Christian Living

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During last Sunday's message, the preacher, Joel Engle, was giving some background on the passage he was about to preach (Daniel 9). One of the things he discussed was how God kept Daniel safe in the lions' den; Daniel spent the whole night there and the lions didn't touch him.

For some reason, as he was talking (sorry if you read this, Joel; my mind wanders during sermons), I got to thinking about the persecution that the Christians faced in the 60s and 70s A.D., including being thrown into the Colosseum with lions. On that occasion, God did not preserve his people. It's the exact same situation - children of God in mortal danger from lions - but God does two completely opposite things. What gives?

The answer is that God is unpredictable. I don't mean that he does things randomly or out of fits of whimsy, the way you might think of a cat being unpredictable. I just mean that he consistently does things in a way that nobody would expect. Why? It almost seems as if he delights in keeping people guessing.

Examples of God's unpredictability abound in Scripture. Jesus healed a lot of blind people, but never the same way twice. Sometimes he touched the guy's eyes; sometimes he spit on the eyes; once he spit on the ground instead and made mud, which he slopped on the fellow's face. One time, he didn't even heal the guy completely the first time; he had to spit on his eyes twice to get the job done. Why didn't he just find a method that worked and stick with it? Why keep doing things differently?

Back the bus up to the Old Testament, and you've got multiple examples God doing baffling things. God chooses Moses to be a spokesman for his people - but Moses stutters and is petrified of speaking publicly. A giant named Goliath comes wandering along, and rather than send the army out to beat him down, God sends a teenaged boy armed with a sling and a couple rocks. He tells one of his prophets to marry a prostitute, as an object lesson in how unfaithful his people are being to him. He tells another one of his prophets to lay on his left side for 390 days, to represent the 390 years that the nation of Israel had been ignoring God. Oh, and let's not forget how he sent Jesus to earth to redeem humanity, and began by dropping him in the womb of an unwed teenager, who gave birth to him in a stable.

What does this tell you about God?

I find two lessons. The first is that God genuinely does enjoy in keeping people guessing. 1 Corinthians 1 quotes an Old Testament passage in which God promises, "I will thwart the wisdom of the wise, and frustrate the cleverness of the clever." If you think you know stuff, if you think you're pretty smart, God enjoys taking you down a couple notches. Proverbs says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, so unless you love God, you really haven't understood the most basic thing there is to understand about life. If you do love God, then you understand that he is God and you are not. God also notifies us in Isaiah 58 that we're too simple to understand what's going on: "My thoughts are not your thoughts, and my ways are not your ways." Easy enough. He's God; we're not, and he likes to remind us of this fact lest our egos get too big.

The second is that God likes innovating. The Bible repeatedly refers to God as creator. Everything in the earth and in the entire universe was his idea. He invented planets, comets, butterflies, music, sunsets, clouds, mountains, and hammerhead sharks (perhaps not his best move). His creative power is obviously immense. Can his unpredictability be understood as an extension of his creativity? Consider for a second that he is moving and working today, involving himself in people's lives. Every problem I face, he has a solution to, and he created that solution. The more crazy, bizarre, and unlikely the solution, the greater the chance that I will recognize it as God moving. Think of where you were when you came to understand that God loves you. What ridiculous chain of events transpired to bring you the Gospel, convince you of its truth, and cause you to commit your life to God? What unbelievable twists and turns are in your testimony? Isn't the story of God's involvement in your life one giant display of his creativity?

I think that too often Christians try to boil God down to a formula. Find the five steps to spiritual growth and just do them. Get the method that works and stick with it. That's almost an invitation to settle into a rut, isn't it? I find that, especially in light of God's creativity, we are often woefully unimaginative when it comes to thinking of new ways to grow, new ways to express our love to God, and new ways to express his love to others. I want you to consider the notion that God is wildly unpredictable and vastly creative. Can I be bold for a moment? If he has not surprised you lately, the problem is you. Surprising people is what he does. Very few things in the Bible are normal, by any possible definition of the term. If you claim to be following God and you're living a life that is normal, average, and unexceptional, you're doing it wrong. There are always opportunities to do the extraordinary, to learn and grow, to be taught new things, to express your love to God or other people in new ways. Given that you are serving a God who repeatedly does the unexpected, and rarely does things the same way twice, don't you have some obligation to strive for more than the status quo?

Lest you have the wrong idea about God's unpredictability, let me close by reminding you that God is not random or capricious in the way that unpredictable humans are. The Bible assures us that God is infinitely loving (love was, remember, one of the things that he created) and that he loves his children. In all things he is working for the good of those who love him (Romans 8:28) and striving to bring those who don't love him into knowledge of the truth (2 Peter 3:9). Whatever unpredictable things he does, they will be for your good and for your benefit. You might have a hard time with the fact that you never know where he's going next, but you know that you can always trust him. He is God, after all, and you are not. He knows best and he won't lead you wrong.

I would encourage you to pray and ask him to teach you what it means to trust him. Ask for him to open your eyes to the crazy and off the wall things he is doing around you and in your life. Repent for not appreciating his creativity and ask him to blow you away with his power and majesty. Scour the Bible for examples of things that God does that you would never have anticipated. I hope that God will lead you into a greater understanding of him and a more accurate picture of the way he is moving and working in the world today.

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