There are two kinds of rollercoaster riders. The first kind gets in the car with hesitation and fear. They white-knuckle the lap bar in a death grip and either sit there in complete silence or scream their heads off the entire time. In this case, the rollercoaster produced anxiety and nausea. During most of the ride their mind focused on whether or not the car would fly off the tracks or they’d fly out of their seat. They exit the ride assuring their companions that they will never get on one of those again.
The second type of rider leaps into the car excited and ready for a thrill. Rather than grip the lap bar they hold their hands up the entire time because they know it’s not going to leave the track and that the ride is design to protect even those who are clueless about personal safety. This rider has a smile on her face the entire time. She may scream, but it’s more of a “woooo!” than an “ahhhhh!” They exit the ride and say, “Let’s do it again.”
The longer I live, the more I see that life with God is a rollercoaster ride. There are ups and downs. Sometimes the path is straight, but it’s filled with curves. Just when you think you’ve settled down and can relax you realize that the calm was only the top to the first hill and God soon drops you off a cliff. Some folks just endure this aspect of life with God and are filled with anxiety, dread, and sometimes even despair. When God doesn’t make sense they teeter on giving up a life of faith.
A handful learn to enjoy the ride. Why? Because they realize that there is a destination in all this and the train is not going to jump the track. There is some pleasure in the ride because they understand that when God doesn’t make sense, He’s on the move. In the times of confusion, the Lord is bringing completion to His plan and our place in it. This morning I want to provide some guidelines for when the going gets weird, so that maybe when God doesn’t make sense you can enjoy the ride a little more.
Guidelines When the Going Gets Weird
God didn’t make sense to Abraham when He told him to go sacrifice his son Isaac. The child was the fulfillment to God’s promise that He’d bless all nations through a descendant of Abraham. His birth was miraculous. Isaac came along when Sarah was 90 and Abraham 100. Then God called Abraham to take the very thing he’d been promised, the son that he’d waiting for and said, “Take him to a mountain in Moriah that I’ll show you and sacrifice him as a whole burnt offering. What sense does that make? I assure it made no sense to Abraham. He probably concluded that the God who’d been speaking to him was just a mean, capricious little deity like those he’d known growing up in Mesopotamia and in the surrounding Canaanite cultures.
Abraham did not know that command was a test. We know because the Bible informs the reader, but Abraham had no idea. God often does not make sense when He’s testing us. This leads to our first guideline:
1. Keep in mind that God’s testing stretches our quality capacity.
There is a difference between testing and temptation. Temptation is enticement to sin. God never, ever entices us to sin. But He does test us.
Testing occurs when God expands a good virtue or characteristic within us. Trust was the quality God tested in Abraham. God tested his trust by stretching it to the limit. He pulled it almost to the breaking point.
Testing is really a compliment. If you’re being tested it means that there are godly qualities within you and God is stretching their capacity. He’s making those virtues purer and stronger.
Laura and I have been tested several times in the same area over the course of our marriage. For some reason God keeps calling us to take major risks for Him. When Drake was born we decided for Laura to stay home as a full time mom. I was in seminary at that point, making $6.00 an hour working a nearly full-time job. God provided. We’d often receive money in the mail out of the blue. Our bank account decreased to only $7.00 at one time, but never went any lower. That test was only the beginning. After 5 years in the UMC, which provided an extremely secure and well-paying job with a fantastic pension plan, God called us to step out and plant a church. After 5 years there He called us to leave without the prospect of any job. God provided on all those occasions, but I’ve noticed that each leap into the dark gets progressively riskier. Yet we feel little anxiety in it because God has progressively stretched our risk-taking ability.
When God doesn’t make sense to you it’s often because He’s stretching you. Why does He do this? Two reasons. First, He can accomplish more of His will through your expanded capacities. Second, and even better, He’s making you more like Jesus. Romans 8:28-29 provides a clue and a fantastic promise when the going gets weird:
We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. Romans 8:28-29
When life doesn’t make sense you can be absolutely certain that God is doing a greater work in you. He’s stretching you and making you more like Jesus.
2. Remember the Lord’s provision of the past to retain trust for today.
The remarkable aspect to this story that is often overlooked is what Abraham believed was going to happen. We get a clue in verse 5. Abraham left all the supplies with his slave boys and, just before heading up the mountain with Isaac, he assured them:
“We will worship and then we will come back to you.” Genesis 22:5b
Abraham expected to come right back down that mountain with Isaac, his promised son. The New Testament tells us what Abraham thought would happen.
By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, “In Isaac your seed shall be called,” concluding that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead … Hebrews 11:17-19
Abraham full expected to kill his son and burn up his body. But he also expected God to raise Isaac from the dead. Abraham had a confidence in God because of his past experience. He remembered the deliverance of Sarah from Pharaoh and Abimelech. He remembered how God enriched him through those kings. He remembered how God enabled him to defeat the four mighty eastern kings in battle. He remembered God’s faithfulness in rescuing Lot from the destruction of Sodom. He remembered the miraculous birth of Isaac when there was no logical way it could happen. Abraham knew from past experience that God is true to His promises. He knew that Isaac was the one through whom God would build his descendants into a great nation who would be a blessing to all families on the earth. Abraham figured that if he killed Isaac, God would fulfill His promise and was able to raise him from the dead. The Lord’s provision of the past gave him trust for today.
Throughout the Bible God called His people to remember. Remember His goodness and trustworthiness. Why? So they could continue to walk in faith, trusting Him for today.
When God doesn’t make sense and the going gets weird you usually can’t control the circumstances, but there is one thing you do have power over: your attitude. You have the choice to pessimistically whine or speak and act faith even when you don’t feel like it.
3. Speak faith and act faith even when you don’t feel faith.
Although God’s command certainly broke Abraham’s heart, you’d never know it from his actions and words. There’s no weeping. Unlike other times when God didn’t make sense, Abraham didn’t attempt to bargain with Him. He dutifully carried out God’s instructions.
We also have evidence of Abraham’s spoken faith. He spoke a certainty of Isaac’s return to his servants, as mentioned before:
“We will worship and then we will come back to you.” Genesis 22:5b
He also spoke faith to Isaac as they headed up the mountain. Isaac saw the wood, the knife and the fire, but no sacrificial animal. He asked a very obvious question: “Where’s the sacrifice?”
Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” Genesis 22:8
Even Isaac acted in faith when the going got weird. Keep this in mind. Isaac was at a minimum a teenager in this story and possibly even a young adult. If he was strong enough to tote a large pile of wood up a mountain, he could have easily stopped his 100 plus year old father. But he didn’t Isaac allowed himself to be bound and placed on the altar.
When testing comes and God doesn’t make sense the easiest thing to do is become depressed and negative. Then we start dragging around and dragging everyone down with us. We adopt “whoa-is-me” language so that others will feel sorry for us. Let me tell you it’s a waste of energy, a poor witness, and you’ll notice that the most merciful of Christians will start avoiding you. You could also prolong the weirdness if you’re not careful.
Speaking and acting in faith, even when you don’t feel like it will bolster your strength and keep despair away. It will inspire others. People are watching especially when God doesn’t make sense in a Christian’s life. Acting faith and speaking faith also opens the door for God’s power in the situation.
Last week I shared the story of the West Nickel Mines Schoolhouse tragedy with our Sunday evening small group. On the morning of October 5, 2006, Charles Carl Roberts entered the Amish schoolhouse where he shot 10 little girls, fatally wounding 5 before killing himself. I am certain that the Amish community did not feel like acting in faith. They were crushed with grief.
…the images that stayed in the imagination were of Amish men and women attending Charles Robert’s funeral in the graveyard of his wife’s Methodist church. They insisted it was not their place to judge him. Amish leaders even asked their community to refrain from thinking of Roberts as evil.
The Amish also reached out to Marie Roberts and her children. They invited the family to attend the girl’s funerals – for the Bible says to mourn with those who mourn, and the Roberts family was mourning their own loss. As money poured in to address the medical bills of the wounded girls, Amish community leaders stipulated that a fund be set up from these resources to take care of the killer’s widow and three children.
Charles Colson and Harold Fickett, The Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2008), 15
Speak faith and act faith even when you don’t feel faith. And finally, when the going gets weird:
4. Expect God to reveal more of Himself.
Ultimately, this is the point of the story. In fact, this is the point of a life of faith. God demonstrated to Abraham that He was so much more than the so-called gods of his age. You see in those days, people believed that there were two basic levels of gods. There were the cosmic gods who set long term events into motion and there were limited local deities whose job it was to oversee the details of individual lives. Abraham understood the one calling him out of Ur into Canaan and bringing about the miraculous birth of Isaac to be a cosmic god. In chapter 21, verse 31, he calls Him “the LORD, the Eternal God.”
That’s great, but eternal gods didn’t care much about the details of people’s lives. Abraham learned that his God was different. His God had His eye on the big picture and the minute details of Abraham’s life. The ram trapped in the bushes providing a sacrifice convinced Abraham that this God really cared about the small details, the pains and concerns of plain old human living. That’s why in verse 14 of the story he calls Him, “”The LORD Will Provide,” which translated roughly means, “The God Who Will See to the Details.” He is God most high and God most nigh. He’s eternal and exalted, but also close and caring.
Abraham also learned that this God did not demand the sacrifice of human blood. This was a shocker because all the gods of Canaan required an offering of whatever they gave their followers the power to produce: crops, livestock, or kids. But not this God. This God provided a sacrifice for Himself.
What Abraham never learned, but we now know, is that our God is all about self-sacrifice, not human sacrifice. There are some interesting parallels in this story and the life of Jesus. Both Isaac and Jesus had miraculous births. Both Isaac and Jesus were the seed of Abraham to bless the nations. Both Isaac and Jesus carried wood on their backs: one for a fire, the other for a crucifixion. Both Isaac and Jesus climbed a hill for the purpose of death: once ascended Moriah, the other Golgotha. Here’s where the similarities end. Isaac was spared; Jesus was slain. God the Father intervened and provided a ram for Isaac. God the Father did not spare His only Son because He was the Lamb of God, crucified for the salvation of the world.
Nearly 2,000 years later we rejoice because we understand why God did what He did. But back then it made no sense … until the Lamb that was slain arose from the dead after three days. The lesson then is still the lesson now: when God doesn’t make sense, He’s on the move. He’s testing you to make you better, more like Christ. Sometimes the perplexing times are so painful that it’s hard to take one more step with God. In those moments remember the Lord’s provision of the past to retain trust for today. Act faith and speak faith even when you don’t feel faith. Move forward with the expectation that God will reveal more of Himself. Probably more than an any time in your life, when God doesn’t make sense, He’s on the move.
