D. Patrick Collins

One of the things I am learning in this season is just how powerless I am. I am a high-achiever by nature. I was voted most likely to succeed in high school and graduated valedictorian.¹ I know how to get things done. And in life I have certainly done some things well. But there has been a sense of being unable to step into my true purpose and calling, a feeling I am arm’s-length away from what I was actually put on this planet to do.

I suspect this is true for many of us. We have yet to step into the fullness of our destiny. When we feel we are not quite where we want to be in life, the temptation is to push. It is to try to make something happen. This is especially true when we know God has called us to the thing we desire. Many of us in fact have been spiritually trained to do so. God wants what is best for us, He is for us, and He has delegated everything we need to make the life he has for us a reality. Such training has merit; it is much better than being completely unaware and unwilling to believe God has much of anything for us, much less prepared to partner with him in the adventure he has for us.

But there is a counterbalance to all this, and it is that nothing happens apart from His Spirit. It is only by His Spirit that anything lasting and worthwhile is accomplished. The line of demarcation between doing nothing and doing something with our lives is not defined by activity or inactivity per se, but by our responsiveness to His Spirit. In preparation for our calling, God often detours us and calls us to the deep places with Himself. It is not because He wishes to frustrate us or His own plans. It is because our destiny is much more than what we do: it is who we are. God is not just accomplishing destiny through us; He is building destiny in us. Our career path is not the destiny: we are. There is therefore purpose in the waiting. There is purpose in the delay. There is purpose even in the setback and moment and season of disappointment. There is purpose even and especially when things go horribly wrong and do not work out.

Some of us struggle with this. We do not believe God causes all things to work together for our good. Especially the things that blow up spectacularly in our faces, the things that seem to be the very opposite of all that we know is true about Him. We refuse to believe God could be behind some of the things that we walk through. We would rather believe God is in control of those moments of our lives that go well where His extravagant grace is undeniable. We choose to believe God is the God of revival only, not the God of all of our lives; we reason there is a small portion of life God occupies called His manifest presence, and in every other area of our lives, we are on our own. But this is not because we actually are. It is because we have refused to acknowledge Him as the God whose care embraces all that transpires in our lives.² We have chosen unbelief over faith, and it has blinded us from seeing God in the moments He is often doing his best work.

And sometimes His best work is bringing us to a place of realizing just how powerless we really are. That we really can do nothing apart from Him. That everything rests on His ability to show up and make something of our present mess, and of our lives. And that we can trust Him to do so.

1. Technically, co-valedictorian, a status I shared with two other students. ↩︎
2. Matthew 10:29 ↩︎

What hope the Word of God brings! The fact is: everything is possible. We may wonder how to believe in the manner Jesus commands, but the fact everything is possible means no situation is hopeless. Not one. Not even up to the bitter end. Even in our worst moments when things look hopeless, there is no telling what Jesus might do.

But have you ever asked yourself why faith is necessary? I mean, if God is as good as we believe he is, why does he require faith in order to make the seemingly impossible possible? Why does God require that we believe it in order for him to do it? Especially when one considers the difference between him doing it can be the difference between suffering and not suffering, between us seeing a young man demonized and being delivered from a demon? Between us suffering under the weight of whatever impossible situation we find ourselves in, and being liberated from it? If God is so good, why faith?

I mean, is faith nothing more than God making us jump through hoops in order to experience the fullness of his blessings?

I do not believe so. God requires faith because faith itself is far more sacred and far more central to the overall scheme of things than we might realize. It is not just “the thing we must do to get God to do the thing we want him to do.” It is something that reflects what it means to be fully human.

In a previous post I mentioned God’s commitment to conform us to His own image is really a commitment to restore us to the fullness of our true humanity. In other words, God, though he is good and desires to deliver us from suffering, is more concerned with delivering us from everything in our lives that has distorted and compromised what He has called and created us to be. In other words, he is doing more than just delivering us from the effects of evil; he is delivering us from evil itself. And unbelief is the greatest form of evil. It is everything in us that prevents us from seeing God as he truly is in relation to who we truly are. And that true picture of God and us can be summed up in these words: Everything is possible for one who believes. This is the true nature of how things are between God and us, indeed the true nature of reality itself.

Which means faith is more than the means by which we get God to move. Rather, faith is the thing God is restoring in every area of our lives. To be like Jesus is to be full of faith, because being full of faith means being aligned with what is really true about our situation from heaven’s perspective. The truth is: all things are possible with God. The truth is: we are unfathomably loved. The truth is: God’s hand is not too short. The truth is: God will never leave us. The truth is: we are sons and daughters of the Most High God. The truth is: we are more than overcomers. The truth is: God is for us. The truth is: we are the righteousness of God. All of these things represent the faith Jesus is in the process of perfecting in us.

And I will part with one last thought: knowing this liberates us from being responsible for whatever outcome we hope to achieve in whatever situation we are in. When we realize faith is not a means to an end but really an end in itself, we are free to allow God to perfect faith in whatever situation we are in and leave the outcome up to him. Every situation we face is really an opportunity to believe; the rest is up to him.

Many in the church are suspicious of the idea God wants us to live prosperous lives. They think such an idea is a selfish reframing of the Gospel, as though Jesus went to the Cross for other reasons, and we human beings in our self-centeredness have somehow found a way to make it all about us. In a way, such caution is merited; we are, after all, good at interpreting things from the standpoint of our own self-centeredness, not to mention good at making things all about us.

Still, I find it difficult to make the Cross not about us when we consider Jesus went to the Cross to give us abundant life for no other reason than his love for us. Think about it: Jesus died that we not only would not receive what we rightly deserve by also receive what we do not deserve, namely abundant life. That sounds a whole lot like a God wanting to prosper us.

If you have difficulty accepting God wants you to prosper, ask yourself whether you will prosper once you are in heaven. Heaven, after all, is what Jesus paid for at the Cross. Will you experience the abundance of good things in heaven, or will you be living a life of eternal lack and sacrifice? I hope you realize it is the former. But if this is so, what then is keeping Jesus from giving you what he paid for now? Why would a God who went to so much trouble to give you everything withhold from you now?

I think the answer for many of us is we still think we are earning our salvation. Life on earth is where we be good to earn heaven, and heaven is where we cash in on all our good behavior. Which makes sense, apart from the Cross. If we are alienated from the Cross, we have a deep-seated belief we do not deserve anything. But when we encounter the Cross, we come to realize there is really nothing God would withhold from us.

We believers are being conformed to the image of Jesus. This means far more than having our behavior conformed to the image of Jesus’ behavior. It means having all that we are conformed to all that he is. He is changing the inside of us. He is making us like him in every way. He is drawing us as close to the Father as he is. He is making us as full of mercy as he is. He is changing our thoughts and motivations, not just our actions.

This may seem obvious, but it is surprising to me how many times sermons are preached that assume God wants us to do things differently, not be different. Or the prevailing idea that in light of what Jesus has done for us, we should do this or that. As if Jesus’ main goal in our lives is to have us hold up our end of the bargain. Which would be fine, if this were the case. But the truth is, such thinking is still stuck within a Law-based mindset in which we are still trying to earn what Jesus already paid for. Which, by the way, is one of the many things Jesus is in the process of transforming in us. He is delivering us from any thought or motivation that suggests His work was not enough and therefore we are deficient in some way and must make up the difference through good behavior.

Others are under the impression we are being conformed to the image of Jesus only as far as his material blessings are concerned. We believe Jesus went to the Cross to deliver us from sickness and disease and poverty, only. I personally believe he went to the Cross for these things, along with every other effect of sin. But if we stop there, we will be puzzled when God begins to go after deeper things in us. We won’t understand why He doesn’t just deliver us from the circumstance as if that were His main objective. It is not that Jesus does not delight in delivering us from difficult circumstances. But the gold He is after runs far deeper and is far more precious than any favorable circumstance.

But what is the endgame here? What image are we being conformed to? It is the image of Jesus, of course. But who is He exactly? Is he nothing more than Someone who is well-behaved and very nice in every situation? Again, is the goal nothing more than perfect behavior? No, the goal is perfect humanity. Jesus is delivering us from everything in this life that has distorted and compromised what it means to be fully human. He is restoring in us all we were created to be and are destined to be.

And he is doing so by honoring our humanity in the process. Some of our prayers to be delivered from circumstances are really prayers to be delivered from our humanity. We are asking not to feel the pain of loss, for example, when our true path through loss is to allow ourselves to feel the pain of it. He delivers us through grief, not out of it. God does as he pleases, of course. But our paths of deliverance often follow the lines that preserve and perfect our humanity. For to be like Him is to be fully human.