Life on God’s Terms
Is it a coincidence that I break my long blogging silence with a discussion of the great 400 years of silence? Who knows…
I was reading a little history about the 400 years that transpired between the Old and New Testaments, and I was really impressed by the faith of the Israelites who lived during that time. 400 years with no prophet, no sign, except for the annual troubling of the water at the Pool of Bethesda, and this group of people held on to faith, worshipping the one true God, looking for the promised Messiah.
It’s disturbing to me, that they seem to have done everything right. They held on to God’s promises and waited in hope until the Messiah should come. But when the fulfillment of this long-awaited prophecy finally burst on the scene, they missed it. How horrifying to endure suffering and oppression for so long, only being kept going by the hope of one promise, and then to miss the promise when it comes… How does that happen?
Looking more closely at the Israelites of that day, they made some crucial mistakes that we can learn from today. They received God’s promise, but they only received it on their terms. They took what God said, and saw how it could benefit them, and only really received the parts that lined up with their desires and expectations. The Old Testament prophecies said a lot about the suffering of Christ and gave clues that he was not going to be an ordinary king like what they expected, but very few received those words. They only heard what they wanted to hear.
Our minds are so powerful, that we can sometimes ignore key information if it does not lend to our desired outcome. Kind of like the young lady who cannot see giant red flags even when they are pointed out by people who love her, because she really wants him to be “The One”.
The lesson I took from this particular example, is that we have to be open to God’s terms for our lives. We can’t come to God with already preconceived notions as to who we are and what we are called to do. Even as he is the one who made us and the one who called us, God knows who we will be, how we will get there and everything in between. When we come to God on our terms, we really miss out completely and we are only really serving ourselves. <— read that again, that was heavy 
God’s Word is the best way for us to stay in a place of being open to His way at all times. His Word doesn’t slant to our wants and desires, it stands by itself. The Word of God says what’s right even when it is not what we want to hear. We have to prepare ourselves to receive everything God’s Word has to say to us. Combined with prayer and a conscious effort to obey what God tells us, we will remain in a place where we won’t miss our long-awaited promise.
