(3) He doesn’t show up on time.
The story of Lazarus teaches us this in spades. The Lord works too slowly. He reacts too late. His deliverance takes too long. His clock seems defective.
We can text or email our prayer to God, and He doesn’t text or email back when we expect. In fact, sometimes we never hear back from Him at all. The screen is blank.
Sometimes we’ll pray for an important matter in our own lives … or we’ll pray for someone else … for years. And the dial doesn’t move.
Waiting on the Lord can become exhausting. And it can lead to offense. But God always keeps perfect time.
To sum up, here’s how not to be offended by the Lord:
Remember that He demands everything, and He has promised suffering and tribulation along with blessing and eternal life. So don’t sell out for a cheap, easy gospel. Such is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. He told us what we were getting into and exhorted us to count the cost ahead of time.
Remember that His ways are higher than ours, and He doesn’t always show us what He’s doing or why. We may not always understand what He does or allows, but He can still be trusted. This is the nature of walking by faith rather than by sight. Even when His grace is not sufficient, when we look back, we realize that it was always sufficient.
Remember that God is always on time, but His clock ticks differently from ours. He’s a Lord who sometimes shows up long after the hour of healing has passed and we have been dead four days. Just ask Lazarus.
Being offended by God is a choice. You can choose to take offense at the Lord and stumble over that which you don’t understand. Or you can “trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not unto your own understanding.”
Basing your faith on God’s performance—what you think He should do according to what you’ve been taught about His promises—is a profound mistake. Countless Christians have fallen away from the Lord when He didn’t appear to fulfill His promises. Thus the only solid basis for an unwavering faith and an unshakable devotion is to believe that God is … and that He does “all things well,” no matter what takes place.
A. W. Tozer was correct when he wrote, “The worth of any journey can always be measured by the difficulties encountered along the way.”
Jesus Christ is full of surprises. So much so that if Jesus isn’t surprising you, then you’ve probably stopped growing in Him.
O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!