mgpcpastor's blog

My essay from mgpc’s latest newsletter:

God is always present, but not always apparent.
I’ve been rolling that particular thought around in my head for a number of days now.
The words are from a pastor named Craig Barnes, and, in penning them, he is seeking to point out that in every situation and circumstance of life the Holy Spirit is calling us to draw more closely into a dependent relationship with God.
We are consistently invited to draw our peace from God, our joy from God, our wisdom from God, our strength from God, and more.
Yet the nature of this invitation is not a phone-call or a letter, not an email or an SMS message. God extends these invitations through the everyday circumstances of our lives.
But most of the time we fail to notice the invitation because we get too caught up in the circumstance in which we receive it.
Perhaps we receive a negative report on a medical test. Instead of delving through God’s Word and being comforted by His love and care for the week and powerless, we obsess over the possibility of new and better cures and treatments. Sometimes we’re even motivated by the notion that it must be God’s will that I get healed.
Maybe our children have said or done something small but irritating. Instead of reflecting on the patience and forgiveness that our heavenly Father shows toward us, we snap and seek to bend them to our will.
Of course the human heart is capable of more complex evasions than these. Many of us will know that we’ve gotten home and snapped at our husband or wife, not because we’re really upset with them, but because we’ve had a hard day at work, dealing with overbearing bosses and demanding and thoughtless customers. Instead of realizing that our response to our spouse is out of order and indicative of our workplace generated hurt, a hurt which God invites us to bring to Him so we can bask in His unqualified acceptance, we grump and complain about our loved one not understanding us.
Bereaved folk who attend church will complain about changes to service, song or furniture, when what is really disquieting them is that nothing feels right ever since their loved one became absent from the body.
God yearns to allow them to know even greater experiences of His love and presence, but they never acknowledge what it is that is truly troubling them.
We’ve probably all known people whose current relationships suffer because of past experiences. They enter a new relationship but their responses are conditioned by that which has happened to them at the hands of others.
Friends, a new relationship is hard enough to commence and nurture without it being an arena in which the ghosts of past experience, absent and unable to be dealt with, dominate our concerns, thoughts, words and actions and responses.
Constantly we carry an image, a template around with us that we believe, if imposed on life around us, would enable us to be peaceful, joyous, happy and satisfied.
God says that we will only experience these emotions fully in Him.
Instead of responding to disquiet, upset and anger by asking ‘What has really provoked this response in me, and what is God giving me the opportunity to hand over to Him?’ we usually ask ourselves ‘How can I change this situation in order that I feel the way I think I should be feeling and are there any Bible verses or ways that I can use God’s authority to get my way?’
We may never say it exactly like that, that’s what we mean.
We want things fixed, which means we want our peace. God, however, continues to extend sacred invitation after sacred invitation to us to receive a peace that passes human understanding. It is a peace that comes, not by controlling our circumstances, but by entering ever more deeply and deeply into our relationship of trust and dependence with their author.