When God Plays Hard to Get : Part 3

Out of Your Comfort Zone: Is Your God Too Nice?
by R. T. Kendall

(Page 3 of 6)

Yet He does this with all of us. He sees us in our struggle and anxieties and does not step in. There these disciples were, "straining at the oars," with Jesus doing nothing to rescue them! He waited until four o'clock in the morning before He showed up. Then when He did so, walking on the water, He was "about to pass by them." So He wasn't even going to identify Himself, and they too were kept from recognizing Him; they thought He was a ghost. But Jesus chose at that moment to intervene and said, "Take courage! It is I. Don't be afraid" (Mark 6:47-51; Matt. 14:22-27). God is never too late and never too early; He's always right on time.

Consider the Syrophoenician woman of Mark 7:24-30. She was not Jewish but Greek, yet she still approached Jesus and begged Him to drive a demon out of her daughter. Jesus treated her with an almost callous coldness. "'First let the children eat all they want,' he told her, 'for it is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs'" (v. 27). If the Lord said those words to many of us we would walk away in disgust and sarcastically say, "Thanks a lot, sorry to be such a nuisance to you," - and never know what might have been our lot had we persisted as this woman did. Instead of being offended, acknowledging what would be an insult by today's reckoning, and going away in a huff, she reasoned with him: "'Yes, Lord, but even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs'" (v. 28). She knew her place and realized Jesus owed her nothing. Jesus told her, "'For such a reply, you may go; the demon has left your daughter'" (v. 29).

A widespread feeling exists among people today that God owes us something, that if we do something good or righteous, God should stand at attention and salute us. Our self-righteousness creeps in and we say to ourselves, "Most people don't even go to church at all. This puts me in a special class; therefore God should be very happy that I am doing this good deed." The good deed might be attending church, tithing, or spending extra time in prayer. We think God should reward those of us whom we assume are a cut above most people.

My wife, Louise, was miraculously healed in 1995 when Rodney and Adonica Howard-Browne laid hands on her and prayed for her. They invited her to come to Lakeland, Florida, to attend a camp meeting there. She agreed to go. When she walked in the first night, nothing went right. Thousands of people were there, strange people doing what seemed to her very weird things. The people around her seat were even rude, so she got up and moved to another area. She really wanted to go back to the hotel, pack her bags, and get on the next plane back to England. But she stayed. She phoned me two days later to say of the camp meeting, "It is the nearest you get to heaven without dying; it is the greatest experience of my life" (a sentiment I promised myself I would not take too personally). Louise was never to be the same again; those days in Lakeland were more precious than gold, but she initially had every reason to reject the whole experience.

You might think God would be nice and immediately acknowledge those who sincerely seek His face with a tangible sign on a silver platter. He might have been nice to Martin Luther the night that courageous man stood before the authorities at Worms, Germany, in the sixteenth century. After all, Luther was standing alone for the gospel, the truth of God's own Word. But Luther walked back and forth in his cell that final night before the trial crying out to his Lord, "O God, are you dead?" No angelic visitation. No congratulations. No sense of God. Only silence. But the next day Luther uttered words that changed history: "Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen." God wants us to accept His ways and affirm Him as He is rather than seeing Him only how we may want Him to be. When we are out of our comfort zone we can learn His ways.

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." (Isa. 55:8-9)

Moses was possibly the greatest leader of men and women in world history. He was a brilliant military strategist. He understood people and their feelings. He had an extremely high degree of patience, and he did not take rejection personally. This man knew what it was to be loved by his people as well as being hated and rejected.

Things were so bad on one occasion that God stepped in and made a deal with Moses. It was a proposition most leaders I know would have latched onto with both hands. It went something like this: God said, "Moses, these people who are supposed to be following you are a sorry lot. I am tired of them, and I know you are too. Here is what I am going to do: I will destroy them. Yes, I will wipe them off the face of the earth and start all over again with you as the leader." Though paraphrased, this is essentially what God said; read it in Exodus 32:9-10 (Num. 14:11-12). Moses wasted no time in replying to the offer:

Then the Egyptians will hear about it! . . . They have already heard that you, O LORD, are with these people and that you, O LORD, have been seen face to face, that your cloud stays over them, and that you go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. If you put these people to death all at one time, the nations who have heard this report about you will say, "The LORD was not able to bring these people into the land he promised them on oath; so he slaughtered them in the desert." (Num. 14:13-16)

Moses then reminded the Lord that He was "slow to anger and abounding in love" and interceded for the people to be forgiven (v. 18). Had Moses not been knowledgeable in God's ways - or cared more about his own ego - he would have said "Yes, kill these unworthy people, Lord." The psalmist picked up on this event and said, "So he said he would destroy them - had not Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach before him to keep his wrath from destroying them" (Ps. 106:23).

It was God playing hard to get. God wanted Moses to respond exactly as he did. Had he taken the Lord's words seriously when God said, "Let's start all over again and I will make a new nation," Moses would have shown he did not know the Lord very well. Moses had developed such a love for the glory of God that his personal feelings and ego were subservient to the honor. Moses did not value his own reputation and esteem as much as he cared about how the world thought about the Lord. Through this experience God also let Moses see for himself that he was getting to know the Lord's very ways, which was the key to his greatness. There are not many leaders like Moses.

Copyright © R. T. Kendall 2005

About the Author

Dr. R. T. Kendall served for 25 years as Minister of Westminster Chapel in London and now lives in Florida. From there, he continues his career as a popular Christian preacher and writer. His best-selling books include The Thorn in the Flesh, Total Forgiveness, and The Anointing.