Quit Trying to Understand God

If you want to commit your life to God and walk in obedience to Him, you must forget what you think you know about how life works. As mere humans, we can never fully understand God’s ways.

We’re told in Isaiah 55:9,

For as heaven is higher than earth, so my ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

If you stop and think about it, nothing about God and His creation really makes any sense. 

For example, in our human way of understanding, everything has a beginning and an end. 

Just look at our lives. We’re born, we live a certain length of time, then we die. That holds true for every single human being. There’s no variance to this pattern. Some may live longer than others, but every person has a beginning and an end.

God is different, however. The scriptures tell us that He has always been. He was not created by another entity, and He has never not existed. There’s no time in history when God wasn’t around. He created the concept of past, present, and future as we know it.

Our human brains struggle to make sense of this. How can something or someone have always been in existence? It’s not possible, our minds scream. Yet, it’s true. 

If we can truly wrap our heads around this fact, then we’ve come a long way toward accepting all the truths we’re told about God in the Bible. 

If we believe that God is all-powerful, then surely we can grasp the fact that He flooded the entire earth, or parted the sea so His people could escape capture, or resurrected His Son from the dead.

We, ourselves, can’t do any of these things; it’s not within our power to do so. This fact makes it quite difficult to believe that these things are possible. We simply must suspend disbelief and realize that there are things that a divine being can do that we simply can’t. 

I believe that’s why the Bible begins the way that it does. In Genesis, we’re told in detail how God created the heavens and the earth, then populated the earth with a man and woman and a multitude of animal species. 

He just puts it all out there right off the bat. If we can accept the truths found in Genesis, the rest of the Bible shouldn’t be a problem for us. 

The question is, do you believe the narratives found in the Bible? If you struggle to believe what you read in scripture, ask God to strengthen your faith; He’ll do it. He wants us to wholeheartedly accept Him and His ways.

To do so, it’s necessary to put aside human logic and accept the fact that God’s divine nature can’t be explained using our limited logic.

If you can do that, you can begin to commune more fully with God and worship Him as the Divine Creator that He is.

Just remember—it’s not always supposed to make sense. If it did, we wouldn’t need faith. And we’re told in Hebrews 11:6a that without faith it is impossible to please God.

So exercise your faith today. Don’t worry about understanding God. Simply worship Him by pondering on His glorious attributes. 

Trust in God No Matter What

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.

Proverbs 3:5

What does it mean to trust in the Lord with all your heart? And to not rely on your own understanding?

These are deep words for certain. I believe we need to go beyond just a surface explanation of what it means to trust in God, as the verse includes the words, “with all your heart.”

That means we are to trust, rely on, depend on, and put all our weight on God. With every fiber of our being. No matter what we’re doing, we’re called to trust in Him.

That’s hard to do because we’re human. As mere humans, we tend to focus on what our senses reveal to us. We look at what we can see, hear, and touch.

Relying on God requires more than that. It’s a deep dependence of surviving on God and Him alone.

It’s knowing that God is our provider for everything that we need to sustain us. He wants us to rely on Him—that’s why He tells us to do just that.

If we obey God, adopting and maintaining the mindset that everything comes from Him, we can take it a step further and comfortably give Him all our cares and worries—which He commands us to do: “Casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7).

However, if we don’t first accept the fact that everything in our lives comes from Him, there’s no way we can ever hand over our cares to Him.

Just as God wants us to lean into Him and rely on Him, He also wants us to be free from the worry and anxiety that everyday life can produce. Philippians 4:6a tells us, “Do not be anxious about anything.”

These are fantastic, life-changing words! God literally commands us to live a worry-free life!

He doesn’t want us weighed down by our circumstances, but rather, He wants us to rely on Him, lean into Him, and give Him any burdens we’ve been carrying.

This is the freedom that so many of us desperately need each day. I know I do. Just the thought that God wants my mind to rest free and easy gives me hope that I don’t have to worry and fret about finances, my career, my relationships, and a host of other things.

And it should give you hope, too.

God Understands

I was lying in bed last night preparing to fall asleep and praying, like I often do. I was trying to figure out my actions of the day. I’d gotten angry about circumstances and lashed out at my wife and daughter – twice each. I’d felt bad after the first time for each, of course, but that didn’t seem to stop me from doing it again later.
As I prayed, I was trying to explain it all to God. My actions, my thoughts on my actions and what motivated them.
Then I realized I didn’t have to “explain” anything to God. He understands me much better than I ever could myself. He made me. Nothing I could ever say to Him would help Him understand my situation any better. My explanation to Him is really only for my benefit, kind of like talk therapy.
Anything I can think about anything is far below His infinite knowledge. He is, was, and will be – forever. As a mere human—a creation—we will by definition always be less than the creator. We can never see, know, or experience more than the One who created us.
That is very freeing to think about. When I turn to God after sinning (like last night), I don’t have to have all the answers. I just have to go to Him and seek His forgiveness. He understands what the human experience is like, so I don’t have to fill Him in on the details.
Plus, as one of the billions of people who have walked this earth, I’m sure I’m not the first to struggle with these exact feelings. The confusion. The turmoil. The frustration of failing over and over to live the life that I should. Countless others have been through it before.
And God understands.
I will fail again. I can count on that. I’ll let God down and let myself down. But it’s nice knowing that He’s always there to pick me up afterward.

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