God's Megaphone

“We confess before Thee that if life were all smooth, there would be no patience; were it all easy, no courage, no sacrifice, no depth of character. We acknowledge before Thee that what is most admirable is the child of adversity and of courageous souls unafraid to face it.”

-Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick

One of the basic truths that Lauren and I have been clinging onto is that despite the whole issue of finding a "job", God ultimately wants to use this time to move us closer toward Jesus.

Our situation, which at times feels like a crucible, is the very means to which God wants to bend my heart and will to His. He wants to drive me to the cross and to be surrendered in utter and complete dependence.

C.S. Lewis said that God uses pain and trials as a megaphone to get our attention and speak to us. God has certainly been speaking.

God has been exposing the idols of my heart and how I have been responding to God like the older brother in the parable of the Lost Son in Luke 15. At times I have responded to the Father, just like the older brother, with anger, fear and frustration. Because, like the older brother, I was saying to God- "I've obeyed you!...I've done what you've asked!...God you owe me!...I don't deserve this!"

What foolishness and arrogance. I have been on my knees in repentance for my heart that was treating God like a giant vending machine. That kind of "older-brother" thinking suggests that if I put in a dollar's worth of piety, obedience and holiness then the divine vending machine, who is God, needs to cough up the product that I paid for.

God can't be controlled, rather He is to be loved. Our relationship with God is a relationship built and bound in love. I pray that during this time, my love and affection for God would go deeper even still.

"We love because He first loved us" -1 John 4:19