To the Mom Who Feels Stuck in Her Faith

I love gas station sunglasses.

I love them for two reasons: they are cheap and they never let me down.

I have very low expectations of gas station sunglasses. When they break (which they inevitably do right before I need them) I just shrug, cradle their snapped pieces in my palm and whisper, "You did the best you could with your obvious flaws. Rest in peace."

You see, I tend to lose things. And my kids tend to break things. The combination of those two realities in my life leave no room for high expectations of anything.

Expectations tell us a lot about where we put our trust and what we appoint value to. And these very same expectations reveal what we truly believe about God when things fall apart. 

In the Bible, a fellow named Job had a lot of things fall apart for him.

Disease took his body. Death took his family. Devastation took his wealth. Destructive theology stole his friendships. But he never questioned God. He never shook his fist at the sky and denied God's plan. At the base of his soul, he seriously wanted to get right with God. He wanted to know what he had done wrong, so he could fix it.

"If I have sinned, what have I done to you, O watcher of men? Why have you made me your target?" (Job 7:20) When Job suffers he sounds a lot like Someone else I know. His words mirror the same type of questioning language that Jesus shrieked from the cross, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"

Job's longing is honorable. He wants God to reveal his sin. But sadly, there is no sin to be revealed. He is doing all the right things. He is confused, but coherent.

Let that settle in there. Let it work its way into any cracks there may be in your belief system. Let it reveal those expectations of what you think you deserve when doing all the right things. Or conversely, expectations of what you don't deserve because you can't do anything right.

Job was a sinner, because we all are. But in this particular season, Job's hardships were not because of sin. There was no direct cause and effect. This makes legalism-bound hearts really uneasy. This is why Job's friends were convinced he was doing something wrong.

One commentary on Job's life that I read said this, "Job suffers because he is among the best, not because he is the worst." 

Job isn't a story about sin. It is a story about trust.

God is relentless in sanctification. He longs for us to become better versions of ourselves. But in God's economy, our better selves aren't free from sin, they are free from self. Sometimes in our own stories we are doing all that we need to be doing. And it's still hard.

In seasons of suffering, sadness, depression or boredom God invites us to ask the hard questions. Job did. Jesus did. We should.

Asking questions isn't a sin. It infers that you don't have all the answers. That's humility. Asking questions with expectations of a specific answer. It infers you are God. That's pride.

When we come to God with more than lament, we are coming to Him with an addendum to his sovereign plan. We come to him with a marked up map explaining the need for a specific detour. And he just can't bless that.

He waits instead.

Waiting for the day we throw away the map and the helmet, and the knee pads and the elbow pads and the whole uniform that purports safety. (Apparently my journey with God looks a lot like an overcautious rollerblader.)

This last year, I've been craving a much deeper intimacy with Jesus. Maybe having my third child has something to do with that. And as result of meeting with him more often, I have had a season where he is speaking clearly in certain areas of my life. I'm not bragging, I'm warning you. Because in turn, my "map" has been torn in half only to be cut into a million pieces before being thrown into the fire and then sparked into oblivion.

Because the more you meet with God, the more your expectations implode. 

You begin to rely less on your own voice and start to hear His. Perhaps for the first time. And its terrifying. All of a sudden you don't see the road in front of you anymore. You are simply standing in His shadow, following His lead. Slowly the road changes; bends; twists; turns; narrows; and steepens.

And yet, you feel more alive than ever before. Because you are living like you were meant to: God-dependent.

Elihu, in the story of Job, is an unsung hero. He is one of those God-dependent guys.

Elihu finally calls Job's suffering what it is: grace in the hands of a God who has a plan. And in this small portion of what is the longest response to Job's plight in the entire book, we find Elihu revealing an epiphanous truth about God. He wraps up God's might and power inside the purpose of struggle.

"Whether for correction or for his land or for love, He causes it to happen." (Job 37:13) The New American Standard version says it this way:

"Whether for correction, or for His world, or for lovingkindness, He causes it to happen."

You guys. God has three reasons He does things that force us to wade deeper in our faith:

-For correction
-For creation
-For love

Let's touch on each.

If you feel stuck in your faith, consider the need for correction:

God corrects. He doesn't do this in the way we see humans abuse power. He does it to guide, to nudge, to correct, to save, to pull, to point. Not to beat. Or berate. Or shame. Or to wound. The Hebrew word for correction here is shebet, which means scepter, rod, staff. We can not take away the corrector nature of God, he knows better than we do. He is our parent. He wants the best for us. He wants to take our yokes and snap them in half. This is His mission: to usher us into freedom.

If you suspect you're stuck because you need to be corrected. Ask the hard questions. Fast from things that you've become enslaved to. Check your sin out. Be an investigator of your own life and motives. Only good can come from proper correction.

If you feel stuck in your faith, consider the betterment of His creation:

Maybe God wants to create something new in you and around you, lean into that. God loves to plant honeysuckle in the cracks of city sidewalks. He loves to make beauty in unexpected places. He is always looking to further his creation. And he does that by the hands of his kids.

God may be physically calling you to leave, to move, to go, to plant deeper roots, to dig through the rocks. He may be doing this through struggle and testing. That is in His character. He uses disappointment and job loss and health deterioration and death to move us into new cities; new positions; new jobs. New heart postures. And He uses it to push us through the mundane and monotony to create matter.

It's His world to do with as He wishes, He is just generous enough to invite us into cultivating his creation. Ask him if the reason you feel stuck is because he is asking you to respond to the unwelcome change in your life with trust. Blind, shadow-following trust.

If you feel stuck in your faith, consider His love:

This one.

My friends. My sisters. My family.

This is where we must always land in seasons of stuck-ness and struggle. It is all for love. Easy answer right? It's actually the hardest answer to reconcile with reality. And yet, trusting his love for us is the only way to stare Struggle in the face and silence her lies.

An intimate God like ours refuses to let pain and sadness have the last word: instead He allows it so He can restore you to wholeness. His love for you can not be measured. And this is the same God that "has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand." (Isaiah 40:12)

If we have high expectations of struggle, demanding to know what it is producing in us and why it is taking from us, we will remain stuck. If we assume that hard stuff is either punishment or just plain mean, we will remain stuck. If we prefer to look good on the outside to uphold our image instead of aligning our hearts with the One whose image we bear, we will remain stuck. 

The truth is when it comes to struggle, we are poorly equipped. We complain and fuss. We fold under pressure. We are made to break. We are a lot like those gas station sunglasses.

But we are welcome pieces in the palm of our Savior. In the capable hands of a God who loves us immeasurably, our obliterated expectations can be used for good. You can trust him.

Hand over the broken bits and say, "I did the best I could with my obvious flaws. Now can I rest in peace?"

And you can.

We're in this together,
M