Fearlessly Courageous
Desk of Dennis Piller
10 16 2023
Disappointed in God because of His Silence?
Good Morning. I am going to try to put out a devotion this week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday… God willing. My strength and mental focus are starting to return and I am truly grateful for all your prayers and support. They say I am doing well except for this nagging cough that just started. I have good days and really tired days. Blessings to you all and you too are in my prayers!
I was pretty disappointed when I had a heart attack on our vacation and my daughter’s 21st birthday! It was like REALLY LORD…NOW? But I didn’t get an answer. Honestly, I was too weak and out of it to be angry about it, but I had a heavenly peace. When I was in the pre-op room, the nurse asked if I wanted something for my anxiousness. I said, no thank you, I am fine. She seemed to stutter and asked again are you sure, everyone gets something. I said, No, I am really at peace.
I thought about all of us having moments when we are disappointed in God because of His silence or we get a non-answer to prayer and I thought about how all of us look through a glass dimly and can’t seem to see beyond ourselves. 1 Cor 13:12 ” For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known”. It got me thinking about a prism but beyond just the light. What does a prism mean in psychology? “The prism, is a metaphor of the key psychological structure that mediates the child’s consciousness of their environment, the interpreted meanings of their experiences, and the subsequent influence of those meanings on the development of their personality.” Almost like a filter that shapes us as we view and perceive our environment and life in general as it influences us and develops us as people.
How do prisms alter light? As light passes through the prism, it slows and bends,
but different wavelengths bend at different angles.
It changes what WE SAW after it passes through a prism… it bends and splinters the light,… it was a light but it’s different, it changed the face of the original light but was still a real light …but not the original true light in its purest form… BUT it is all we are seeing… All we can perceive… so it must be logically, and categorically true… Right? It is a light objectively, but we may have never known or forgotten that it was splintered and altered, and many walked off believing in the absolute truth of this newly altered light.
Is 55: 8 says “His ways are higher than mans ways” but we refuse to go back to the original source of light and have faith, (beyond what we see).
Perhaps it’s similar to going through pain and discouragement that is so overwhelming and we cannot hear God. We cannot find our peace in the midst of the storm, we pray, we plead, we read his word, we try to have faith beyond what we are feeling and believing but can’t get there and don’t understand why, and my faith waivers the more. I see life as it is splintered through the prism of pain and disappointment, and can’t seem to fathom the light before it changed. The light, love, and truth of god that we can only know by faith and God’s grace even though it seems to be eluding us for a time or even a season.
How does one stand unwavering in their faith when they hear nothing from God? We look to God’s truth…to God’s light, but all we see is the prism of splintered light, that has passed through the past existence of our life, failures, hard times, misconceptions, lies, sins, our distortions, our omissions, and perhaps largely due to our blindness and the half-truths society and its prism that was inflicted on me, like the daily assault of incoming rockets from Gaza into Israel. And it becomes a way of life, running to a life shelter with all your family. It never stops. My question is, how has that changed the light and truth we see? I think we naturally start to look at the light after it passes through the prism… passed through the darkness of life’s unanswered questions of why? and where are you, Lord? And why haven’t you answered my prayers…versus looking into a realm beyond… accessible only by and through faith…literally defying the logic or truth of what we are seeing. The pain and loneliness that is unmistakable and, in your face, but I can’t see or find the peace of God in it.
So often we, as the church, answer the hard questions of life with simple platitudes rather than take the time necessary to search the Scriptures and the heart of God. He said we must be born again. God is spirit…He is the pure light and truth beyond what we see or can even imagine. We can only walk with God in Spirit and His truth. John 4;23 “But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him MUST worship in spirit and truth.”
Disappointed in God? The silence of God? Trying and trying but hearing nothing. How do we lay hold of our faith when God is seemingly not listening or doesn’t care? I have passed through many tunnels of darkness, and some were completely unfair at the time…certainly, in my view, the punishment…the repercussions…did not justify the offense. And I prayed and prayed and read and claimed deliverance but there was no answer…there was only silence. But there came a time when I finally came to let go of my hurts, my reasons to take offense, my crystal-clear ideologies and prisms of truth and rest in God.
Let me encourage you: 1. Give God your disappointments. Be real with God about your feelings! And then lay them down at the altar. You will pick them up a hundred times but keep laying them down and rest at the Father’s feet. Just nestle up and lay your head softly in his lap. Sit until you actually see that.
2. Don’t be afraid to be real and offer up a prayer of disappointment. and then remember, “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all” (Psalm 34:17-19” .3. Look at who God is! Not what he has done for you. For Who He Is! Look up the answers beyond your recollection. His word will be revealed as you diligently seek him. 4. Find a reason to praise him. When you discover who God is, you can’t help but see many reasons to praise him. If you can’t…. go back and unload some more at the altar of Grace. In faith, trusting God in His sovereignty. Trusting that He is the potter, and I am the clay and that like it or not… (Is 64:8) He is molding me into a vessel of his choosing. He is the Master and I am but his bond slave and He has an agenda far beyond my ability…, in all my intellectuality,…to use this set of circumstances…this dark chapter of living for my ultimate good and his glory. Romans 8:28
Some might say….Great… typical Christianese… read a thousand Christian books and read the same thing. Blind faith for a bunch of feeble-minded people that need to lean on something or
somebody to make it…
I heard someone say: Be disappointed with Him or be disappointed without him.
But I guess that’s the nature of faith.
God of all my days. Casting Crowns
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RocPcgqCDE0
