Six questions: Third Question

You called me. Why aren’t you giving me victory?

The champion is not always the victor in the fight.

We are not promised triumph in all of life’s trials and situations. What we are promised is that God has already won the battle for our souls. That being said, our powerlessness sets the stage for God’s movement.

God did not call us to accomplishments; he called us to obedience. Difficult times grind deep the truths and foundations of our faith.

“Violent passions are formed in solitude. In the busy world no object has time to make a deep impression.” (Henry Home)

In other words, we get to practice.

“Here’s the point: God is in the resume-building business. He is always using past experiences to prepare us for future opportunities. But those God-given opportunities often come disguised as man-eating lions. And how we react when we encounter those lions will determine our destiny.” (Mark Batterson)

Or, to put it another way, “no problem equals no miracle.” (Mark Batterson)

Sometimes we are led into the desert of powerlessness in order to get away from anything and everything that may cause us to attribute events to anything other than God’s involvement.

“The wisdom of the desert is that the confrontation with our own frightening nothingness forces us to surrender ourselves totally and unconditionally to the Lord Jesus Christ.” (Henri Nouwen)

Over and over in the Old Testament, God moves in such a way that no other explanation can be given than that of the Providential Hand of God moving in the affairs of men.

For example, Jehoshaphat marched his people out against an overwhelming advancing army—sang—and by the time they got there, their enemies were dead. (2 Chron. 20:1- 30) Or take Gideon’s army, which was stripped down to what seemed like less than a skeleton crew. Their enemies were obliterated. (Judges 7)

“Has any god ever tried to take for himself one nation out of another nation, by testings, by miraculous signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, or by great and awesome deeds, like all the things the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes? You were shown these things so that you might know that the LORD is God; besides him there is no other. From heaven he made you hear his voice to discipline you. On earth he showed you his great fire, and you heard his words from out of the fire.” (Deut. 4:34-36)

You meet God in the furnace of difficulty a long time before you meet him in the sky. (Rich Mullins) And it’s often in that furnace that God’s intervention in daily life shows up the greatest. We see his work for what it is most clearly when it cannot be anything else.

“Then we speak best of God and his goodness when we speak from our own experience, and in telling others, tell God also what he has done for our souls.” (Matthew Henry on 2 Cor. 1)