GOD DOES NOT FRUSTRATE
For this commandment which I command you this day is not too hard for you, neither is it far off....But the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it. Deut. 30:11-14, R.S.V.
My fourth-grade teacher will never know how resentful I felt at what she had explained to me. I had just taken a standardized achievement test, and I was smarting under the awareness that many of the questions on the test were utter mysteries to me. My teacher kindly told me that in order to measure the upper limits of even the most brilliant some questions that I wasn't even expected to answer had to be included.
After cooling down for a few hours, I decided I could forgive this calculating piece of academic frustration, in view of its purposes. Yet the same feelings have sometimes surfaced in the years since then as I have thought about the "testing" requirements of God's law. It has seemed manifestly unfair that God should require of me that which He knew I was unable to perform.
What is more, it has seemed even more unfair that He should then judge me so severely for failing to reach that impossible standard. More than a scaled score on a national norm was at stake; my eternal life was on the line! How comforting to realize that I am not the first to have struggled with these feelings, and Moses' message is as potent for us as for his hearers. And what a wisely comforting understanding of God he brings!
God is not testing our upper limits that He might judge us; He is expanding our upper limits that we might enjoy Him. He has no reason to frustrate us by commanding the impossible; He has every reason to transform our inner motives that we might love His commands. His relationship to us has never been that of the distant Judge, handing down endless dictums beyond our capacity to perform. It has been that of a nurturing Father, healing and transforming our inner motives that we might enjoy doing right.
So often we have seen victory over sin as similar to sitting on a keg of dynamite, holding down the lid and hoping that it won't blow. We do endless battles with our unchangeable inner drives, gritting our teeth, clenching our fists, and making new resolutions "not to do that one more time." But God's plan for us is to change what it is we really want to do.
What hope there is, then, for all of us who have struggled with the untamed mind-habits of the old life! The victory is not preserved for those stiff-backed few who can take cold showers without gasping. It is free to all who will let God write His law on their hearts.
For this commandment which I command you this day is not too hard for you, neither is it far off....But the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it. Deut. 30:11-14, R.S.V.
My fourth-grade teacher will never know how resentful I felt at what she had explained to me. I had just taken a standardized achievement test, and I was smarting under the awareness that many of the questions on the test were utter mysteries to me. My teacher kindly told me that in order to measure the upper limits of even the most brilliant some questions that I wasn't even expected to answer had to be included.
After cooling down for a few hours, I decided I could forgive this calculating piece of academic frustration, in view of its purposes. Yet the same feelings have sometimes surfaced in the years since then as I have thought about the "testing" requirements of God's law. It has seemed manifestly unfair that God should require of me that which He knew I was unable to perform.
What is more, it has seemed even more unfair that He should then judge me so severely for failing to reach that impossible standard. More than a scaled score on a national norm was at stake; my eternal life was on the line! How comforting to realize that I am not the first to have struggled with these feelings, and Moses' message is as potent for us as for his hearers. And what a wisely comforting understanding of God he brings!
God is not testing our upper limits that He might judge us; He is expanding our upper limits that we might enjoy Him. He has no reason to frustrate us by commanding the impossible; He has every reason to transform our inner motives that we might love His commands. His relationship to us has never been that of the distant Judge, handing down endless dictums beyond our capacity to perform. It has been that of a nurturing Father, healing and transforming our inner motives that we might enjoy doing right.
So often we have seen victory over sin as similar to sitting on a keg of dynamite, holding down the lid and hoping that it won't blow. We do endless battles with our unchangeable inner drives, gritting our teeth, clenching our fists, and making new resolutions "not to do that one more time." But God's plan for us is to change what it is we really want to do.
What hope there is, then, for all of us who have struggled with the untamed mind-habits of the old life! The victory is not preserved for those stiff-backed few who can take cold showers without gasping. It is free to all who will let God write His law on their hearts.
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