His cruel and effective ways

“Why?!” I yelled, out into the sky. “Why did you trick me, God?”

I waited. Silence.

“Why are you slashing my heart to pieces? Why are you doing this to me? Why did you trick me? Why?!”

Ten years ago God was breaking my heart and I had no idea why. The specific way it came about it, the details, how everything lined up — if I was honest about it, it seemed cruel. Deliberate. A calculated blow that sent me reeling.

Just this morning I sat across from a dear girl, tears streaming down her beautiful cheeks. My heart broke with hers because the cracks on mine are in the same place… sacred scars that remind me of God’s beautifully brutal work that cold December day.

There are times, wouldn’t you agree, that when we line up all the evidence it appears God’s hands have worked in cruel and calculating ways? Our deepest insecurity exposed, our worst fear realized, our greatest weakness pinpointed.

Our greatest love called to be slain.

Abraham experienced this, yes? When God requires Abraham bring his beloved son, the child of promise, to the altar and sacrifice him there. What is God thinking? This is surely cruelty if there ever were. Abraham’s greatest love and God asks him to slay the boy himself. Perhaps in all of scripture there isn’t another request more disturbing than this.

But as Abraham passes the test, and willingly gives up his son, God intervenes, spares the boy, and commends Abraham’s faith. A cruel test it would seem, yes? Or, by another perspective, a brilliantly effective work in Abraham’s heart. AW Tozer says this:

“Now [Abraham] was a man wholly surrendered, a man utterly obedient, a man who possessed nothing. He had concentrated his all in the person of his dear son, and god had taken it from him. God could have begun out on the margin of Abraham’s life and worked inward to the center. He chose rather to cut quickly to the heart and have it over in one sharp act of separation. In dealing thus, He practiced an economy of means and time. It hurt cruelly, but it was effective” (Pursuit of God, 27).

In a conversation earlier today a girl asked how I had worked through a certain issue in such a short amount of time (10 years ago). Instead of it taking years it had literally only been one night of tears and wrestling. And it has never come up again.  Honestly, I believe it is because of the paragraph above. Sometimes God deals with us through slow and gradual means, working from the margin into the center. But sometimes he chooses to cut quickly to the heart and have it over in one sharp and cruelly painful act. One isn’t necessarily better than the other, but understanding this concept can carry us through the brutal blows we are dealt.

And what exactly is God’s purpose in this cruel and effective treatment we receive? The blessedness of possessing nothing. We are always tempted to allow things to enter the central shrine where God alone should reign. When these good and blessed things are allowed into the sacred space of our hearts, God will do His brutal and beautiful work extracting them “in agony and blood like a tooth from the jaw.” He created a million good things for us to enjoy but none belongs in the sacred shrine of our heart. He will jealously guard His holy place in our lives.

At all cost.

There is no blessing that can compare with that of possessing nothing. “There is the spiritual secret. There is the sweet theology of the heart which can be learned only in the school of renunciation. The books on systematic theology overlook this, but the wise will understand.”

When God alone reigns on the throne of our hearts we are as we were created to be. The pure and holy dwelling place of God. The process is painful but the result is glorious.

However God is dealing with you today, whether by a slow and steady sanctification or a cruel and painful blow, be sure that He is lovingly guarding the throne of your precious heart — His sacred dwelling. How can you trust the Surgeon’s hand today? {Thank you for reading.}