essay
ADVICE FOR GOD
- ADVICE FOR GOD Job to God - “May the day of my birth perish” (Job 3:3). God to Job - “Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?” (Job 38:4) Job is not the only person who felt the need of giving advice to God. Here are others!
- Cain - “I will be hidden from your presence” (Gen. 4:14).
- Abram - “What can you give me since I remain childless”? (Gen. 15:3).
- Moses - “O Lord, please send someone else to do it” (Ex. 4:13).
- Pharaoh - “Who is the Lord that I should obey Him?” (Ex. 5:2)
- Gideon - “I am the least in my family” (Jud. 6:15).
- Elijah - “I am the only one left” (1 Ki. 19:14).
- King Saul - “But I did obey the Lord” (1 Sam. 15:20).
- King David - “The man who did this deserves to die” (2 Sam. 12:6).
- King Solomon - “I have seen all the things that are done under the sun, all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind” (Eccl. 1:14)
- Nebuchadnezzar - “What God will be able to rescue you from my hand?” (Dan. 3:15)
- Peter to Jesus about the cross - “This shall never happen to you” (Matt. 16:22).
- The disciples - “Send the crowds away so they can . . . buy themselves some food” (Matt. 14:15).
- Judas Iscariot - “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor”? (Jn. 12:5).
- The disciples about Lazarus - “Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better” (Jn. 12:12).
- Martha about Lazarus - “But Lord, . . . by this time there is a bad odor” (Jn. 11:39).
- Pilate to Jesus - “Don't you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?" (John 19:10)
- Two on the road to Emmaus talking to Jesus - “Are you only a visitor . . . and do not know the things that have happened?” (Lk. 24:18).
- Peter about Gentiles - “Surely not, Lord . . . I have never eaten anything impure or unclean” (Acts 10:14).
- Sinners at the Judgement - “Sir . . . he already has ten” Lk. 19:25). This list, of course, could easily be expanded. Almost everyone has, at one time or another, felt that we understood things better than God did. It is, of course, totally irrational to think this way. The clay is not smarter than the Potter. The sheep are not smarter than the Shepherd. The created is not smarter than the Creator! Yet, there is constant criticism from some who obviously do not understand the Sovereignty of God. Take, for example, the story of a man born blind. Various opinions for his blindness were suggested. The disciples thought it was because he or his parents had sinned. His neighbors didn’t care and merely saw him as a “beggar”. His parents, of course, loved him as their “son”. Jesus, however, saw him differently. Jesus saw him though the eyes of God . Jesus correctly said “this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life” (Jn. 9:3). Life’s hardships are seen differently in the light of God’s eternal purpose. When the Hebrews came out of Egypt the Scriptures are clear that God was guiding them each step of the way. “So God led the people” (Ex. 13:18). By day He led them in a pillar of a cloud, and by night in a pillar of fire (Ex. 13:20 - 22). When they got “trapped” by the Red Sea, and went three days without water, God was not surprised at all. This is precisely the way He planned it. God deliberately orchestrated these events for His own Sovereign purposes. So, when God leads us in ways we don’t understand, we need to open our mind and not our mouth!