REMEMBER THE ONE WHO FORMED THE STONE

(Post by: Madie Hobbs)

Have you ever gone through something where you felt as though you have prayed, and prayed, and prayed, and then prayed again for an answer to a certain question, yet been met with complete silence? If you’ve been a Christian for any extended amount of time, I’m sure you can answer yes, just as I can.

This can be one of the most difficult things to go through in your faith. When you are trying to consistently rely on the Lord for guidance and direction in your life, your relationship can be deeply tested when it feels like your communication skills aren’t getting any better. Or when you feel like you’re talking to a brick wall.

I’ve mentioned before that this has seemed to be a theme in my own faith over the last few months and is one I am still struggling through. At one point, I felt as though the Lord and I were on the same page about my life, the decisions I was making, and what my future was shaping up to look like. I fell asleep every night thanking Jesus for the new blessings I was experiencing that made my life and faith feel full, vibrant, and meaningful. Now, when I lay my head on the pillow every night, the only thing I can seem to say to Him is, “How is this my life now? I thought you were leading me. Was I really so wrong about what I thought you were calling me to?”

These can often be the most gut-wrenching and confusing prayers we can pray. Trials are different when you know the wound you now have to nurse back to health was self-inflicted. You know that really you have no one to blame but yourself, and for some odd reason, that can almost be comforting. You can be confident that chaos and heartbreak aren’t actually a part of your faith, that they weren’t the results of something Jesus instructed you to do.

But what happens when you experience chaos and heartbreak after following the Lord unflinchingly into something you were so sure He orchestrated?

A struggle begins. One between your own feelings which have been hurt and your heart which has been wounded. Another between your belief and confidence. The first tells you that He is the one to blame, that He is the one who let all this happen even when He knew it wouldn’t end well for you. The latter reminds you that it is not in God’s nature to willfully wound anyone who seeks Him and His kingdom and that He really does have your best interest at heart.

But what do we do when we still don’t have answers? What do we do when we still want to hear His voice, but it feels like we’re being stonewalled?

These were the exact questions I was contemplating while doing a mundane task and listening to an online conference I had missed when it originally came out.

The speaker was talking about how her entire faith underwent a dramatic change one day when she was 17 and diagnosed with OCD, a condition which dominated her thoughts and left her without control of the basic things going on inside her head. Her faith went from innocent and trusting to confused and suspicious.

Over the last couple of decades, she has striven to reclaim her mind and steep herself in the beauty God provides. But this has been a conscious decision on her part.

What this prompted me to ask myself is, am I consciously pursuing the same thing?

Sure, I might pray a lot and ask Him a lot of questions, but do I take solace in the fact that His silence is never really silence? His answers are littered all around me.

In the conference, she pointed out that, really, we have two choices when it comes to what we believe about God. We can either believe that everything He does is steeped in horror (even though it is a result of sin that horror even exists), or we can believe everything He does is steeped in beauty.

She used the example of Job, a man who experienced horror of every kind to its greatest degree, and how He still chose to seek the Lord despite it. The Lord honors Job for this simple decision, and rewards him with a glimpse of everything in the world which is beautiful which God has played an intricate part in.

Still, in the midst of this interaction, Job has questions. Why did these horrible things happen to him when he only ever pursued God? Why must his friends and family be taken away or oppose him at every turn? Why is everything seemingly meaningless?

What has always fascinated and even sometimes frustrated me about the book of Job is that Job never fully receives an answer. We as readers have the benefit of knowing Satan was heavily involved in the tragedy Job experienced as a ploy to make him reject the Lord, but Job is never told this.

Instead of being given an explanation, Job is given an encounter.

Would this be enough for us?

In this encounter, the Lord displays that the only thing Job truly needs to know is the Lord Himself. The very personhood of God is his solace and should be his desire.

When we are at a point in our faith where we see no progress, no healing, no reprieve, would this be enough? Is the personhood our satisfaction?

I will be the first to confess that over these last few months, I have not been satisfied with this. Not because it cannot satisfy, but because I have quite honestly refused to be satisfied.

What the Lord has taught me through this silence is that though I stare at a stone wall, I must remember the One who formed the stone from mere breath, mere words. I must remember the one who rolled the stone away to reveal an empty tomb.

That is answer enough. It must be.