When God Plays Hard to Get : Part 5

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

(Page 5 of 6)

Martin Luther said that you must know God as an enemy before you can know him as a friend. My old friend Rolfe Barnard used to say to people, "Don't tell me when you were saved, tell me when you were lost." Many people assume they were converted because of a profession of faith, but if they do not recall a time when they knew they were lost and in danger of hell, Rolfe reckoned there was reason to question whether their profession of faith is valid.

Arthur Blessitt tells how he was praying at five o'clock in the morning and God told him to take the cross down from the wall in the coffee shop known as His Place on Hollywood's Sunset Strip and carry it around the world. Arthur sometimes speculates, "What if I had stopped praying at four o'clock that morning?" (I had originally assumed he got up early to pray, but it was a case of Arthur praying all night.) One could push this point too far of course, but Arthur's point was that he prayed and prayed and the revelation to start carrying the cross was pivotal in his life.

Closely akin to recognizing God playing hard to get is breaking the betrayal barrier. This is what every sovereign vessel of God sooner or later must do. There comes a time, puzzling though this may be, when God seems to betray those He loves. It is like when God temporarily left Hezekiah or when Martin Luther felt so deserted God seemed like an enemy. God still plays hard to get. Sadly, some people unfamiliar with God's ways walk away and never know the blessing that could be theirs had they persevered in a time of struggling and testing.

Breaking the betrayal barrier is the spiritual equivalent of breaking the sound barrier in aviation. The latter was a great feat, but breaking the betrayal barrier is far more productive for the world because through this experience God takes His seasoned servants and uses them to turn the world upside down.

God told Abraham to leave his own country and come to the land of Canaan. As Stephen recounted in his speech to the Sanhedrin, "He [God] gave him [Abraham] no inheritance here, not even a foot of ground" (Acts 7:5). Abraham must have felt betrayed. And again, when God told him to sacrifice his son Isaac, he must have felt betrayed. When Joseph refused to sleep with Potiphar's wife but was accused of trying to rape her and then slammed into prison - he must have felt betrayed by God. He did the right thing and was punished. When Moses left Pharaoh's palace but was rejected by his fellow Hebrews, he must have felt betrayed. This list goes on and on, and yet the ultimate sense of betrayal rests with our Lord when He cried out on the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matt. 27:46); He must have felt betrayed. All these broke the betrayal barrier, and so can we, but only if we never, never, never give up.

One of the purposes of this book is to show some of God's ways that have been sadly overlooked. We learn God's ways by developing intimacy with Him, by spending time with Him. My wife knows my ways, and I know her ways. Habits. Likes. Dislikes. Predictable responses. God yearned for a people who would know Him so well they would know His ways. Though you may not like this side of Him I have termed "playing hard to get," it is one method by which He communicates. Call it a peculiarity, eccentricity, or strange part of His personality if you like, that is the way He is.

If God accommodates our ill-posed requests He is being too nice. But He can do that too. I have long been gripped by the King James Version rendering of Psalm 106:15: "And he gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul." Sometimes God gives us what we keep demanding despite His warnings, "This is not best for you" - as when Israel insisted on having a king like other nations. God said to Samuel, "Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king" (1 Sam. 8:7). God granted their request. Nice God. For a while. But not for long.

James encourages us when he says, "You do not have, because you do not ask God" (Jas. 4:2). I like that! But in the next breath he says, "When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures" (Jas. 4:3). I don't like that. I only wonder to what degree this has applied to me over the years. Is God being nice when He gives us what we want? It would seem so for a time, but not for long.

God is looking for a people who want to know His ways, His heart, and His Word so well that they can learn to pray according to His will. I worry about the spirituality of people (however sincere) who are mostly interested in the "word of knowledge" or the "prophetic word" (or rhema word, as it is sometimes called) rather than to know the Bible backward and forward. God hears the prayers of those who pray in His will (1 John 5:14) even if they don't always know they are praying in His will. Paul admitted he did not always know if he was praying in God's will but yielded to the Spirit's infallible intercession which is always in God's will (Rom. 8:26-27). We should keep His will before our eyes whenever we pray because this is what is best for us and what we will never regret.

You can therefore make the case that when God is being nice He really isn't being so nice after all. We will discover at the end of the day that what seemed nice at first wasn't best for us in the long run, that the cost for such niceties eventually becomes too great to bear. God accommodates our comfort zone for a while - when we thought He was being so good to us, but it is only a matter of time before the sobering truth of His playing hard to get is revealed.

The problem is that we hastily assume God is being good to us and answering our prayers and overlooking our superficiality when the truth is that He is instead passing us by. When we are neither hot nor cold but rather lukewarm, we will eventually be spat out of our Lord's mouth (Rev. 3:16). This is the same thing as becoming stone deaf to the Holy Spirit (Heb. 5:13-6:6). Perhaps not today or tomorrow, but it will come.

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.