WHEN GOD SEEMS TO HAVE FAILED YOU
What do you do when
God’s promises appear to be empty?
BY
ROBERT AND JANE Foster had been called to a small,
struggling church. It was to be Bob’s first pastorate. The church offered only
a small salary, well below the government poverty level. As the church grew,
Bob’s salary would grow also, but meanwhile he and Jane would have to “trust
the Lord.”
After much prayer the Fosters
accepted the call. They believed they were stepping out on the promises of God.
One verse especially summed up the basis of their faith: “But my God shall
supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus” (Phil.
Bob launched into his new
ministry enthusiastically. The people were responsive and their numbers began
to grow. However, the mill that was the chief economic support of the town
began cutting back. One of Bob’s best men was laid off and announced plans to
move away.
Bob and Jane winced, but they
had come here by faith and were not about to give up now. Still, there were
bills to pay, a car to keep running, and two small children who needed food,
clothing, vitamins, doctor visits, and maybe a trip to McDonald’s once in a
while.
Six months later the
“temporary” mill curtailment turned into a permanent closure. No longer was
there any possibility of living on what the church could pay. Bob and Jane were
beaten.
“It took us several years to
get over that,” they said later. “Not just the hardship of being poor. Worse
than that was the blow to our faith. We had counted on what we thought was
God’s promise and we had been let down. How could we ever again be sure of any
of His promises?”
DISAPPOINTED FAITH
Like Bob and Jane, many
Christians have had their faith disappointed. They have believed God was
promising them something but then have failed to receive it. Consider two more
cases.
The healing
that never comes. Francine was a delightful, warm-hearted woman. She
loved the Lord and she loved people. She was the spiritual sparkplug of her
family. Though her husband and two teenaged children were Christians, it was
Francine who glowed for God. Even after grim doctors diagnosed her “gall
bladder problem” as liver cancer and estimated that she had only ten weeks to
live, Francine remained positive. She believed in the healing power of God. Far
more than affirming that God could heal her, Francine believed that He would.
As she prayed and studied the
scriptural promises, Francine became even more certain of her healing. It made
no sense for her to die. Her family needed her. She was a key witness for
Christ in a dark community. She was still young – only 39 years old. Surely
this sickness was an attack of Satan.
Francine got some teaching
tapes that encouraged her to “name it and claim it.” Whatever she would ask in
Jesus’ name, believing would be granted. The Word of God said so (Matt.
The ten weeks allotted by her
doctors came and went with Francine still very much alive. She reported at a
church service that she’d had a vision from the Lord. In the vision, she had
seen herself completely healed.
So, despite
the yellow color of her skin, evidence of a diseased liver, Francine kept
“naming and claiming” her healing. Then, about eighteen months after she
became ill, Francine noticed one day that her stools had turned white. That
meant the disease had proceeded to the point of no return. Her liver was
damaged irreversibly and she could not survive.
Francine wept out her fear and
disappointment to a close friend, but then resumed her “naming and claiming.”
There were preparations for death that Francine needed to make but couldn’t
because she was “going to be healed.” Her family, reflecting her attitude,
treated her almost as if she were not sick. Longstanding problems between
Francine and her children continued unresolved, just as they had for years.
Toward the end, she became too weak to deal with all the questions: Why had she
not been healed? What happened to God’s promise?
About two years after she
became ill, Francine died. Her husband and children haven’t been to church
since.
The equal
yoke that breaks. Michelle is a young mother of four children. Her first
husband walked out on her years ago. Since then, Michelle has come to know the
Lord and has found a whole new life in Christ.
Like most other single parents,
Michelle entertained hopes of one day marrying again. Her church taught that as
the innocent party, Michelle was free to marry “in the Lord.” That meant she
should marry a man who shared her faith in Christ, and that she needed to marry
in God’s will.
“We know it’s hard to wait, but
God will bless you for it,” her friends said. Michelle had made her commitment
to Christ as Lord and she wasn’t about to compromise that now by marrying
unwisely. She committed the whole matter to the Lord.
Two years later Michelle walked
down the aisle, her heart almost bursting with joy. She had honored the Lord
and now He had given her a Christian man with whom to share the rest of her
life.
Today, Michelle is alone again
with her four children and living on welfare. Her second husband, a Christian,
walked out on her.
HARD QUESTIONS AND EASY ANSWERS
Time and space would not allow
us to tell of those who have tithed and not prospered, asked and not received,
trained up children to follow the Lord and then seen them depart.
What can we say about these
apparent tragedies? How can we understand why some act on faith in God’s
promises and then are disappointed? Let’s consider some answers often
suggested. Perhaps each one is partially correct.
1. The promises don’t fail; people do. Perhaps the most common
reaction people have to another’s disappointed faith is suspicion or even
accusation: “Let God be true, and every man a liar” (Rom. 3:4). If your faith was
disappointed, you must have failed to meet the conditions; that’s all there is
to it. If a child goes astray, he wasn’t truly trained up in the way he should
go. If a pastor was driven out by lack of funds, he must have given up too
easily or failed somehow. If a sick person was not healed, he must have lacked
faith or misinterpreted the promise in the first place. If a woman’s marriage
fails twice, there must be something seriously wrong with the woman.
Maybe so.
Sometimes people do fail God and then blame Him for failing them. However, to
assume this is true in every case can be both judgmental and cruel. It places
us in the company of Job’s accusers – they were sure Job was responsible for
the calamities that befell him. In their view, either God or Job was at fault.
Since they were not about to blame God, that left Job as the only candidate.
They were wrong.
2. The promises are “spiritual”, not literal. With a little
imagination, one can explain away almost all of God’s promises. Does the Bible
say, “My God shall supply all your need”? Yes, but what does a Christian really
need? Nothing but Jesus, some say. We don’t even need to survive here on earth.
One preacher argued that this is why the verse says God will supply your need
rather than your needs, your only
need is Jesus.
The many promises of answered prayer
can be dealt with handily by a similar kind of “spiritualizing.” People pray
for a sick person to get well; they claim the relevant promises. Then when the
patient dies someone says, “He has received his perfect healing. He has gone to
be with the Lord where there is no more sickness or pain.” If it’s prosperity
that’s promised, one can say, “Well, we may be poor in this world’s goods but
we are rich in heavenly things.
This approach is not totally
wrong. No doubt some have claimed promises that God never made, at least in the
way they understood them. Perhaps parents understand this best because children
frequently read into their remarks ironclad promises they never intended.
“Can we go to the beach next
Saturday? Please Mommy?” “Well, maybe, if it’s a nice day.”
Saturday dawns bright and clear, and before Mommy is even wide awake the child is
excitedly preparing for the beach.
“We can’t go, dear,” Mommy
explains. “The car is broken down.” “But you promised! Waaaah!”
It is possible to read into
another’s words more than that person intended. Perhaps, we sometimes do that
with God. But explaining away God’s promises in this fashion can also be a
cop-out. For example, it is unlikely that Paul meant a Christian’s only need is
Jesus when he said God would supply. He makes the statement in the context of
discussing material gifts.
Maybe some promises are to be
taken spiritually, but we also need to remember the old maxim: “Those who have
spiritual eyes don’t spiritualize and thereby tell spiritual lies.”
3. The “promises” are general statements of fact or they are addressed
to others; they are not personal guarantees to us.
“Train a child in the way he
should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it” (Prov. 22:6). Some would say this is not a guarantee from God that
your child, if he is trained properly in Christian faith, will be a Christian.
It is rather a general observation about the nature of life. Childhood training
will ordinarily have a lasting and decisive effect on a person.
They would point out that the
saying is, after all, a proverb, and identified as such in the text (see Prov.
10:1). It is a saying much like, “A stitch in time saves nine.” Should a stitch
in time prove to be wasted on occasion because the whole fabric is rotten, that
would not invalidate the proverb.
Other promises, one might
argue, are like the assurance Paul gave the Philippians that their needs would
be met and supplied. The promise was addressed to them, not us.
While there is validity in the
argument that not everything in the Bible applies directly to us, we’d lose
virtually the whole Book if we never accepted any command or promise originally
addressed to someone else.
FAITH IN FORMULAS
How do we know when a biblical
promise or statement is ours to claim literally and personally? That’s a tough
question. We don’t want to be among those of little faith who do not have
because they do not ask. But neither do we want to end up doubting God – or
secretly angry at Him – because we have assumed too much.
My own answer to the question
is that if a humble study of the Scriptures plus the inner witness of the
Spirit leads me to believe a promise is for me, then I claim it. But even when
I do so, I try to center my faith in the Promiser rather than in the promise.
There is a big difference.
Something about human nature
loves formulas. We want predictability, regularity, uniformity. We sometimes
try to put God in little boxes – we want predictable, regular, and uniform
behavior from Him. Within very large parameters, even this desire is
legitimate. God is love, and we may expect that He will predictably, regularly,
and uniformly act on the basis of love.
However, as
Paul writes, “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable His judgments, and His paths beyond tracing out!” (Rom.
Job found that God didn’t
always act according to his expectations, nor
according to those of his contemporaries. Still he was able to say, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him” (Job
Isn’t that what true faith is
after all – trusting God no matter what happens? We cannot be sure God will
always do what we think He should. David wrote, “I was young and now I am old,
yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread” (Ps. 37:25). But David never knew the
seven nineteenth-century missionaries to
Nevertheless, God does take
care of His own. If in His divine wisdom, He sees fit
to make an exception to some general rule, we should say, “Let God be God.”
Yes, we can trust God to keep
His promises. More than that, we can trust God. He is the King of the
universe, the all-knowing
Sovereign,
the Almighty. He has said He loves us… and He sent His only Son to prove
it. And that is a God to be trusted!
Discipleship Journal, Issue 38, 1987.