily declares rather than explains Himself. The human heart is no vacuum. If God does not dwell therein, something else will. Whatever it may be will not suffice to deliver from desperation. It rather delivers unto desperation, the desperation of disbelieving in a Better and Greater.
As a preacher of old once suggested, we "make room for mystery" in our understanding and proclamation of the living and true God. Truth demands this. The Infinite cannot completely define Himself to the finite. Our hearts also demand a God beyond their full comprehension. He is the Creator. We are His creatures. Such a relationship necessitates His vast superiority, as well as our awareness of it. As the writer of Hebrews declared, there must be "no contradiction" in our acquiescence to the truth of His excellency and our lowliness. "Put them in fear, o Lord, that the nations may know themselves to be but men" (Psalm 9:20).
There can be no genuine faith in hearts that reject the truth of "the less is blessed of the better." There can be no "better" if the Greater can fully explain Himself to the lesser. Thus, we make room for mystery in our understanding and in our lives, rejoicing in that which we can know, and in that which we cannot. Such awareness assures us there is Someone to trust. We also proclaim without apology that faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, while most assuredly involving the mind, speaks most directly to the heart. Indeed, the Lord Jesus does not save by offering explanations to be understood, but by declarations to be believed. Certainly, we can understand some, and in some cases, even much about our Lord and His way. At the end of the day, however, truth and faith demand that supplicants kneel before the throne of God, seeking grace rather than explanation. The heart humbled before the Lord Jesus knows this, and thereby finds deliverance from desperation because it joyfully discovers there is Someone to trust.
"The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law."
(Deuteronomy 29:29)
Weekly Memory Verse
"For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."
(II Corinthians 5:1)
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