Well, we're back again for another podcast of Struggling Well and Suzi, as we come to this one, there's a fair number of people in our lives who are walking through difficult times for various reasons, some for health reasons, others for just hard situations in their life right now. And it reminded me, and we've talked about this recently, of a book that our dear friend and mentor Larry Crab wrote a number of years ago, and the title of the book is to me just so it's so spot-on with what people are going through. And the title of the book is when God's ways make no sense. And if we're honest, I know that there's the Christianes answer that we give everybody. But if we're honest, there are times when his ways make absolutely no sense. And then we're left to try to figure out because that's what we typically default to is we're going to figure it out.
And I'm not sure that you can figure it out. out. but that brings us to verses that you and I have talked about many times from the book of Isaiah in the 50th chapter where Isaiah says this, "Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the voice of his servant?" So there's a couple of qualifiers. The fear of God is there and the obedience to what he says in this word. Let him who walks in darkness and has no light. To me, that's God's ways making no sense. Here's the resp Trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God. Behold, all you who kindle a fire, who equip yourselves with burning torches. Walk by the light of your fire and by the torches you have kindled. This is what you'll get from my hand. You'll lie down in torment.
Yikes.
Yeah. I mean, but that to me sums up what we typically try to do when we're walking in darkness. I don't like darkness. I don't want to trip over something. So, I light the little flashlight on my phone or I want there to be light so I can see what's ahead and see what's going on and in that sense try to solve everything for myself.
And God says we have two options. You can walk in darkness and trust me or you can light your fires and think you can figure it out and that's not going to give you the result you want.
It makes me think of a time in our lives when each one of our children at various points went through a difficult time. And I remember one time in particular where this verse was I really wasn't reading the verse because I was pretty angry at what I thought was God's kind of like on vacation mode. And so I thought, well, I'm going to light a torch here. And I didn't think light a torch, but I remember in my consciousness saying, I've got this, God. And so what I did then was I began to try to take something that was a complete mess. And in my humanness, I thought, well, I can bring this back together. and for those of you that have children, whatever age they're at, whether they're young teenagers, young adults, adults with their own families, if you think that your heart disengages as they get older, I'm sorry to tell you that it doesn't. you're still a parent. But I can remember this one time when I was just I didn't understand why God wasn't intervening. It felt like the perfect time. time to intervene. And even right now in our world, it feels like now's a great time, Lord. Come back or intervene, do something. But I remember what I did was I began to step away from I believed God. I loved him. I said I loved him. but I remember taking this situation and trying to do something with it. and I was trying to make things right for my daughter, our daughter, and having her understand what that what she was doing was not a good path. And when I look back, well, it didn't I didn't have to look back very far, but I knew at the moment that I was lighting a torch because I was in such torment from the things that I had done that I thought would work that didn't work. They blew up in my face every time. And I don't see God in heaven going, "Well, there it goes. She tried her on her own again." I think it causes him grief to see me try to flail around to live life without his guidance and his light, but trying to make my own light. And I say this as a partial warning, I guess. When you get to that place where you think I can figure this out, stop and let God speak into that because there is a torment that comes when you try to figure out life on your own.
Yeah. And I think the word that he uses there when you walk in darkness and you have no light. it's simple in this sense. It's easy to understand. Trust in the name of the Lord and rely on your God.
I think trusting God is hard. I think it's again, we say it easily in Christian circles. We say it easily in to our friends at church. you know, we tell them in the midst of the darkness that they may be walking through, yeah, just trust in the Lord.
And that is the answer. Rel relying on God and trusting him. However, to actually live that out is, I think, a really challenging thing to have to do because again, you're, as Isaiah says here, you're in darkness. You don't know what lies ahead,
right?
You don't know what the diagnosis is going to bring. You don't know what the situation at work is going to do. You don't know how you're going to resolve or how u a broken relationship is going to be resolved. And can I trust him? in those moments and rely on him or am I going to go scurrying around trying to do it on my own?
Okay, I unpack that a little bit more because I hear what you're saying, but there's somebody who's listening that those one or two people that are listening, that's a joke. and they're saying, "Okay, how?" Because you know, we want to know how. And that brings us back to when it says in verse 11, "Behold, all you who kindle of fire, who equip yourselves with burning torches,
right? Well, I think again I'll go back to verse 10. How I think you this is where it starts. And again, you we've been married for 48 years. You know, I'm not going to give you three steps to making it easy to trust. But he starts by saying, "Who among you fears the Lord?" So there's a sense of awe and reverence and worship of God
and obeys the voice of his servant. Now Isaiah's specifically talking about his voice, I believe, as a servant. But I think that it's fair to bring this application who obeys his word.
Yeah.
And so if I'm going to trust, then it begins with my attitude towards God, a fear, a reverence and awe of who he is and a willingness to pay attention to what he says in his word.
And you know, I think happens and I think this happens with me is I like I envision kind of a wheel and instead of, you know, going to the hub of the wheel to see that the wheel is running correctly. I start from the outside because I want the situation to be fixed first, then I'll trust you, Lord. So, in other words, I'm putting God to the test all the time. Like, if you don't respond in this many days or the way I want, then I'm going to step away. And so many people do. They say, "Well, God didn't answer my prayer because I have a timetable. I have a solution. I have a theology of how God should be. And when he doesn't work according to that, then I blame him as opposed to getting to know him better to obey him and to fear him. And that comes from being in God's word. I've got to know it.
Yeah. And it's again I this is one of those places we talk about the culture and not liking the culture of our current situation in life. And we think of the things that are obviously against God's design as the designer creator of everything. But I also think things like this instant society that we live in the sense that it needs to happen, it needs to happen now. As you said, it needs to happen on my timetable. those are things that fly in the face of what God says so often in his word. Can you just wait? Can you be still? Can you be patient? Can you listen to my voice? I don't do well with silence. And yet it's in that silence that I think sometimes to hear the voice of God. just a thought that comes to me, Elijah. Elijah is on the run from Ahab and Jezebel and he heads down to this cave because God tells him he'll meet him there and there's lightning and thunder and all these different things and earthquake, but it's not until he sits quiet in the still silence of the cave that he hears the whisper of God.
and I think we're looking for those big explosive God writed in the sky. All those kinds of things when the truth of the matter is he's promised to be with me and can I be quiet long enough to hear his voice.
And this is why we entitled this time together with you struggling well. because it there it's always there's always something that we're struggling with. But the word well our in our context is not that you're like oh you got an A doing that. That's beautiful struggling. But that we're struggling. Well, takes me to ver, you know, verse 10, fearing God and obeying his voice. That's struggling well.
Yeah. I don't ever want to turn my face away from Christ because as we've said in other podcasts and we'll say, I'm sure many times going forward, that's where life is found.
That's where my hope is found and what Christ did for me. So, as you maybe right now are listening and maybe you're in one of those dark places, maybe you don't know what the future holds for you. you resist the temptation to light your own fire and figure it out and solve it and trust him as you walk in the gardens.
Thanks for being with us today.