MY SON MARK HAD PRACTICED gymnastics for several years and he was ready to learn a double back flip on the trampoline. His coach buckled a spotting belt around Mark’s waist and clipped on two ropes that stretched upward to two pulleys on ceiling beams some thirty feet apart and then rejoined and dropped back down to the spotter. If Mark was about to fall on his head, the coach would pull on the rope and suspend him in the air. Mark practiced doubles safely for several weeks in the spotting belt and proudly reported to me how well he was doing.
Then one Saturday he came home with bruises on his head and hip and a disquieting story. In the middle of a double flip, when Mark’s coach pulled on the ropes, one of them came unclipped from the steel ring on the belt. Since the remaining rope ran to a ceiling pulley many feet to the side of the trampoline, Mark swung pendulum-like sideways off the trampoline, where he met a wall.
Until this episode, Mark had placed complete confidence in the spotting belt. Suddenly he did not know what to expect from it.
The same sort of thing has happened to me a few times in my ministry. Based on my interpretation and application of Scripture, I thought I knew what I could expect from God. Then something came unclipped, and I swung in a direction I did not anticipate, leaving me disillusioned and sometimes pondering whether I should quit.
One of these times came in 1994. After serving as associate editor at LEADERSHIP for three years, I had ventured into free-lance writing and itinerant preaching. Financially, this was an extremely risky move. I could not predict from week to week what my honorariums would be, if any. I paid my own health and life insurance, and I had a wife and four sons to house, feed, and clothe.
But I felt I was within God’s will and therefore not presumptuous, and I wanted to bank on God’s promise to meet my needs if I sought first his kingdom and his righteousness. I believed God would supply all my needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus; that if I asked, I would receive. I had no illusions that it would be easy but I was convinced God would make a way.
Several months into my new venture, my finances grew leaner and leaner. Preaching honorariums almost always fell far below what I needed. I wrote and mailed out a number of book proposals to publishers, who were not interested. In the meantime I wrote magazine articles, which usually pay at a rate that works out to minimum wage. Gradually I fell further and further behind in my bills.
Lord, I cannot believe you want me behind in my bills, I would pray. This is not a good witness. I cannot believe you want me to struggle like this, to spend such emotional energy just to meet daily needs.
Everything came to a head in the summer of 1994. The irs had hit me with an unexpected tax bill, and we were now several thousand dollars in debt. In desperation, I put this debt on a high-interest credit card. Other bills remained outstanding. I was getting to the point of no return; I had to make some decisions about whether to make a course correction.
As the noose tightened around my neck, I began to flirt with questions I had never before allowed myself to think. Could I depend on God or not? Could I rely on his promises or not? As far as I could see, I was doing all I could: working hard six and seven days a week, praying, seeking first the kingdom through writing and preaching. I checked my motives and felt they were fairly good. In short, things just did not add up.
As I pondered my situation, a terrible feeling of insecurity swept over me, something like a ship captain must feel when his anchor gives way in a storm. The questions I was asking ultimately addressed issues that went beyond merely paying the bills to the very core issues of my faith. If these promises about provision were not reliable, what was? If the Book does not work when it comes to finances, how can I know it will work in regard to other spiritual issues?
Disillusionment sapped my ability to persevere. I had to preach the Word, and I was wondering how to interpret it! If I was to hang in there with God’s work, I had to understand the nature of prayer and God’s promises and the difference between faith and presumption. I needed to be able to trust God.
I have found the health of human relationships often revolves around expectations—ours and theirs. If my expectations for my wife do not match reality, I am disappointed. The same holds true in my relationship with God. I cannot put God in a box, but I need to know what I should realistically expect of him. If my expectations are unscriptural, I am living under an illusion and will some-day experience a jarring collision with a wall. All the same, just as surely as I did not want to presume upon God, neither did I want to veer to the other extreme of having a small God (to use Phillips’ phrase). That, too, is an illusion and one, I suspect, that is more displeasing to the Lord than presumption.
I think by now my bias is clear: if I am going to err, I choose to do so on the side of faith. But I was face-to-face with stark reality. I was in a no-man’s-land, where a minister cannot long endure. I could not continue to risk everything while unsure about my beliefs. I had to know what I could expect from God in the future. Had I built my life on false expectations?
Over the next six months as I worked through my finances and my Bible, I learned several things about myself and about God.
1. Remember to remember. I quickly forget how God has worked in my life in the past, much as the Israelites forgot how God delivered them from Egypt and led them in the desert. Even though they had repeatedly seen God work mighty wonders on their behalf, with each new peril they complained in full throat that God had left them and that all was lost.
I have read this Exodus account often, with full knowledge of how the story ends, and I have thought, How can they be so dense! Only days before God parted the Red Sea and they walked through on dry ground. On top of that, they saw God’s power on their behalf against the Egyptians. How can they not see that God will help them now as he did before? Yet when I face troubles far less perilous than the Israelites faced (never have I walked with my children for days through a desert without food and water), I am just as quick to shout, “Woe is me!”
In my times of disillusionment, I find it helpful to remember how God has previously pulled me from the fire. Once when I pastored in Chicago, for example, with my salary in the $22,000 range and bills excruciatingly tight, I had slowly fallen behind some $1,500. One day a friend who knew nothing about my bills gave me a check that covered the majority of them, and soon we were out of the woods. I rejoiced because I had seen God’s promises proven true. On another occasion, in winter, the church boiler had burst, and we needed some $6,000 for a new one. Our inner-city church had no money, so I prayed earnestly for God to help us. Within days he provided through neighboring churches that rallied to our aid. Our church worshiped God joyfully for making a way for us.
I can say categorically that God has never failed me in the past. Not once have our cupboards been bare. Not once has my family lacked food, clothing, shelter, or transportation. The Lord has always been faithful and trustworthy.
2. Develop “radical listening” skills. In the middle of my crisis of confidence in the summer of 1994, I decided that at all cost I had to find out what was wrong. I had not discovered it through my reasoning or through talking it out with fellow ministers, so I had to take another tack.
I determined to devote myself to seeking the Lord until he gave me insight into the cause of my circumstances. Of course I had already been praying hard for months, but I had also been under pressure to write as much as possible in order to pay the bills. Now I decided to risk everything on God—to put my work aside and fast, pray, read Scripture, and listen for God’s voice. I called it “radical listening” because I was in such desperate straits.
On the first day, after several hours, I felt impressed to read Amos 4. Unsure whether I had “heard” God accurately, I opened the Bible with apprehension, only to have my soul galvanized by the sense that God was apparently at work, for the words seemed directly relevant to my situation. Amos declared God had withheld rain from Israel and struck their crops with plagues because of Israel’s sin. God called Israel to return to him.
The parallel was all too clear. My life was marked by drought. I realized that in all likelihood my financial shortfalls had resulted from conduct that was displeasing to the Lord. The clearest area of disobedience was my marriage. My wife and I had not been getting along well—owing first to some issues we had never worked through and second to our financial problems. Furthermore, I had not properly involved her in the process of making my decision to undertake free-lance writing and itinerant preaching. I saw that I was not trying hard enough to hear her concerns and work together toward a solution.
The impression I had from Amos 4 was confirmed twice. To ensure that I had heard properly, I continued for several days to spend devoted time to seeking the Lord. He impressed only two other Scriptures on my heart: Jeremiah 14 and the book of Haggai. Again, my soul was quickened as I read; both passages addressed the subject of lack having been sent by the Lord to wake up his people.
I was certain now that I lacked provision not because God’s promise had failed but because I had failed. I took steps to correct the areas of disobedience and slippage, and over several months our financial situation gradually improved as a spate of work came my way and honorariums improved. Within eight months we were in the black.
Paul’s word to the Philippians had come true for me: “If on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you” (3:15).
3. Look hard in the mirror. I have two cars—a 1992 Toyota Corolla and a 1984 Chevy Cavalier. The latter has 135,000 miles on it that are all mine. Naturally I have had to replace many parts on the Chevy over the years, but only recently did I learn that one of the more expensive replacements should have been unnecessary. Several years after I bought the car, I started having problems with the radiator, and around 1992 I replaced it at a cost of several hundred dollars. I blamed Chevy for having a shoddy product.
When I took my Toyota in for maintenance a few years later, however, I learned something about cars. “The most important maintenance,” said the service manager, “is to replace the fluids. You need to change your oil every 3,000 miles and flush your radiator every two years.” This is because after two years antifreeze undergoes a chemical change and becomes corrosive, ruining the radiator. Throughout the life of my Chevy Cavalier, I had never once flushed the radiator! So I was to blame for the failure, not Chevy.
During my season of disillusionment, I made the same mistake with God. The problem was not God’s promises but my disobedience. If I ever again face similar disillusioning circumstances, I am determined to take the attitude that the problem is with me; I am missing something. I am the one with limited perceptions; I am the one who has distortions in understanding because of sin. I am the one who needs to humble myself and accept God’s Word as true, even when I cannot make it fit my experience.
I like the way David expresses this attitude in Psalm 131: “My heart is not proud, O Lord, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel, put your hope in the Lord both now and forevermore.”
Someone has said we become disillusioned when we hold on to an illusion. I believe this was indeed the case with me. Not that anything in God’s Word is an illusion, but I always thought I should be able to understand all of God’s ways in my life at the very time that they are happening. Therein lay the illusion. In fact, Scripture assures me that much of the time I will not understand God’s activity!
4. Account for anomalies. Scripture shows that God occasionally works in people’s lives in untypical ways. The events that do not fit our current understanding are something like the anomalies of science that for a season puzzle physicists.
For example, when Einstein was a young man, physicists had already scratched their heads for some fifty years over the unexplainable orbit of the planet Mercury. Newton’s theories of gravity had served well for centuries to understand the orbits of all the other planets. But in Mercury’s elliptical orbit, the point nearest the sun drifted by a very small amount: “5,600 seconds of arc per century,” according to Walter Sullivan. “Newton’s theory explained all but forty-three seconds of this by taking into account the gravity of other planets.”
Astronomers conjectured that another small hidden planet, which they named Vulcan, might orbit near the sun and exert gravitational force on Mercury. But Vulcan was never discovered. Until Einstein came on the scene, those forty-three seconds of arc remained a stubborn anomaly.
But then Einstein formulated his general theory of relativity. When he applied this gravitational formula to the eccentric orbit of Mercury, he experienced one of the breathtaking moments of his scientific life: the numbers fit. Mercury’s forty-three seconds were no longer an anomaly.
My life will occasionally take on an orbit like Mercury’s that for a time simply defies my best efforts to explain it. Nonetheless, as surely as there is order in the universe, there is a heavenly reason for my circumstances that is utterly consistent with God’s Word and character. I simply cannot understand it yet.
The Bible records many circumstances that contradict what I would expect of God:
- God commands Abraham to emigrate to the Promised Land and, once there, the first thing Abraham finds is famine—severe famine. An anomaly.
- God tells Abraham to sacrifice his son. An anomaly.
- David eats the consecrated bread. An anomaly.
- God commands Ezekiel to eat food cooked over human dung. An anomaly.
- God commands Hosea to marry a prostitute. An anomaly.
- Jesus shows mercy to sinners for four years; then when Ananias and Sapphira lie, God strikes them dead. An anomaly.
- Jesus hangs on the cross and cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” An anomaly.
I can trust God’s Word, but I cannot lock God into a formula. At the same time, I must take care not to make what seems like an exception into the rule. For example, if I do not see the provision I expect for some period of time, I cannot say God’s promises of provision cannot stand the acid test. The rule is the rule, and an apparent exception is precisely that.
I heard one analogy that has helped me. For an airplane to fly, one law of physics must supersede another. The laws of aerodynamics must take precedence over the law of gravity. Airplane flight does not mean that the law of gravity has failed, only that another law has taken precedence. So it is that on occasion one principle of Scripture supplants another. In my case, for example, as it often was for the Israelites, God’s discipline superseded his provision.
5. Wait for time to prove God right. A few months before my disillusionment hit, I figured out how much money I would need, not only to get out of debt and pay current bills but also to purchase some things we desperately needed and had delayed buying. The amount was $10,000. I began to pray for this specific amount to come in. Extraordinarily. Beyond my regular income.
When nothing happened, I went through my deep disillusionment. As I said before, I entered a period of radical listening; I corrected some things in my life; and after a few months my finances slowly improved, though the week-to-week pressure remained.
About another six months passed. And then one year after I had first prayed for the miraculous supply of $10,000, I received a completely unforeseen gift from a family member for exactly $10,000. That check took us out of the woods, and since then we have kept pace with our expenses and enjoyed the most pressure-free time in our financial lives.
Situations like this have shown me again and again that time proves God’s promises true, often an extensive amount of time. The short run is deceptive.
Through this entire experience, Psalm 89 has taken on special meaning for me. Written by a Jew after the destruction of Jerusalem, this psalm is an account of cognitive dissonance.
Without a hint of his anguish, the psalmist begins with praise to God for his faithfulness and love. He writes at length of the covenant God established with David and quotes God’s promise to establish David’s line forever even if his sons stray.
Then in a jarring, abrupt reversal in tone, the psalmist addresses God in the second person, recounting in accusatory terms how God has cast David’s throne to the ground. “Where is your former great love,” he asks, “which in your faithfulness you swore to David?” He begs God to remember Israel and finishes with a curt, almost obligatory “Praise be to the Lord forever! Amen and Amen.”
On the one hand, the psalmist knows what God has promised; on the other, history and his experience contradict those promises. He cannot reconcile the two no matter how hard he tries. He believes God’s Word, yet he must face a reality that seems to deny God’s Word can ever be fulfilled.
From my position in history, though, I know how God’s faithful covenant was and is being fulfilled, and, to a degree, that surpasses anything David could have imagined. God himself would become David’s royal descendant and establish an eternal kingdom of absolute justice and righteousness that would fill the universe. Despite how unlikely it appeared to the psalmist, God is fulfilling his covenant to David.
David—and Moses and Abraham and Joseph and Esther and Ruth and Mary, among many others—teaches me that when God’s promises appear the least likely to be fulfilled, he is working out ambitious projects that dwarf my capacity even to conceive of them.
My problem is that I live in a fax-machine culture. If my computer takes a half-second to obey a command, I want to spend thousands of dollars to upgrade. My culture conditions me to expect everything quickly. If I bring those expectations to God, however, I am usually disappointed. God is the Timeless One, for whom a thousand years are as a day. He knows most of his highest purposes for me are realized in a time-intensive process, so he uses Old Man Time as a chisel on my inner man.
And so in my times of disillusionment I have learned to simply persevere no matter what circumstances or thoughts buzz around me. My mind may never resolve every question, but time will.
I must not put an arbitrary statute of limitations on God’s Word. If I become disillusioned again, it will be a failure of my patience, not of God’s promise. He encourages me in almost unqualified terms to pray and believe but he reserves to himself the date of fulfillment.
6. Focus on what God pursues. My faith, like my character, is an end in itself, not merely a means by which God gives me what I ask. Christ is the author and perfecter of my faith. I expect, then, that God will allow circumstances that demand faith, hence circumstances that by definition defy my reasoning and expectations, that force me to trust in spite of everything. Because faith is the goal, I should expect God to defy my expectations.
After my son Mark’s accident on the trampoline, the owner of the gymnastics club took action to ensure that such a mishap would not occur again. He installed a safety latch to keep the clip from accidentally unclipping. God is likewise interested in my safety. If I will do the one thing he clearly instructs me to do—persevere—he will ultimately show himself faithful. In the long run, God is always found true.
Copyright © 1998 Craig Brian Larson
