Into the Fire

God has built us from the beginning. Each individual has innate talents and gifts, emotions, personalities, inclinations, purpose. Those who’ve entered life with pain and handicap are not spared these characteristics. As humans, we cannot see all the implications of life. We are often defined by our finite-ness, God Himself declaring His ways are higher than ours. We often do not think like Him, and most certainly much of the time we do not act like Him. In fact, it is impossible to “act” even reasonably close to how He would prefer us to conduct ourselves without His Holy Spirit residing in us. And we all know that cannot happen without our accepting His provided sacrifice in His Son Jesus Christ.

Some of us are not terribly “smart”, others of us are of average intelligence, and still others are intellectuals, often driven to play mind games with a multitude of subjects. Questions are a part of learning, necessary to gain information, disseminate falsehoods, and establish truth.

“Questioning”, however, can be an exercise in brain games. The “what ifs” take liberties with possibilities incurred only by the imagination and based on nothing more than idle thoughts.

It is a fact that a Christian must walk by faith and not by sight (2Cor. 5:7). Once we gain the truth of Jesus Christ, we more or less yield our human reasoning for reformation to be transformed to heavenly thinking. It’s a process that requires us to get outside ourselves and trust the One we haven’t seen to lead us in a way we’ve never known—a way that goes against our sinful grain which strives to resurrect itself at every possible opportunity.

Faith is what it is. We’re not good at it. We’re demanding in all our ways, requiring “proof” of things we can’t even begin to understand. God expects our curiosity, our questions, knowing how much we lack in spiritual knowledge and how encumbered our minds are with the battles of sin. He has given His account of our beginning and our “end”, the choices we are required to make in our allegiance, and He even speaks into our lives when we converse with Him in prayer.

No man can “prove” how we began, the size of the universe, find the cures or reasons for certain diseases, or even how the brain works. Some profess that we have warmed the planet with our emissions to the point of bringing on catastrophic consequences, yet from day to day those same “scientists” cannot correctly predict the weather in any given place all the time. We are arrogant, selfish, self-righteous, and foolish in our natural selves.

Questions are inevitable. God expects them. He even welcomes them when they come from a pure heart desiring to know Him more or better. But the “questioning” that comes from a faithless desire to “prove” Him wrong is impossible to please the One who gave His only Son to save us wicked people, regenerating us into a new creation doing away with the old. The “questioning” that arises from a desire to justify the lusts of the flesh, to rationalize sinful desires, or to make excuses for lazy or evil behavior and demean the instructions of His Word will only demonstrate the influence of deception being waged by the enemy of our souls to steal our devotion from our Savior.

Make sure you ask the right questions and make sure they’re even worth asking.

Father, you are generous with your love, your grace, your mercy. You are open to any honest inquiries, providing answers in sometimes spectacular ways, sometimes in the most mundane ways, and often with unexpected methods. You’ve “made foolish the wisdom of the world”, you’ve said you will “destroy the wisdom of the wise, the intelligence of the intelligent” you will frustrate. You are the source of all goodness and pure wisdom. I am in awe of you, Lord. Please, Lord, let me not ever think of myself more highly than I ought, for I know next to nothing about anything. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.