I have talked with people who have “meaningful” standpoints concerning what God ought to have done but has not. Good suggestions are out there about how things ought to have been but they are not. At the end of the day, it is God who decides and it remains so.
I once went through an experience out of which God taught me something. At one time, I didn’t have a job and this had gone for too long. A friend tipped me that I could be employed as a bus driver if I had the bus-driver’s license. I couldn’t raise enough money for a course in bus-driving. I applied to a bus company to sponsor me for the course a result of which I would drive with them for a bonded time. Since I already had a personal car’s driving licence, they accepted to sponsor me for at most 20 hours. I believed this was more than enough for me. There was one condition though. I had to go to a driving school and take a one-hour pre-course bus-driving trials. Upon the recommendation of the instructor, they would act accordingly.
I was confident to do my best. When I was given a minibus instead of a big bus, I knew that it was going to be but a formality. I would drive so well that the instructor would be impressed. And I did drive well—or so I thought.
I didn’t believe my ears when the instructor told me that my driving was poor he was not recommending me for the course. At first I thought he was only joking. But how could he joke with what to me was such a serious matter? No! He wasn’t joking, he meant it.
Despite my protest, his decision was final. According to me, I drove so well. If I were to recommend myself, I would have done it confidently. What happened was that I evaluated myself by myself and thought I was there. But who can have the authority to evaluate and recommend self? I did not have the authority and that much was obvious. Despite my own glowing evaluation of my driving, I had failed all the same. It ended there, I never became a bus-driver. I stayed jobless for quite some time after that.
That is how it will be for some people before God. We compare ourselves with our “own standards” and recommend ourselves (2 Cor. 10:12). We have no authority to grade our own exams. When God says that our best wasn’t good enough, we may complain, but His decision is final. We may do so well according to mankind’s standards but according to God, we can’t qualify on our own credentials. We only qualify under Christ (Jhn. 14:6). This is why we must seek Christ in order to qualify under His sponsorship. We can’t make it on our own however well we think we are doing, even if we take a refuge in a religion. We would be wise to take a refuge in the Saviour rather than in a religion or denomination.
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