Our granddaughter called last night from her new apartment home in South Korea. She arrived 8:30 Wednesday. Since her clock is 15 hours ahead of our time, when we talked to her she was preparing for her first day of work. This gal hit the ground running.
What an incredible adventure. Jet lag, new home, foreign country, different language, no food in her frig, a few thousand Korean Won to get her started (the exchange rate is 1000 to one), and starting a new job her first day in town. I can hardly imagine the complications of all this in her mind, but I am so glad that I can talk to God about it on her behalf, and that God can use all of this to draw her into a relationship with Himself.
What will she learn from her difficulties and challenges? Many things, I’m certain. Two verses in my reading this morning suggest two possibilities in regard to her spiritual life.
The first is in Proverbs 27:22, “Though you grind a fool in a mortar with a pestle along with crushed grain, yet his foolishness will not depart from him.”
This is the worst case scenario. In Proverbs, a fool is someone who has rejected God. The figure of speech is an image for extreme difficulties. These pressures grind all stubbornness and self-will to powder, yet the fool remains foolish. All their suffering produces no change.
The second option is illustrated by Jesus. Hebrews 5:8 says, “though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered.”
My initial question about this verse was why did Jesus, who never sinned, have to “learn” obedience? It was not His nature to disobey. He knows everything, so why did He have to “learn” anything? He is God the Son, yet this verse sets Him out in His humanness. “Though He was the Son” of God, He was also the Son of man.
His obedience as a man depending on His Father was tested by trials. Whatever happened to Him, every circumstance, confrontation, and opportunity, called for a choice. Even though He would always make the right choice, no one, not even Jesus, would see that reality unless He first experienced the tests and trials that put Him into a position of choosing and obeying.
Learning obedience to God is the same for every human being. Proverbs 29:19 says, “A servant will not be corrected by mere words; for though he understands, he will not respond.”
As I read His Word, I hear His voice telling me His will. I know what He wants from me, but unless I’m in a place where I must choose to do something about it, I’ve not actually “learned” obedience. It might be in my head, but it is not part of my life until I obey.
I don’t like suffering. My first response ought to be, “God, how can I obey You in this?” Yet too often I complain and look for a way out. I fear this is also true of most Christians. Instead of seeking the will of God when we suffer, or instead of discerning why He allows such things and learning from them, our usual response is a prayer request that the suffering be removed. I’m somewhat amazed that God sometimes does remove the problem. He is so incredibly merciful. Or maybe He removes it because (sadly) He sees we are not going to “learn” obedience from it after all.
My hope for our granddaughter is that these pressures that she is experiencing will not crush her to no avail, but that they will result in a heart’s cry to the One who can rescue her. Hebrews 5:7 says of Jesus, “who, in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear . . .” May this be true of her.
Yet I must also remember that God, who knows all things, can see what will produce a change of heart and what will not. If she manages to get through all of this without “learning obedience” then that too is by His mercy.
No comments:
Post a Comment