From time to time I post one of the pages from Grace for the Moment by Max Lucado. Something about that page in particular grabs my attention. So I decide to write and share my thoughts.
Getting Our Attention
Joel 2:13 (New Century Version)
Come back to the Lord your God,
because he is kind and shows mercy.
He doesn’t become angry quickly,
and he has great love.
He can change his mind about doing harm.How far do you want God to go in getting your attention? If God has to choose between your eternal safety and your earthly comfort, which do you hope he chooses?
What if he moved you to another land? (As he did Abraham.) What if he called your out of retirement? (Remember Moses?) How about the voice of an angel or the bowel of a fish? (A la Gideon and Jonah.) How about a promotion like Daniel’s or a demotion like Samson’s?
God does what it takes to get our attention. Isn’t that the message of the Bible? The relentless pursuit of God. God on the hunt. God in the search. Peeking under the bed for the hiding kids, stirring the bushes for lost sheep.
When I read this page, I was shaken. I remembered what it had once taken to get my attention, and my eyes teared. In each of the examples above, with the father of nations, the prophets, and the heroes, God seized a man’s attention by allowing something to happen to that man.
Several years ago God got my attention. How did He seized my attention? When a loved one was strickened with a terrible illness, I did not know what to do. I could find nothing to do — except pray.
So thoughts raced through my head. Did God get my attention by hurting a loved one? Was she put through so much pain and fear just for my sake? I want to believe God is the Holy One who can do no evil, but I do not know God’s thoughts. I only know my own.
So I paused and wondered. First I thought of the Book of Job, of puzzles we cannot solve. Then I thought of the Apostle Paul.
1 Corinthians 13:11-12 (New Century Version)
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I stopped those childish ways. It is the same with us. Now we see a dim reflection, as if we were looking into a mirror, but then we shall see clearly. Now I know only a part, but then I will know fully, as God has known me.
Some think of faith as believing because we want to believe. Yet that is not faith. That is fantasy. Such faith was not Paul’s faith.
Paul knew Jesus, but he still required faith to set aside his doubts and uncertainty. To defeat his doubts, Paul clutched to the belief that God loved him. Paul found the strength to love God because God first loved him.
And so it must be for me. To find the strength to set aside my doubts and uncertainty, I too must have faith that God loves me and those I love.
