My decision can not be put off again
I see the right choice but my heart is filled with dread
It all seems backwards in my head, my head
I know it seems too wrong to be right
This way is so much harder to fight
But in the end I know it is true
This way is better, it's better for you
Choose a little pain and gain a life with joy
Accepting pleasure now will earn a life of pain
It all seems backwards in my head, my head
I know it seems too wrong to be right
This way is so much harder to fight
But in the end I know it is true
This way is better
It's better for you, for you
Sometimes I wonder why it's this way
When it's done the burden is gone
This discomfort will be taken away
As soon as it's over, it's over for me
I know it seems too wrong to be right
This way is so much harder to fight
But in the end I know it is true
This way is better
It's better for you, for you
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do... For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. (Romans 7: 15, 18-19)
it is written: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate." Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength. (1 Corinthians 1: 19-25)
“My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways," declares the LORD. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9)
The way of a fool seems right to him, but a wise man listens to advice. (Proverbs 12:15)
There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death. (Proverbs 14:12 & Proverbs 16:25)
Christianity must seem foolishness indeed. We choose the hard path through life and say that the burden is lighter. We live in trials and praise God for His goodness. We seem to walk in the midst of contradiction and confusion. We speak of enthroning God in our lives and no longer being slaves. I can understand why it might be confusing.
God told us it would be confusing. He told us we wouldn't understand. He tells us that His ways are higher than ours. You see, Beloved, He's looking at an eternal view, while we study a small piece of the now. In our view, things are jumbled, confused, and ugly. But if we could see from God's persepctivce, we'd find that the view is as different as the back of a piece of needlework is from the front.
Let's take Joseph, for instance. God gives Joseph dreams. Joseph brags about them. Joseph gets thrown into a pit and sold into slavery. He finds favor with his master, only to be tempted by and accused of raping his master's wife. He's thrown into prison, where he finds favor with the warden. He interprets dreams, and is forgotten. He comes before Pharaoh to interpret his dreams, and is placed in charge of all of Egypt. It's easy to have a narrow view of things, to see all the ways his life went wrong and conclude (wrongly) that God had deserted him. But widen your view a moment.
Because Joseph is sold into slavery, he is brought to Egypt ahead of his family. Because he earns favor with his master, he is imprisoned instead of being executed. Because he lives faithfully, he is in a position to interpret dreams. Because he interprets them correctly and has shown faithful service to his masters that prospers them, he is placed in a position of power. There, he is able to prepare Egypt for the famine that brings his brothers back to him... where they bow before him just as they had in his dream. God uses the sins of the brothers to fulfill His plan for Joseph.
But wait... step back with me further. Because Jacob and his 12 sons come to Egypt during the famine for Joseph to take care of them, they are there for years. They wind up enslaved by the Egyptians, building their monuments. 400 years they toil until God raises up Moses and leads them from bondage into the promised land. God uses Joseph's position of power to woo his chosen people back to Him in one of the greatest demonstrations of His mercy and His power in history. Lives are forever changed through the Exodus... the nation is changed.
Wait, though. We still haven't stepped back far enough... there's still an eternal view we're missing. Because you see, Beloved, the Exodus, the Passover, the entire bondage of the nation of Israel foreshadows another Exodus, another Passover, another delivery from bondage. The lambs they killed in Egypt were a symbol of the Lamb who would be slain for their souls just as the lambs then were killed for their lives. The blood that signaled that they should be passed over, that they were the children of God was a hint of the blood that would flow to seal us for God later. And the bondage the Israelites escaped was but a whisper of the greater bondage of sin that Christ frees us from.
And I may still not have the full picture. I don't know. Because God's ways are so different from mine that I can't even begin to conceive of them. But can you begin to see how easy it is to fall into seeing the right now and losing sight of the eternal? God is so different from us that trying to understand Him and His motives is like trying to get an amoeba to understand our motives!
When you can't understand what God is trying to accomplish, even in the midst of the deepest hurts of our lives that we can't begin to grasp, I want you to stop. He didn't ask us to understand Him. Indeed, He pretty much promised we couldn't. When the Word of God seems to make no sense to you, I want you to stop and try to step back. Look for the eternal perspective. Remind yourself that it won't always make sense to us. But it doesn't have to. I want you to step back, reach for the eternal view, and trust that God's way, however baffling and confusing it is to us, it really is better.
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