Perhaps an annoying part of your story at the moment is that God is contradicting your desire to be “in the game” – whatever that is for you. Maybe you dream of a new job, but the path seems blocked, or even indiscernible. You’d love a relationship to blossom, but it isn’t happening – not even close. Or maybe you just want to be more noticed, or less noticed (is that possible?), or to be ok with not being noticed at all (JD Salinger’s wistful Zooey comes to mind: “I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody!” Great line.). But listen, we need to talk - because I need to hear this too.
In his excellent book Love Walked Among Us, Paul Miller shares the story of Robertson McQuilkin, who left his university position to take care of his wife, Muriel. Not long after, when a student asked him, “Do you miss being president?” McQuilkin reflected, and “put his wondering into a prayer”:
“Father, I like this assignment, and I have no regrets. But if a coach puts a man on the bench, he must not want him in the game. You needn’t tell me, of course, but I’d like to know – why didn’t you need me in the game?"
I didn’t sleep well that night and awoke contemplating the puzzle. Muriel was still mobile at the time, so we set out on our morning walk around the block. She wasn’t too sure on her feet, so we went slowly and held hands as we always do. This day I heard footsteps behind me and looked back to see the familiar form of a local derelict behind us. He staggered past us, then turned and looked us up and down. “Tha’s good. I likes ‘at” he said. “Tha’s real good. I likes it.” He turned and headed back down the street, mumbling to himself over and over again, “Tha’s good. I like it.”
When Muriel and I reached our little garden and sat down, his words came back to me. Then the realization hit me. God had spoken through an inebriated old derelict. “It is You who are whispering to my spirit, “I likes it, tha’s good,” I said aloud. “I may be on the bench, but if You like it and say it’s good, that’s all that counts.”
Miller reflects on this beautiful episode with some thoughts of his own:
“When McQuilken “heard” God’s voice, he could “rest” in God’s assignment for him. It deepened the meaning of his love for Muriel. Many times people give up on love because they get sick of hearing other people’s voices – their demands. Then they walk away from a relationship and experience an initial freedom in regaining their own “voice...”
What If…
You may not realize it, but the story of your life and how you love others hangs in the balance with such a move. I like how Tim Keller (of Redeemer, NYC) approaches it:
Think about it. In your relationships with people, what would it be like if you never allowed others to contradict, or correct you? You’d really be a lonely person, wouldn’t you?” (Really, how could you maintain relationships where you have to have the final word on everything?)
Keller goes on to apply the argument to God, saying, when we hear our culture (or our own hearts) say, “I could never believe in a God who would do ------- (fill in the blank with anything we don’t like)”, does it ever occur to us that we aren’t willing to apply to Him the same privilege we grant to others – to contradict us – in order to maintain relationship?
And so because God’s ways aren’t allowed to contradict human reasoning, God is simply rejected out of hand – or at least deemed irrelevant to my current struggle. (Some even bend over backward to “protect” God from unpleasant and devastating things like tornadoes and famine and sexual abuse, contradicting His right to be involved in them … but what if He wasn’t in them? How could the dreadful abuses and wonderful grace of the cross mean anything?)
Your Role of Love
So it appears that often, for the good of “the team,” (or the family, or church, or job), you will sometimes be asked to play a much different role than you think you should – maybe, even a role other than you think you are most gifted for. The team needs a defensive end, but you usually play quarter-back. Theology and teaching is your thing, but the homeless ministry needs your hands. Will you allow your idea of self to be contradicted in that case, for the good of the team?
Now consider Jesus – the Sovereign One – in whom “all things hold together” (Colossians 1:7), and “through whom all things were made” (John 1:3). Which means He’s the Astronomer who keeps beautiful Jupiter hanging in space 390 million miles away, tucked under a dazzling moon (as it was last night). He shapes and holds your blue (or green or brown) eyes and your skin - every molecule – all held together by His powerful word. Shouldn’t He have demanded His rightful place of honor in this world?
“…with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves… Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross…” ~ Phillipians 2
Further, since He is who He is, and has done all that He has done for you, should you get to contradict him about your life plans, or does He contradict you? Is He a person who, as Keller says, you “invite into your life to be your personal assistant,” or, with the whole universe hanging together in Him, does He get to command you?
Consider what it feels like to be dearly loved and prized by someone who absolutely has your best at heart – because he knows it better than you. Wouldn’t you want to stop and listen to him, to pay him mind? Further, might you even allow yourself to be contradicted, corrected, and convicted by him – because you prize him and love His selfless heart?
Here, as in all good relationships, we find real love loosening our grip on control and our own demand for rightness. But there’s a beautiful result: we ourselves begin to love well.
So learn of Him, spend time as you would with someone you deeply admire, just observing Him. And as you get to know Him, ask then if it make a difference that it’s Him who “keeps you on the bench.” Or rather, like McQuikin, if He provides you a new bench to sit on, beside one who needs your love…
Note: There’s a name for all this, and it’s called His providence. And actually, it’s very, very good news for the world - and for you. Think of life without it - a life where we are never contradicted...
Let all divine restraints be removed and man be left absolutely free, and all ethical distinctions would immediately disappear, the spirit of barbarism would prevail universally, and pandemonium would reign supreme. ~ A.W. Pink
Thank Him for His powerful and wise ways today.
