Weather report from heaven: Sunny and bright with an abundance of light, and lots of singing and rejoicing.
Scripture- “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” – Hebrews 11:1
Insight: As we continue our series on Understanding The Times, today let’s expand the discussion on confusion and how sometimes it is a part of God’s plan to get us to surrender our lives fully to him. We have been looking at many different words that describe most people’s mental state currently and they include anxious, fearful, and yes confused. The world is indeed anxious about a myriad of different problems facing humanity, and that leads to confusion if we are not 100% turning to God’s Word as our roadmap for understanding what is really going on. There seems to be a great force that is leading everyone into confusion based on the events that are happening upon the earth right now, including myself. I am utterly confused by many of the things I hear being spewed out of peoples mouth’s. I hear political leaders referring to men as women, to children being called racist because of some past history that they had no part of, to criminals being called victims and on and on it goes. It is right out of Isaiah 5:20 where evil is being called good, and good is called evil. How is that not confusing? But what if confusion is part of God’s plan of surrendering our entire life to Him? What if He is using it to lead many souls to salvation as they come to the end of their rope? What if God is pulling us out of our comfort zones by using confusing circumstances to rely solely on Him. We know for sure that God wants us to fully surrender our life to Him. The Bible makes this very clear. A little bit of Jesus does not go a long way. Just look at Luke 9:23-25 which states “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self?
I believe that God sometimes uses confusing circumstances to remove any of our ability to rely on ourselves and instead to totally rely on Him. That has certainly been the case in my faith walk. Maybe, in fact, confusion is sometimes part of His plan to get us where He needs us to go. Maybe we would rebel like Jonah, and we would never choose where God wants us to go if we saw the path first. We talked about Joseph yesterday. Do you think Joseph ever imagined God was preparing hin to be #2 in command of all of Egypt when he was sold into slavery by his own brothers, falsely accused by his boss’s wife or spending 13 years in prison? Of course not! Think about all the stories in the Bible that had the people confused, which led to total surrender, which led to God achieving great things through them. God gets all the glory that He deserves when we are brought to our knees in full surrender and then we’re used to accomplish great things for His Kingdom. From Abraham being asked to set out on a journey to a foreign land he didn’t know, to Moses being chosen to lead the Israelites out of Egypt in spite of his perceived lack of communication skills, to David being anointed as the future King of Israel by Samuel when he seemed to be the least likely of all his brothers, to Gideon being chosen to save Israel from the hand of the Midianites. In fact, Gideon’s response in Judges 6:15 to God telling him he was the one to save Israel from the Midianite Army pretty much sums up this point perfectly when he replied “Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.”
Gideon was utterly confused, but for God’s purposes that was a very good thing. I can relate to Gideon. I have felt like Gideon many times, like a reluctant warrior, and even today I struggle to fully understand how God could use someone as flawed and as weak as me to help grow His Kingdom in any way. But maybe this is a good thing in disguise. Maybe His strength can indeed flow through my weakness, just as Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 12.:9-10 “But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” Maybe in fact it is a great thing, because it could be God is preparing us through our confusion to fully surrender our life to Him and He is about to take us on the greatest faith based ride of our lifetime. Maybe incredible joy is waiting just on the other side of our confusion.Prayer: Father God, you are a loving and Holy God. Sometimes we get so confused as to the circumstances of our lives, that we can become fearful. Help us to understand that many times confusion is part of your plan for our lives by forcing us to let go of our own understanding and instead to rely solely on you. Your ways are so much higher than our ways, as Isaiah 55:8-9 says, so help us release our confusion over to you, and to follow by faith in the plan you have for us. May we learn to embrace the uncertainty of the journey by focusing on the One who is in charge of the ride, and that is you God. We pray this in the mighty name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen!
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