God is NOT a Man

God is not a man, so He does not lie.
He is not human, so He does not change His mind.
Has He ever spoken and failed to act?
Has He ever promised and not carried it through?
Numbers 23:19 NLT

The biggest impediment to my relationship with God is assuming that I know what He wants from me – and why.  In my old nature, I really do think that I know how the mind of God works.  I wonder if I have company?

Since I am on making peace with parents, I will be looking at this contemptible presumption in light of those dealings.  When I was listening to the teachings and reading the scriptures, and I just knew how it would all go down. I was going to get stuck with the short end of the stick and told to like it or lump it. 

Now, I am a violently vengeful creature in my old nature.  I use examples in my posts wherever possible, because I don’t want anyone to assume that I am prone to exaggeration.  I once told God that I would be content with an eternity in hell provided that a particular person was next to me suffering the same fate. I run hot.  So I just knew that forgiveness meant me swallowing every hurt, while the bad guys run around happy and unscathed.  It was easy to think that right up to the day of my own reckoning.  Somewhere between the shock and awe of God’s wrathful confrontation and the unbearable bliss of complete forgiveness, I finally realized that God is GOD – not a human.

My parental dealings looked NOTHING like I thought they would.  And the result of these dealings is beyond what I could have imagined.  I am continually surprised by God because I am ever boxing Him in with my presumptions.  When I cease to assume that I can comprehend the mind of the Creator of the Universe, then I’ll live in the delighted wonder of a child and not the surprised bewilderment of an adult.

So Maybe you had walking horror stories for parents and you just KNOW that God will put you back with them.  Maybe your parents weren’t that bad and you just KNOW that God is going to come in and tornado through the Thanksgiving dinner that you love.  Let me encourage everyone dealing with parents (or any other Cross-encounter, really): you know absolutely NOTHING about what God wants, until He tells you.

Our Father is so loving and patient and faithful that He WILL do all that it takes to bring you into right relationship with Him.  But it will be on His terms and in His good time, and we DO NOT KNOW His ways until He shows us.  He is not capricious and irresponsible and unreliable.  He is not human; He is GOD.  And God is LOVE.

You have turned things around,
as if the potter were the same as the clay.
How can what is made say about its maker,
“He didn’t make me”?
How can what is formed
say about the one who formed it,
“He doesn’t understand what he’s doing”?
Isaiah 29:16 HCSB