I am so thankful for the last sentence of confession from Tozer. Unity with God is not something we can fully comprehend. We’ve been deformed and we practice deformation. God is not something we can attain cerebrally. He is a person we can know personally. And we must know Him personally. Maybe you don’t recognize Him as Jesus or you don’t recognize Jesus as Him yet but He is right there knocking on your door, asking to be invited in. He wants to be known by you. I think everyone, no matter where they are in their walk with God, needs the humility Tozer shares with us today: to embrace and trust Someone with much bigger, much better plans than we can think up for ourselves.
I used to be someone that needed to ‘see things to believe’ them. I needed proof data. I needed a logical argument to ‘believe.’ If I was going to place my trust in something I needed to verify it first. Just to be absolutely sure. And I would justify this as trying to be wise and responsible. ‘I’m too smart to believe in something like that.’ Really, logically, it’s asinine to only ‘believe’ things you can understand. No offense but that’s an extremely limiting belief to adhere to. Imagine if in your professional development you never listened to someone that had done it previously. Maybe you heard them but you went off to try it on your own terms. You might come up with some flashy tricks and inject some fresh perspective but there is usually a very good reason why things are done a certain way. Typically you can’t see that reason when you start out due to inexperience but as you practice as an apprentice under a craftsman, you begin to see the why. An apprentice learns why they do what they do after they do what they do over and over again for a long, long time. As an apprentice learning a craft you have to submit your understanding to a master-craftsman. I’m sure we can all think of personal examples of this. If you’ve ever put together IKEA furniture and skipped steps because they seemed unnecessary, unimportant, or impossible to figure out, you might know what I am talking about. Or you might find out soon. In order to do it correctly and safely, it’s best to submit to the directions. And no matter how confusing and difficult they are to understand you keep at it. You can even call someone to help you! Admittedly, I’ve never done that with IKEA furniture but I know it’s there. They have that little picture of the confused guy on the phone. I fear many Christians don’t make that phone call either.
No, we can’t always comprehend or understand the way the Lord works but we can embrace Him. We can Trust Him understanding that it will take a period of diligent practice before we are able to understand.
My wife Alysha and I host a podcast called Disrupt the Comfort. In it we discuss what the Lord has been teaching us and how the Lord is moving us out of darkness into light. check us out on YouTube or Spotify.
Please check out our woodworking shop! It helps fund our Disrupt the Comfort ministry. If you have any custom furniture or home décor needs, please reach out! mbwwstudios@gmail.com