He’s never not been there.
But it is possible that He’s gone unnoticed
Every single step of my life and every dream I dreamed along the way is cataloged in the pages of this well-worn Bible, detailed in journals kept since I was thirteen years old. I revisited some of those old prayer journals, unearthing a whole new crop of great-is-thy-faithfulness kind of evidence.
About fifteen years ago, I wrote the line “my heart cries out to see with Your vision, God; to know the end of each step of faith.” I’ll spare you the even more dramatic lines penned by the twenty-five-year-old version of me. That girl had no idea what was coming, but had plenty of ideas about what God should be doing.
I guess things haven’t changed that much.
Have you ever paused and considered what you would tell your younger self? I think it’s a good practice because it forces us to stop, to take stock of how much we’ve grown. And odds are, the advice we’d give to the younger generation is advice we still need to hear now.
The lessons might look different, but when you get right down to it, isn’t it still about our willingness to trust Him at a deeper level?
There are levels to this. Solomon reminds us in Ecclesiastes that there is nothing new under the sun. The sun he wrote about centuries ago is the same one that rises and sets every day in 2023, so I guess that means we’re still dealing with the same old stuff. The lessons might look different, but when you get right down to it, isn’t it still about our willingness to trust Him at a deeper level?
And what is to be gained as we learn these lessons?
There is a difference between reading about God and experiencing God. That’s what I would tell the twenty-five-year-old version of me. The girl who wrote that aforementioned line had read far more than she’d experienced, and yet she experienced about all she could handle at that age.
God is close to the broken-hearted and He saves those who are crushed in spirit. That’s a level of sorrow I’d not yet encountered. And though younger me would likely object to that truth, truer words were never spoken.
Disappointment.
Heartache.
Unmet expectations.
Delay.
Loss.
There is a difference between reading about God and truly experiencing God.
All of these things lead to heartbreak. Heartbreak paves the way for the nearness of God. His nearness becomes the means by which we hear Him whisper words of hope and sing songs of rejoicing over us.
If our hearts don’t break, then our wills won’t be broken. If our will isn’t broken, we cannot lay hold of God’s will for our lives. Experiencing heartbreak might just mean that we get to experience God.
He’s never not been there. But it is possible that He’s gone unnoticed.
“My heart cries out to see with your vision; to know the end of each step of faith.”
Silly girl… He is the end. He is your reward.
If you saw what it would take to get there – if you truly saw with His vision – you’d never take a step.
If you knew how much your heart would break, how much your stubborn will would prove to be incorrect – and how often, for that matter, you would learn and relearn that lesson – you’d have already quit.
Experiencing heartbreak might just be the means by which we experience God.
It is the kindness of God that hides the fullness of His plan from us. He is not punishing us. Rather, He is calling us, moment by moment, to trust Him. He teaches us to walk by faith until those are not just words underlined in pink gel pen on the pages of 2 Corinthians, but actions we take day in and day out.
He teaches us to experience Him so that His presence never goes unnoticed.
Imagine the pain that Jesus endured, the suffering of our Savior carried out so that we may be able to commune with Him unhindered. Now imagine going through all of that and being unnoticed by the one whose sin sent you to the cross.
Worse than the pain of rejection is the pain of being unseen.
He’s never not been there. And it is our heartache that teaches us to see. It is our present that allows us to review our history with Him.
Our unmet expectations can lead to an unmatched experience with God when we walk by faith, undeterred by what we perceive.
Our unmet expectations can lead to an unmatched experience with God when we walk by faith, undeterred by what we perceive.
I’d tell myself to not be so hard on myself. And that people really do really like me. And that God is closer to me than water is to fish. But your mother probably figured out this out about me a long time ago.