Telling the Future: Why God Usually Doesn't

There was a time when I didn't know if my house would ever be filled with the chaos and high pitched laughter of little ones.  In fact, several years were fraught with the stress and shame of infertility treatments, the loss of two babies, and the feelings of incredible guilt and inadequacy, all which culminated in one particularly gut-wrenching day when a new series of tests came in and the nurse answered my "So this is it?" question with a sad grimace and a nod.

We had reached the end of the road.  There would be no children.

Until that day, I was positive we would get pregnant, that God would work a miracle as he had with Hannah, Sarah, Rachel, and Elizabeth.  I read my Bible, listened to sermons, and went about my day to day life with my ears and eyes hyper sensitive to any word from the Lord about our struggles, any direction He might give, any tiny hint of hope.

I wanted a baby so badly that many times, I read what I wanted to read, I heard what I wanted to hear.  In short, I saw God's answer everywhere, in everything...but it wasn't God at all. It was my own longing to make my own future.  But, it wasn't until I gave up and accepted whatever He chose for us that He worked His miracles...on His timeline.

Without this experience, I might still believe that knowing the future is a good thing.  Perhaps I might still be convinced that if I just knew why God allowed this or that trial in my life or if He just showed me where this was all headed or how long I had to endure that difficulty, then going through the storm would be easier.

Yet, I know the real truth--if God were to give us a hint at our future, we would feel the need to "help" Him along the way.  And the results would be catastrophic.

Such was the case with Abraham and Sarah.

God had told Abraham the future, that "You will have a son of your own who will inherit what you have" (Gen. 15:4).  Both Abraham and Sarah believed God.  They had faith.  Yet, after so many years passed, Sarah decided to help bring God's prophecy to pass.  

Scripture records that "Sarai, Abram’s wife, had no children, but she had a slave girl from Egypt named Hagar.  Sarai said to Abram, 'Look, the Lord has not allowed me to have children, so have sexual relations with my slave girl. If she has a child, maybe I can have my own family through her'" (Gen. 16:1-2).

Sarah nor Abraham consulted God in this.  They attempted to bring about God's vision of the future through human means.  The result from this meddling was a boy named Ishmael.  Yet, he was not the son of promise.  God confirmed this later when He said, "[Sarah] will be the mother of many nations. Kings of nations will come from her.^'...Then Abraham said to God, 'Please let Ishmael be the son you promised.'   God said, 'No, Sarah your wife will have a son, and you will name him Isaac. I will make my agreement with him to be an agreement that continues forever with all his descendants'" (Gen. 17:15-19). 

Abraham and Sarah's attempt to force God's hand is still playing out centuries later in the Middle East as the Islamic descendants of Ishmael fight against the Jews.  

This same type of "taking over for God" happened later in Israel's history with Rebekah and her son, Jacob.

When Isaac was old and ready to die, he called in his older son, Esau to give him the blessing and inheritance typically given the older son.  Scripture records that "Rebekah was listening as Isaac said this to his son Esau. She said to her son Jacob, 'Listen, I heard your father saying to your brother Esau, ⁷ ‘Kill an animal and prepare some tasty food for me to eat. Then I will bless you in the presence of the Lord before I die.’ So obey me, my son, and do what I tell you.Go out to our goats and bring me two of the best young ones. I will prepare them just the way your father likes them.Then you will take the food to your father, and he will bless you before he dies” (Gen. 27:5-10).

Why would Rebekah interfere and trick her nearly blind husband into giving her favorite son, Jacob, the blessing and not her older son, Esau, as was tradition? What was she thinking!?

In all honesty, I think she was trying to "help" God just as did Sarah.  Years earlier when the two boys were still struggling in her womb, "The Lord said to her, 'Two nations are in your body, and two groups of people will be taken from you.  One group will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger'" (Gen. 25:23).

Could God have accomplished this future without Rebekah's help?  Certainly.  Yet, knowing the future led Rebekah to connive to bring it about, to force God's will to come to pass on her timeline and not His.  And due to her interference, the resulting animosity between two brothers exploded into enmity between two warring nations--Israel (Jacob) and Esau (Edom).

From Genesis to Malachi, the descendants of Jacob and Esau would be constant enemies.  From Esau came the Edomites from the land of Edom, and because of the hatred set in motion by Rebekah's meddling, several generations later, the Edomites refused to allow Moses and the ex-slave children of Israel to cross through their land on their way from Egypt to Canaan.

Even later, Esau's descendants helped destroy the temple in Israel.  The prophet Obadiah exclaims of Edom: "You did violence to your relatives, the Israelites, so you will be covered with shame and destroyed forever. You stood aside without helping while strangers carried Israel’s treasures away. When foreigners entered Israel’s city gate and threw lots to decide what part of Jerusalem they would take, you were like one of them" (Ob. 10-11).  King David even speaks of Edom's role in the destruction of Jerusalem, saying, "Lord, remember what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell. They said, 'Tear it down! Tear it down to its foundations!'"

It makes me wonder if this animosity, this blood-revenge hatred would have been passed down from generation to generation had Rebekah not interfered, had she allowed God to bring His prophecy to pass without her help. Or would God have accomplished the same outcome but without all the animosity.

Sarah and Rebekah show us why God does not often reveal the future to us.  If you know what's coming down the road, you're hyper alert, looking everywhere for the turn-off that you know will take you to your destination.  The problem is, when you're watching and waiting, every exit looks like the right one.

The next time you or I wish we knew what our future held, we should remember God's graciousness in not giving us what we ask for.  

In our humanity, we'd probably just screw it up. 

What If You Can't Work Miracles?

It's the modern-day miracles that stick in our memory.  They're the ones we repeat to friends and family, the kind that only the word miracle can properly describe.     

This word is whispered around the boy who walks away from the pile of crumpled metal that once looked like a car.

It is the only way to explain the couple who survives in a small four-walled bathroom that withstands a tornado's strength while every other wall is blown down for miles around.

Yes, only miracle can describe the woman whose first MRI shows cancerous tumors throughout her body only to have the doctors go in for surgery and find every last trace of illness has vanished. 

We see the power of God in the miracles--big and small--around us.  It is good to give Him thanks for what He does in these kinds of blessings.

The problem comes if we think the power of God will only manifest itself in the miraculous, the unexplainable, the Hollywood-style events.

Yet, if the power of God was never again demonstrated in something Webster's would deem a miracle, still, God's power would be at work.

With all the show-stoppers, we tend to forget the power of the Word of God.

Consider John the Baptist.  

Before his birth, the angel appeared to his father, Zacharias, and prophesied John's coming, saying he would be "'filled with the Holy Spirit while yet in his mother’s womb. And he will turn many of the sons of Israel back to the Lord their God. It is he who will go as a forerunner before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers back to the children, and the disobedient to the attitude of the righteous, so as to make ready a people prepared for the Lord'" (Lk. 1:15-17).

Describing John as having the "power of Elijah" likely caused his parents to think their little boy would be working miracles left and right.  In the Old Testament, Elijah worked sixteen recorded miracles; this was the man of God who prayed that the heavens be shut up and there was no rain for three years, who restored a child's life, who multiplied the oil so a widow did not starve, who divided the waters of the Jordan River.

Yet, even with this promise of power,  John the Baptist performed not one miracle  recorded in Scripture.  

Not. One. 

The power of the Holy Spirit that dwelt within him wasn't inactive.  No.  The power merely manifested itself differently (and no less miraculously). 

Scripture describes this eccentric man wearing camel's hair and noshing on locusts and honey as a magnet for swarms of people traveling great distances to catch a glimpse at this voice in the wilderness: "Then Jerusalem was going out to him, and all Judea and all the district around the Jordan; and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, as they confessed their sins" (Matt. 3:5-6).

The throngs of people didn't come to see John work great miracles.  Instead, they came to hear him preach the Word of God:

"Now in those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying, ' Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.' For this is the one referred to by Isaiah the prophet when he said,

“ The voice of one crying in the wilderness,
‘ Make ready the way of the Lord,Make His paths straight!’” (Matt. 3:1-3).

John's power was The Word. 

He drew men to the desert by preaching nothing but The Word of God.

It was a power that not only drew them to him but that also led them to repent, confess their sins, and be baptized, paving the way for salvation with Christ's coming.

Sometimes, I wish I had catchier stories to draw people to my blog.  Or maybe if I just had a more powerful testimony of being saved out of the worst life possible...  Then, maybe people would listen to what I have to say.  Then, perhaps I would be more instrumental in drawing others to repent and find saving faith.

But I must realize--we must realize--the power of God's Word is enough to draw men and women to Christ.

Those who later met Jesus said of John the Baptist, "While John performed no sign, yet everything John said about this man was true" (Jn. 10:41).

This is what we must strive to do.  

We need not perform any sign or miracle.  We must simply be faithful, like John, and speak the Word of God.  

It is as powerful as any miracle to point others to the truth of Christ and His offer of salvation.

Image: First glimpse of my twins in early 2008. These are truly my miracles.