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Israel’s years in the wilderness, and their subsequent complaining, was always a distant thing to me. Whenever I would hear the story, I would think, “Silly Israelites. Why do they keep complaining? How could God not just wipe them out? Instead, he keeps blessing them, even when they continually doubt him and ask for more.” It wasn’t until this past week that I identified with them.
For years, I have wanted to get married. Sometimes I would become bitter because my friends were getting married and I wasn’t, or the man I liked didn’t like me back. I kept thinking that the desire for marriage is a godly one, one that I believe God has placed in me, but for years he has kept me single. I would question God’s purpose for keeping me single and get angry.
However, isn’t that somewhat what Israel did as well? They doubted God’s plan for them in the wilderness. He put them through trials and temptations in the desert to test them, and they would fail every time. Even in their failure, God would bless them (with manna, quail, and eventually the Promised Land), but he would still test them. My singleness is also a test, and although I don’t know what God is trying to teach me during these years, it helps to know that he has put me in this position in life to teach me something, to use me in other peoples’ lives, and to show me grace even through my unfaithfulness. When I doubt God’s love for me in ‘keeping me single,’ I’m doubting like the Israelites. God brought them out of Egypt and into the Promised Land, and God brought me out of sin and will bring me to heaven. Ultimately, His Son was the biggest show of grace for me, and has obeyed fully in the ‘wilderness,’ and thankfully that perfect obedience is credited to me. But in the ‘wilderness’ of our lives on earth, we’re all tested in different ways. Right now, I want to be in a different part of the wilderness than I am, but at this moment, God has, in his providence, put me in this single state, and I am called to trust him.
This is my first ever blog entry so please bear with me if this is rambling or awkward. I need to get used to this whole idea!
So, one thing that is increasingling driving me nuts as I talk with women about theology and bible studies is the idea of practicality. It’s either why is it practical to study theology or take this Bible story and make sure we apply it. It seems to all boil down to application, application, application. While I do agree that what we learn about God does need to have an impact on our lives, it seems that we so focus on how I need to apply this to my life that we lose the important content of the Scriptures, who Christ is and what he did, and try to rely on ourselves rather than the Holy Spirit to effect the changes in our character and relationships.
Before I rant too much, I should say that I see studying theology in a similar manner to getting to know another person. Some people might argue that all I need to know God is the Bible. Well sure, but how do you know that what you believe about God from what you have just read is an accurate representation of the whole of Scripture? To me, reading and studying theology is understanding how the Church over centuries has understood God to have revealed himself in his Word. The Church is not infallible, but she is guided by the Holy Spirit, and I as an individual can come up with some pretty wacked out beliefs about God if left to my own devices.
Think of studying the Church’s position like talking to the mother or siblings or lifelong friends of your boyfriend or husband. They have known him much longer and have insights into his behavior that may surprise you, or explain some odd behavior you didn’t understand before. They know his history, the things that are important to him and why. The Bible does this for us, showing us God’s relationship with his people, how he planned our redemption from the beginning, how he pointed us forward to his Son and his work. But really understanding all that the Scriptures say to us of God takes more than just me and the Bible. We need help putting the pieces together to understand how great and holy, how mighty, how just and merciful he is. We get a good understanding (or think we do) of other people by looking at their relationships with other people besides ourselves. We do the same with God, looking at his faithfulness through the centuries to his people comforts and encourages us in his faithfulness to us today. Theology helps us give categories to that understanding and terminology for it.
And with greater understanding comes deeper relationship. The more we understand about God, about ourselves, about how we relate to God and each other, the better our relationships with God and others should become. And isn’t that the most practical change of all?
I often latch onto words or phrases that have played some role in my life and then somehow they become descriptors for everything around me. A few years back the concept of idolatry was reintroduced into my thinking about my life, until that point it had been reserved for golden calves and ominous wooden statues from the Old Testament. As my awareness of the relevancy of idolatry increased tremendous change started to happen in my life. It was like naming and identifying this hidden undercurrent that spanned my entire life.
Needless to say, idolatry has been one of those phrases for me, and though I find it very useful to identify the things we worship as idols (since that is what they are), I think that description has the tendency to lead us in the wrong direction. You think of idols and you think, silly person, stop worshipping that. It has a law driven connotation and doesn’t take into account the pain associated with it. More importantly than that, it doesn’t lead us to the only thing that can help us – the gospel. We can’t just stop worshipping our idols without latching onto the truth that Christ is our victor, that in him nothing truly has the power to master us.
I was listening to a lecture on counseling today and instead of referring to this as idolatry, it was pointed out that the New Testament talks about this as your desires, the desires of the flesh, your sinful desires. This opens up the door for so many things, an idol is a desire run amuck. The desire for marriage is a good one, nothing wrong with wanting to be married, we go wrong when it begins to rule us. So yeah, we all have idols that we worship, but maybe a better way of getting at them is beginning to think of the desires in our lives that are acting more like destructive tyrants than longings that point us to our creator.
I heard another sermon on Sunday (I guess that’s the typical day to be hearing them) on Acts and the calling of Saul/Paul. One thing that convicted me while reading is Paul’s desire to give his all for Christ. So often, all I desire is a spouse to do ministry with…a spouse who will lead me, whom I can support, and who will join me in serving others in the church or mission field. When that spouse comes, I feel, THEN real ministry can happen in my life…God will be able to use me to the best of my abilities because I will be able to be led by a man who wants to serve others as much as I do.
However, Paul’s stipulation of service was not, “Lord, as soon as you bring a spouse into my life to serve WITH me, THEN I’ll serve you.” No, instead it was, “Here I am Lord, use me where you’ve placed me, even if I must die for your sake.” How convicting! Not until I see Paul’s selflessness in his 30 years of service to Christ am I convicted of my own self-centeredness in my desire to serve Christ as well.
Whether or not I’m single, God’s put me here in this situation to be used by Him for His glory. Obviously, it is not His will that I be married, but that doesn’t mean I’m limited in my ability to serve Him. He’ll place opportunities in my path when He wants me to serve, and I shouldn’t be looking for the ‘what if’s’ or ‘if only’s’ in life before I serve Him. He asks that I look to Him for completeness, which is something I need to learn and will keep learning until I see Him one day.
