THE PERPLEXING SYSTEM OF GOD

...the meaning of earthly existence lies, not as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering, but in the development of the soul.  Solzhenitsyn

We are obsessed with calculation.  Weight gain or loss.  Bank accounts.  Church attendance numbers.  We think in terms of accounting and judge such with grades of success or failure.

The kingdom of God, however, is foreign to such statistics.  The first/last ranking links with the giving/keeping mystery.  Formula nor equation will float in the system God engages.

Therefore, we are challenged in a very good way to rethink our thinking.  In places we will need to rebelieve our beliefs.  We are called to be ever on our toes with this matter of perspective as to God's Word and His walk within each of us.  It will usually not be at all what we had surmised.

I doubt Moses' mother placing him in a secure hideout gave a thought to the world leader this baby would become.  Likely Saul's (of Tarsus) momma could never have conceived of the idea that her son would become a martyr for the King of the Jews.

It is likely Cotton Mather did not see the Second Great Awakening in America--as he had prayed for years--to take place as soon as he died.  Hudson Taylor had few converts in China; yet millions of Chinese today believe in Jesus due to his sacrificial labor.

The perplexing system of God is that one can't calculate in the beginning of any journey exactly what it is He has in store for unfathomable blessing beyond our imagination.  The church surely needs constant reminder that the God-element among us defies both estimation and direction.  We must be ever flexible in Spirit to adjust our thinking and our walking.

It is a strange thing among us---for one, because living in the Spirit of God is strange to the flesh--but our choosing a few quaint passages of scripture and never budging from them is a threat to His influence in society.  Rigidity is not sound doctrine.  Fluidity is.

It seems to me that an unchurched world wouldn't mind being a part of the church Jesus is building if they could see a daring and robust enthusiasm for being led by the Spirit.  I'm not the example.  I am saying, though, that every created person has embedded within him or her the sense of what is truly of God....and they search for it through struggles and pains...they are looking for the reality of God.

May we look for it as well.  His system is perplexing to the minds which have solidified with a promise of never adjusting and never changing.  If we want others to draw to Him, we must always be doing the same.