Steve's Letter: If you want to make God laugh...

Let me tell you about a couple of recent incidents. One is relatively minor and the other is so very sad. Then I want to give you a biblical principle. It is bad news, but becomes good news.

Sounds like a sermon. Sorry.

The first incident is about our house. We're going to stay in it.

I know I told you we planned to downsize and move to a condo or townhouse. We tried. In fact, we had the house on the market for months. Not only that, we received a very attractive offer.

So?

So when they did the appraisal, it came in lower than what we were paying taxes on and the buyers couldn't get a mortgage.

That morning (unbeknownst to me), Anna was sitting on the patio of the house looking at the squirrels, listening to the birds, and looking at all the flowers she had planted. She thought, I'm really going to miss this place. At the same time (unbeknownst to her), I was sitting in my study also thinking about how much I was going to miss spending time there. Neither of us wanted to "rain on the other's parade."

Then when the appraisal came in, we both started laughing...a surprise to both of us. (We don't communicate well!) To make a long story short, we changed our 15-year mortgage to a 30-year one and decided to stay.

I know, I know. More than you wanted to know but, stay with me, I'm making a point here.

The other incident isn't so pleasant.

I'm writing this in Orlando. Today, I was actually supposed to be in Westerville (near Columbus), Ohio, at Grace Brethren Church to teach at a conference on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.I love the guys in that church and their people.While I wasn't looking forward to the snow and cold, I was looking forward to being with my friends.

The conference was canceled at the last minute because their pastor, Dr. Dave Plaster, is dying.He came back from a missions trip and wasn't feeling well.He went to the doctor and, after a battery of tests, discovered that he had a very short time to live.As I write this, he is still alive but, if the doctors are right and Jesus doesn't intervene, Dave will be Home with the Lord by the time you receive this letter.(Do pray for his family and for that church...and, if Jesus does intervene, for him.)

In both of those incidents, I had made plans.In the former, we had stored all of our personal things (pictures, mementos, etc.) and for months lived in what felt like the blandness of a hotel room. (I spend most of my life in hotel rooms and don't like living in one!)In the second situation, I had spent days preparing for the conference lectures...to say nothing of how Dave had all sorts of plans for the church and the ministry there.

Now everything has changed.

Okay, let me give you the principle:

Whatever you think God is doing in your life, there is a very good possibility that he isn't.God's ways are circuitous.He is more interested in letting us be a part of what he is doing than he is in telling us what he is doing.

Or:

If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.

There is an interesting comment in the book of Acts relating to Paul's plans for ministry.Paul and Barnabas had separated, and Paul had some big plans to preach in Bithynia, perhaps even to start a church there.

Luke wrote, "...but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them.So, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas.And a vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man of Macedonia was sanding there, urging him and saying, 'Come over to Macedonia and help us'" (Acts 16:7-9).

Later, when Paul wrote the Christians in Rome, he quoted Scripture, giving a rhetorical question:"Who has known the mind of the Lord?" (Romans 11:34) to which there is one clear answer, "Nobody here."

This morning in my time in the Word, I read Isaiah 55:8-9.Those words have been on my mind all day.I thought of them when I heard about my pastor friend.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,
declares the Lord.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.

James wrote, "Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit'-yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring.What is your life?For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.Instead you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that'" (James 4:13-15).

One of the problems with Bible believers who are orthodox in our faith is to think that we have God "in our pocket."Nothing could be further from the truth.I sometimes think that God, when he hears us pontificate about him and what he is doing, does just the opposite to irritate us and to remind us that some things are way above our pay level and we don't get to vote on what he's doing.

That's bad!

No, that's really good.

One time someone asked Ruth Graham if God always answered her prayers."Of course not," she replied."If he did, I would have married the wrong man...several times."

I look back over my life and there is hardly anything happening right now that I expected when I was younger.And yet, I see his kindness and faithfulness at every juncture of my life.And that's the issue.It is not his plans, but his kindness and faithfulness.

I've given you the quote before (and will probably do it a lot more) from Spurgeon.He said, "When you can't trace God's hand...trust his heart."

I don't want to be flippant here because I know that some of you are going through really hard stuff.This morning, I went over the Key Life prayer list (it's a list of requests that listeners have sent to us) and, as I prayed for each person, I winced with the horrible pain and loss that so many are facing.And yet, I know God's heart.He is good and good all the time even if I don't understand.

C.S. Lewis wrote:

The terrible thing is that a perfectly good God is in this matter hardly less formidable than a cosmic sadist.The more we believe that God hurts only to heal, the less we can believe that there is any use in begging for tenderness.A cruel man might be bribed-might grow tired of his vile sport-might have a temporary fit of mercy, as alcoholics have fits of sobriety.But suppose that what you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good?The kinder and more conscientious he is, the more he will go on cutting.If he yielded to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that point would have been useless. But is it credible that such extremities of torture should be necessary for us? Well, take your choice.The tortures occur.If they are unnecessary, then there is no God or a bad one.If there is a good God, then these tortures are necessary.For not even a moderately good being could possibly inflict or permit them if they weren't.Either way, we're in for it.

Still, given the choices I have, given that Jesus is quite fond of me, given what he has already done, and given that he is the "Lord of all"...I think I'll go with him.

Not only that, I think I'll go get a milkshake...and maybe even go to a movie.

I don't have to be God and I'm glad. That's the good news I mentioned.

He told me to remind you.

In His Grip,