Insufficient Answers - Not All Questions Have AnswersНамуна

Insufficient answers

God the Father teaches us through John the Baptist that His ways are not ours - that even the greatest of those born of a woman (Luke 7:28) had to die to make room for the Son of God. In God's plan for us and the world, there will always be passages in the Bible that are incomprehensible. There will always be questions we don't have the answers to in this life – at least not the answers that we would consider satisfactory. Fortunate are the people who are not offended when this happens.

John the Baptist also came to teach us another principle: If Jesus is to become more, I must become less; if Jesus is to be everything, I must die to everything that is not to the glory of the Father. Sometimes we pray, "Lord Jesus, my prayer is that You will be everything in my life and I nothing." The reality is that we often don't really mean it — at least not too literally! If we truly mean what we say, the only way to make our wish a reality would be to die to ourselves.

When I become less, there will be less focus on selfish ambitions and any form of personal significance that takes away the focus on God (Philippians 2:3-4). In 2 Corinthians 5:9, Paul says, We make it our aim to please Him. The focus will shift to Jesus, His will, His plans, and glorifying the Father. So often, we do not want to accept the clear meaning of John the Baptist's words when he says, "He must increase; I must decrease"(John 3:30).

There will be unanswered prayers, sickness, pain, loneliness, suffering, persecution, and ultimately death. Still, as strange and incomprehensible as it sounds, the Lord Jesus will be exalted amid the inadequacy of the answers.

We often want to know the future. The truth is, however, that none of us can handle that information. What if I knew that my son would die in an accident? What if I knew that I would go bankrupt three years from now? What if there was a chance that my parents would get divorced? In His mercy, God prevents us from seeing into the future. It is safe to say that things will happen in the future that we will not understand. We should be content to face each day with the knowledge that has been revealed. That is more than enough.