We Waver

Who is God to you?

When you think of God, what image comes to mind?

How big is God for you?

These are important things to consider, as, depending on your image of God, God may or may not be enough in your mind to really handle or take on the challenges of your life. Think about how much you want to control the situations or people around you. Wanting to have control of our lives is something that each of us desires. Somehow, we think that if we could just control a situation then we could fix it or make it unfold as we think it should, and often to our best interests. However, that may not necessarily be to the best interests of all involved. It takes people who have let go of their own need to be in control, or at least aware that they have little to no power over others, to see another’s need and take that into consideration. At the very least it takes practice to think that way. It does not come naturally.

From birth we are concerned about our needs. Babies need care, food, and love, and they will cry until they get it. And if that care and love does not arrive, and especially if it happens over and over again, the child will not develop into the healthy adult that they were created to be. So, this want to make sure our needs are met is part of us. Still as we mature, from children into adults, we come to learn of the needs of others, and that all those needs should be taken into consideration as well. Most of us also come to a place of realizing that we have little to no control over situations and certainly little to no control over what others do.

I want to say that there are extreme cases where someone never figures out that healthy relationships do not include the abuse and imbalance of power in the relationship. Much help is needed in those cases, especially for the one who is being held captive by another’s control. If you find yourself in that situation please reach out for help.

For most of us, we are dealing with our own need for power and control over our own lives. We get to a point where we understand the only person we can really change or steer is ourselves. Even then, we realize that we have little to no power because the world’s pressures have so much influence over us. The demand of family, work, study, and friends seem to push and pull us…tug on us.

Now you may have heard the saying, “Let go and let God.” Meaning, knowing that we cannot control the people and relationships that are around us, we let God take it, whatever that “it” is. Or as country singer Carrie Underwood sang, “Jesus take the wheel”.

Some people might think it a cop out to let God take the lead in our lives, suggesting that those of us who give to God what we cannot handle is just a way to let go of responsibility or that we use God as a crutch, but this is far from the truth. Giving to God our problems doesn’t necessarily take away the situation, in fact it rarely lifts us out of our situation. What it does do is help us to let go of control of that which we have no control over anyway. Still, we are called into these moments to live as people filled with grace, with hope, and with love, because we are letting God take our lives. And that can take work! How does that old hymn go? “Take my life and let it be, consecrated Lord to thee.”

Even when we are practiced at letting God handle things in our lives, it is so easy to waver and think, maybe God needs a little help, or maybe God isn’t up to the task. In our arrogance we may not think that God is up to the task or can really handle the situation or, maybe not take care of it to our liking. We may become concerned that God will have mercy on someone we would rather not see have God’s grace and love poured out on, so instead of allowing that to happen, we grab the reins back from God in hopes that our desired outcomes come to pass.

Most of the time we simply don’t trust God to be who God says God is. We allow the influences of society to infiltrate what we know to be true. That God is really who God says God is…the God of Abraham. The God who gave Abraham and Sarah a child when all the odds were against them. At their ripe old age, they couldn’t understand how God would be able to deliver on the promise of Abraham becoming the father of all nations. They even tried to help God make it happen by having a child through another woman. They wavered, but not for long. In Romans Paul writes, “When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn’t [himself] do but on what God said God would do.” Abraham trusted God based on his relationship with God and knowing that God had always been faithful and present.

We are so fortunate; we have hundreds of stories of God’s faithfulness to the world and the people God created as we can lift one story after another from the words of scripture. The scriptures being the words of people’s experience of God throughout the centuries. Our God has proven over and over again to be present, to have compassion, and to be merciful. What is even more amazing is that when we pay attention, we may find that we have our own stories of God’s faithfulness, presence, and grace in our lives and that of people we know and love.

Word after word, story after story, experience after experience, both ancient and current let us know that God is faithful even when we are not, even when we want to be but waver in our trust and hope in God, even when we forget God or push God aside. God is present. God is compassionate. God has got you. You just may not know it because you are not looking for God or you feel abandoned by God.

Let me remind you through the words of the Psalmist who this God is that cares for you and me and every person created as we are the image bearers of God. The psalmist writes about this one who created all that you can see or imagine.

^12-17  Who has scooped up the ocean in his two hands,
or measured the sky between his thumb and little finger?
Who has put all the earth’s dirt in one of his baskets,
weighed each mountain and hill?
Who could ever have told God what to do
or taught him his business?
What expert would God have gone to for advice,
what school would he attend to learn justice?

^21-24 Have you not been paying attention?
Have you not been listening?
Haven’t you heard these stories all your life?
Don’t you understand the foundation of all things?
God stretches out the skies like a canvas—
yes, like a tent canvas to live under.

^25-26 “So—who is like me?
Who holds a candle to me?” says The Holy.
Look at the night skies:
Who do you think made all this?
Who marches this army of stars out each night,
counts them off, calls each by name
—so magnificent! so powerful!—
and never overlooks a single one?

The Message (MSG) Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson

This is God in whom we trust. This is the God to whom we sing our praises each Sunday, and especially now in the carols we sing. Our God is powerful, is the Creator, and yet cares enough about the human condition that Jesus came to us as God with us. Walking the face of the earth…bringing heaven to earth.

This is God “… who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine. This is God who cares about your life and desires for you to live an abundant life. A life in which relationships are beautiful and healed, where God cares for us even and when we waver in our ability to be able to let God lead us in his power. A life where we do what we are called to do in order that others might come to know the freedom that can be experienced when God is invited in. We may waver, but God never does. To God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

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