A little over a month ago one of
the men of our congregation telephoned with news no pastor likes to hear. His
lovely wife had been diagnosed with a serious illness. What made the news
particularly grim was that there was a family history of succumbing to the
disease.
For various reasons we were
not able to meet together until a day and a half later. When we did, I was
overwhelmed with awareness that this was a time for reality. To put it another
way, this was a time when we needed a real, personal and living God. In trouble-free
times we can get by (we think) with God as a mere idea. But when trials like
this strike we need him as a very real and present Helper. We need to be able
to reach out and find God and experience his faithful love. Ideas about him are
not enough.
If we are honest, most of us
will have to admit that for much of the time God is an idea in our minds more
than an experienced reality in our lives. We know a good deal more about him than we know of him. We read in the Bible that he is
our Shepherd and Rock and Salvation. We learn there that he is good and
powerful and wise and loving. We agree that all of these things are true and
rejoice in them. And in that respect we can say that we believe them.
Yet it is possible for us to
do so without actually experiencing God ourselves. We believe what we read
about God to be true and that others have experienced him to be who he is in their
lives – especially the “great ones” of the Bible. But we haven’t ourselves. We
read, for example, the story of Solomon asking God for wisdom and being given
it in a remarkable measure (1 Kings 3). We thrill at the response he gave to
the two women disputing over a single living baby and say, “How wonderful this
is! How wise God is and how good he is to give such wisdom to men.” But we tend
to leave it there. We think that Solomon’s experience of God was just for him
and not for ordinary people like us today.
I don’t for a moment want to diminish
the strategic role in redemption of the great figures of the Bible. Nor do I
want to downplay the fact that sometimes God demonstrates his power in ways
that he doesn’t normally. But what I do want to stress is that the men and
women that we read about in the Bible were like us, mere men and women. The God
they encountered is still our God, and the kind of experiences we read about in
the Bible can be known by us as well as them. We too can discover that God
gives wisdom, boldness, power and courage.
That’s the point James makes
when he writes about elders praying for the sick (James 5:14-18). He encourages
people to expect the “prayer of faith” to heal the sick, just as Elijah prayed
and it didn’t rain for three years. Elijah, he says, was a man just like us. And
if his prayers could have such effect, ours can too. It’s a mistake to believe
that the kind of experienced relationship to God we read about in the Bible is
restricted only to the people of the Bible. Their experiences are unique; but
their God is the same as ours. And we should expect to find him real to us as
he was real to them.
He only becomes real to us,
however, as we relate to him. Merely knowing he is there is not enough. It’s as we connect with him and call upon him
that we discover he is real. He does hear and respond. We can experience that
he is loving and powerful and forgiving and strong as he reveals his presence
in our lives. That’s what can make seeming tragedy a blessing. Tragedies force
us to look beyond ourselves. We can’t cope with them ourselves, and they make
us look to the One who is bigger than we are. That’s the rationale behind the
saying “there are no atheists in foxholes” during wartime. Even the most
self-reliant of people find themselves in need of help from above when they are
surrounded by exploding mortar shells and deadly rifle fire.
The key to the Christian life
is to live every day conscious of being in the presence of the living God. More
than that, it is to live aware that we always need him. We need the heart
attitude that looks to the Lord always. We don’t just wait until trials hit; we
live by faith in him every moment. No activity is to be too trivial, no
circumstance too insignificant to share with God. Life with him is meant to be an
intimate fellowship of never-ceasing dependence and blessing. When that
happens, God does become real to us. We begin not only to believe things about
him but begin to experience him.