The older I get the more mysterious life appears to me. I hope that’s a sign of growing wisdom, rather than leaking faith.
When I was in my teens and twenties, life was pretty ‘black and white’. I knew what to believe, and what not to believe, was confident in my convictions, and sometimes intolerant of older saints who weren’t quite as unequivocal as I was. But the ageing process has left me a lot less strident, I think in a good way.
As a pastor, I remember some of my early sermon applications about how to bring up teenagers, before I ever had teenagers of my own. Or what you should and shouldn’t watch on TV, before the internet revolution brought depravity to our bedrooms at the touch of an smartphone app.
I was more forthright about how to deal with suffering before I had really tasted it in my own life, and the sheer bewilderment it brings. It’s not that what I was preaching was untrue or unbiblical, but my preaching hadn’t been refined by the mysteries of life, the disillusionment pain can bring, even the raw edges of tragedy which can make a devoted father say: ‘I believe Lord, help my unbelief’.
I remember reading in Bryan Chappell’s excellent book Christ-Centered Preaching, about what he called the ‘Fallen Condition Focus.’ While we need to promote sound doctrine with vigour and passion, we also need to remember the frailty of humanity and the mind-bending conundrums some of our best people have faced.
A ‘Fallen Condition Focus’ adds a gentleness and empathy to the way you preach. An acknowledgement that life is a mystery, and often we find ourselves utterly perplexed by what God is doing and why He is doing it. And that’s before we talk about Covid, and church life coming to a standstill, and evangelical churches losing 30% of their congregation, and not being allowed to sing, or visit dying spouses in care homes. Life simply isn’t straightforward!
But God never said it would be. Which is why I cling to this verse from Deuteronomy: ‘The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever.’ God has secrets, and on this side of glory there will always be mysteries about what He allows to happen that leave us bewildered. And He never tells not to be bewildered! Some of the richest parts of Scripture involve devoted saints wrestling with God’s ‘frowning providence’ – Jeremiah shaken by desolate Jerusalem, Habakkuk wondering how God could ‘send’ the Babylonians, Asaph telling us his feet had nearly ‘slipped’ (backslidden).
People who come through this life with a strident faith really haven’t thought about it very much. Our job is not to remove the mystery, but to focus on what God has made clear – ‘the things revealed’. Love God with all your heart, trust in the redemption Jesus has won through the cross and obey what you can understand of His word – starting with ‘love one another’.
And then leave the rest, the ‘secret things’ we are not meant to understand, at God’s throne. Be supremely patient with those who have been burnt by life’s mysteries and look forward to the day when faith will turn to sight. In other words, keep a ‘Fallen Condition Focus’ until all fallenness is at last removed, and the frosted glass through which we look is removed, and we see Him face to face!
