Faith and the complex ways of God

Often times, God's move in our lives manifests itself in very subtle and long-term ways, making it more difficult to discern and discover how God is working amid these complex dimensions of faith. Sometimes it will be difficult to discern if it is God, Satan, or a mere coincidence that is intervening in our circumstances.

At other times, the dynamics of faith will take place in ways that we don't normally associate with the simple, clear patterns that Scripture shows us.

• At times, for example, it will seem that God has not heard our prayers, or has remained indifferent to our need. Despite this, we will have to exercise faith, believing that God is sovereign and loves us, and that He always knows what He is doing.

• Sometimes we will pray about something, and we will receive a different answer than we expected. Even so, this will involve a move of faith on our part, as it becomes necessary for us to believe that it is God who is working on this unexpected result anyway.

• At other times, we will have to wait a long time before we see the answer to our prayers. In that case, faith will manifest itself through our patience and perseverance in prayer.

• At times, God will put us through the crucible of pain and suffering, and we will go through circumstances that seem to contradict his faithfulness and power. But this will also be part of the dynamic of faith, God working in us and forming us, just not in the easy and obvious way that we are used to seeing God move in our lives.

The wrong and simplistic schemes and models of faith that we sometimes hold in our minds make us feel confused when we are going through times of trial. As a consequence, we sometimes fail to understand the complex, nuanced movements of God in our lives.

God moves in various and subtle ways in the human realm. Divine involvement or purpose is not always clear in the situations we experience every day. The promises of the Word do not always come out in our favor immediately when the problem or need arises. Many times, between the believer's cry and God's response, other elements arise that complicate and seem to even contradict the principles and promises of the Word.

However, either simply or with a degree of greater complexity and subtlety, it will always be the principles that the Word declares that should determine how we navigate any difficult situation in our lives.

Once we have understood these scriptural principles, no matter how complex or contradictory what we are experiencing may seem, we must keep firmly attached to what we have learned from studying the Word. This firm adherence to what the Word of God declares will allow us to emerge gracefully from any situation that we may face.