Disobedient God: Trusting a God Who Goes Off Scriptنموونە

I regularly give God directions - I mean, prayer requests - and He just refuses to go in order, refuses my timeline, or just ignores them altogether.

I don’t know what disobedient people look like in your life, but when I look at my life, that’s disobedience if I’ve ever seen it. It often feels like God is doing His own thing at the expense of my thing, and I get frustrated.

Where in your life are you frustrated at God? It’s ok. Go on and name it. He can handle it.

We all get frustrated with God.

We say things to God like, “I can’t believe You let them die,” or, “I can’t believe You let me lose my job.”

We asked and prayed, and God didn’t do what we said.

What do we do with a Disobedient God?

We can run from Him, replace Him, perform for Him… we learn to reach for Him, confess to Him, and rest in Him. But ultimately it comes down to one thing:

Trust.

This trust is hard-fought, and we can't do it alone. We need friends who walk with us, push us, and challenge us.

Who are your close friends? Who are the people in your life that help you live out a faithful life to Jesus? When it’s hard to follow God and He’s not going in the direction you wanted, who is there to encourage you and help you?

We often wait to connect with God, or even friends, until “the dust settles.” We put it off till that “right time,” over and over until it usually doesn’t happen at all.

Well, if you walk with Jesus, it’s going to get dusty. And you can’t create a rhythm where you wait till the dust settles to be present for one another. You need friendships where you can hang in the dust, even in the dust of God’s sovereignty.

What is God’s sovereignty? It’s this idea that God’s in control of everything. So even if He didn’t do it, in His sovereignty He allowed it.

How do we rest in that?

How do I resolve that?

How do I find peace in that?

Philippians 4 speaks about a peace that surpasses all understanding, and that this peace will then guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. When it’s dusty, when it’s windy, when the storm is hard, God promises a peace that doesn’t make sense. This means that, in any other translation or interpretation of your season, you should not have joy. You should not have peace. This should make more sense than it does.

In the midst of circumstances that don’t make sense, God has provided a different way to be confused: Peace that doesn’t match your situation.

This peace outweighs your circumstance so heavily that it stands guard on your behalf. Right in front of your heart, this guard stands so that you don’t have to lose heart. Right in front of your mind, this guard stands so that you don’t have to lose your mind.

I pray that the peace that surpasses all understanding in seasons of difficulty would guard your heart and your mind, so that you can fully trust this Disobedient God.

If you enjoyed this devotional, I invite you to grab a copy of Disobedient God, and dive into this challenge of trusting a God who goes off script.