the long game of God

[7 minute read]

I’ve begun rereading Philip Yancey’s Disappointment With God (highly recommend). His writing style has always appealed to me but his daring insights catch me out even more. Try this one on for size:

If you read Genesis in one sitting, you cannot help noticing a change in how God related to his people. At first he stayed close by, walking in the garden with them, punishing their individual sins, speaking to them directly, intervening constantly. Even in Abraham’s day he sent extraterrestrial messengers on house calls. By Jacob’s time, however, the messages were far more ambiguous: a mysterious dream about a ladder, a late-night wrestling match. And toward the end of Genesis, a man named Joseph received guidance in the most unexpected ways.

Genesis slows down when it gets to Joseph, and it shows God working mostly behind the scenes. God spoke to Joseph not through angels, but through such means as the dreams of a despotic Egyptian pharaoh…

…But shift for a moment to the perspective of God the parent. Had he deliberately “pulled back” to allow Joseph’s faith to reach a new level of maturity? And could this be why Genesis devotes more space to Joseph than to any other person? Through all his trials, Joseph learned to trust: not that God would prevent hardship, but that he would redeem even the hardship. Choking back tears, Joseph tried to explain his faith to his murderous brothers: “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good….
— Philip Yancey, Disappointment With God, 71-72

Yancey really got me thinking about how God goes about his business…and not in the way we would expect. Of course you know this.

For example, the three matriarchs of Israel – Sarah, Rebecca, and Rachel – were each affected with some form of barrenness at one time or another. You would think that God, in inventing a new nation, would have the foresight to choose fertile young women who could pop out babies right and left on a whim to launch his people-project. Not so.

God seems to go about his business in less than flashy style, the hard way. A virgin-born baby in a frontier town. Barren matriarchs who are hardly able to eke out a child or two. The runt of the litter as king of the nation. Even in creation, one of the grandest displays of his majestic purposes, God throws out a little at a time: day one, wait, day two, I’m good, day three, that’s enough for now, and so on. Why not fling everything into being all at once in a monumental great big bang?

He scripted a Church that would stymie the gates of hell… and who did he choose as its first adapters? A handful of rough-and-tumble blue collar types; the foolish, weak, and despised. His M.O. was so frighteningly scandalous he picked the Sanhedrin’s favorite hit man to reform and apostle the growing church toward spiritual maturity.

We know God can dazzle (Matt 17:2) but he specializes in the unnerving manner (to us) of plodding and waiting and delaying. He doesn’t do things the conventional way. He’s not in a hurry and he doesn’t do flashy all that often. We want him to call down fire but he wants us to pray for our enemies. Even when he stepped out of character to curse a fig tree, he walked away from it, leaving it intact… until the next day.

He’s liable to tell us that he has big family plans for us so we get busy preparing the nursery only to have it sit empty for a quarter of a century. My ways are higher than your ways, he reminds us. He’s liable to hear that we are sick unto death then wait four days to show up. By then it’s our funeral, not our sick bed.

Jesus shied away from being coronated too soon and, on other occasions, curiously charged his healed followers to keep it between them and their priest. Turns out, he was playing the long game.

I know how disappointment with God can creep in and lead to discouragement. I’ve been there more times than I care to admit. You might be there yourself. Yancey dedicated his book “For my brother, who is still disappointed.”

A sorely disillusioned Sarah laughed over the prospect of pregnancy in her well-past-due date, and when she did so, exposed a deep well of hurt inside her. Maybe at sixty-five, she sniffed, but not hardly at ninety. God recognized it at once and spoke a sure word into her void: “Is anything impossible for the Lord…?” (Gen 18:14)

Whatever you’re going through, however difficult it seems, just keep on trusting Jesus. Sometimes we’d like it better if God stopped playing the long game and wrapped things up all nice and tidy. Quick like. Allow me to share something with you that has anchored my soul in these recent days.

“As it is, we do not yet see everything subjected to Him. But we do see Jesus…” (Hebrews 2:8-9, CSB)

Read that again. Slowly. Let your soul bathe in those words.

Here’s the thing that mollifies me today. What does the writer of Hebrews emphasize time and again about what Jesus is doing right now? He’s sitting. He’s not pacing and fidgeting; he’s not wringing his hands worrying over how to turn the tide.

Jesus is sitting down.

On a throne.

Reigning like a boss.

Right now we’re in the disquieting realm of “yes, but not yet.” We just had no idea how long not yet was going to last. But right now Jesus is ruling and reigning and interceding. Imagine: the King of the Universe has our names on his heart day in and day out and is working behind the scenes causing chief cupbearers to suddenly remember, giving dreams to Pharaohs, putting you on a different platform, orchestrating famines in other places to bring hungry families to your doorstep, and reconciling and subjecting all things – and persons – to himself. He’s not just “sitting around,” mind you, he’s quite busy making all things new.

The present seems pretty messed up, if we’re being honest. But if we can manage to squint through the fog and gloom of the present “as it is,” and adjust our focus, we’ll see it all coming together — in Christ Jesus — just as God promised long ago.

Don’t lose hope, dear one, long game notwithstanding; I won’t either. See Jesus and, in the comforting words of Julian of Norwich, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

Selah, beloved.

it’s here!

42 years, 255 pages, and dozens of attempts later, it’s done. I’m finally a published author!

Though He Fall: My Journey Through Surrender, Loss, And A Thousand Healings is my testimony of God’s sustaining grace through disability, grief, and a parent’s worst nightmare. Above all, it’s the story of the overwhelming goodness and sustaining grace of God.

Early in the summer, I was pressed, rather than prompted, by the Lord to “finish the book.” It seemed urgent back then, so I laid aside almost all of my other activities and sank myself into the discipline of writing in order to get my story “out there.”

With the generous help and keen eye of some friends, I’m happy to report it’s done. I couldn’t have finished this assignment without Kelli and Tim and Mark and Kim and, of course, Sandy. The book is a whole lot better because of them.

I’m honored to share this project with you and pray you will be given a wider lens through which to see the amazing mercies of God. Indeed, He doeth all things well.

Selah, beloved.

Psalm 37:23,24

sing with me

Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD.

Psalm 95:1

Back in the day I was “a singer who happened to preach.” It all started with “The Fire” followed by “Whatever It Takes.” Those were the most requested. Over 10-15 years there were so many others, plus three self-produced albums with several songs I wrote. Songs for Sandy, songs for Graham, songs about my story, but all for Jesus.

One of my favorite audiences were the disabled. They wanted to hear “Home Free.” Tears everywhere. I even got to sing it onstage with Joni a couple times.

Because of my brokenness and disability I gravitated to songs geared for the suffering. Christine Wyrtzen’s album, For Those Who Hurt, struck a chord that has stayed with me to this day.

Does Jesus Care, Tears Are A Language God Understands, Peace In The Midst Of The Storm, just so many. My college friend Kim wrote a song around the time of my accident, God Makes No Mistakes, which I’ve sung a ton of times with Sandy at the keyboard. Pow.er.ful.

Jesus Led Me All The Way. Goodness, I’m waxing nostalgic today. I’ve Never Been Out Of His Care. Oh yeah, that one too.

It wasn’t really a dream of mine to be a “singer who happened to preach” but the other way around. I love to sing but preaching is my calling. Still, I jibe with the occasional tickle to sing to the church again, especially for the wounded ones who weekly (weakly?) sit in our pews. Maybe one more shot at Home Free for my friends at Handi*Camp or Christian Overcomers. Perhaps a reunion with Joni. Or a duet of My Savior First Of All with Sandy.

I suppose what has me musing and all misty about the ministry of song today was a rabbit trail I took in Psalm 95. “Come, let us sing…” The middle verses got me humming a certain Maranatha chorus I heard long ago. You’ll know it too. The first part of the psalm is nostalgic and celebratory. The last refrain reminds us the Church gathered isn’t always a pretty sight.

The truth is we are a wilderness people and when we gather together to worship our Lord, we are worshiping him out of our desert places. Look around next Sunday. Watch the people. No one has it all together. Nobody has arrived.

Many of the people who assemble on Sundays have come through a week out in the wilderness and haven’t fared so well. Some have had seven days of Meribah. Others may have gotten testy with God or they’ve failed in the way and fallen flat on their face. Here and there are those who are losing faith in the whole process. A joyful number have manna on their breath and are just riding that high.

It’s a safe bet no one’s face will shine so brightly they’ll have to cover it. Probably not even your pastor.

Somebody will be there who feels out of place because they come from a lesser tribe, a labeled past. You’ll know them because they barely lift their eyes.

More than one will come with one foot in promise and another in Egypt. Some of those may even have a golden calf still hiding in their closet somewhere.

To your left might be a once-gifted-leader who blew it big time and is just a shell of the man he once was.

There will be a worshipper nearby who remembers all too well the leprosy of her sin. Her friends remember it too.

A great many however, will have stood on the banks of the Sea and seen God make his name famous. They will, as the first verse in the very next chapter says, “Sing to the LORD a new song.” Such are witnesses to the waters being lifted up and pushed aside, making a way for them to pass through on dry land. They can tell you about that day. Some will weep in worship, others will dance and clap. Some will just stand there shaking their head, still in disbelief.

“Come, let us bow worship and bow down…”

So sing we will, with desert sand between our toes, because Jesus came and changed the Story. To that end “A Christian should be an alleluia from head to foot,” said Augustine.

Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, acknowledging his name.
Hebrews 13:15

I want to sing. I want to sing all those songs I mentioned above, but I don’t want to sing to you; I want to sing with you. A choir, no solos. Broken saints, doubting saints, beleaguered, tired, whipped saints, happy saints, all. “Come, let us sing!” Sing with me, will you?

What shall we sing?

P. S. Here’s the song that started it all for me: