Prisoner in the Third Cell – When God Doesn’t Meet Your Expectations (DCLC – July ’86, Part 3)

Probably the only reason in the world I’m a Christian is because this illiterate French Cajun fell in love with a little Protestant girl. She said, “I’m not going to marry you.” And he said, “I’m in love with you. Marry me.” She said, “No, you’re not a Baptist and you’re not a Christian. I’m not going to marry you.” So, he went out and became a Baptist, and he became a Christian. He really did. And that put into effect things that had to do with my life long after she was dead. She didn’t know she’d have a grandson who was a Baptist preacher. She died in her mid-20s. I’m grateful that she was bullheaded about this, because I don’t know where that man would have ended up, and I don’t know what I’d be today, but I’m grateful for that incident that occurred long before I was born.

Good things and evil things abound in realms seen and realms unseen, of which we know nothing, that are utterly inexplicable and will remain that way. And it will remain that way throughout all your life.

I see a God who, before He creates, understands more clearly than I do everything I’ve just said and has recognized the fact that if He creates a creature called man, there’s going to be forever a gap between His ways and our capacity to understand. He knows He’s about to create a temporal being locked in time, captured in space, confined to the visible, having to do business with a God he cannot see, a God he cannot hear, and a God who has chosen to not even make himself evident in this universe.

Now I want you to listen to me. There is no evidence for the existence of God. Now I’m a Christian saying this. There’s no evidence for the existence of God. Don’t care what you quote, all those books you read about the verification of God’s creation, you just consider it: there is no evidence for the existence of God. Now, let’s just say He does exist for a minute. Isn’t that an incredible thing for Him to do, to create a universe and walk off from it, with absolutely no trace of whether He does or does not exist. It’s like He left His calling card and said, “This is the way it’s going to be.”

And I’m fascinated with you Pentecostals. You meet God under every bush and in every tree and every leaf that blows. God told me today; I saw God say this. I had a vision of God that was revealed to me, and the Lord spoke to me as I drove along. And then the Lord said to me, and boy, you know, you just look around, and you’ve got God everywhere. He’s just jumping out of everywhere. He is just all around you. And you know something, the Lord has probably spoken to me no more than three or four times in my whole life. And you got an inside track to this God of yours. He’s just telling you five or ten times a day what to do. I worry about your God. Your God is a lot more evident than mine is. I sometimes wonder if you may be just following your emotions or the inclinations of your personal disposition. Is it okay if I doubt a little bit? Because the God who deliberately withdrew all evidence of His existence. He left his calling guard and said, “That’s the way it’s going to be, and that’s the relationship you’re going to have with Me. You’re going to know Me by faith, or you’ll know Me not at all. And I mean not by faith that he exists, but I mean by faith in Him and whatever He chooses to do. You’re going to know Him by faith. Some of you know too many gods. I mean a God who’s just popping up all over the place.

Your God is rather shy. He does not make Himself evident. I’ve often asked myself why, and it’s really clear to me. You want to hear the Edwardian theory? What if He had a habit of manifesting Himself every once in a while, turning on the TV set tomorrow morning? The news is on. The TV set goes blank. You hear a voice that says, “And now a word from God.” All the TV sets on Earth turn on. All the radios turn on. This is God. Well, He would manifest Himself, right, miraculously, and everybody would hear Him. And how many people would grumble and gripe at what? No matter what He said, how many would grumble and gripe? How many would? Almost everybody. And He would be cussed and sworn at and reviled for what He is. He would be brought down so low by manifestations. Listen, He’s already cussed and reviled enough when there’s not a scrap of evidence for His existence. And that’s the way He chose to relate to you because He knew the enormous gap between you and Him.

I often see this God who’s about to indwell Jesus Christ. I see this God in Spirit walking the streets of Pharaoh’s city, going down each road and hearing the soft murmurs and the quiet tears of His people enslaved. And He hears the sounds of their prayers to the harmony of rustling chains, and He walks away, and He doesn’t answer a single prayer. And they live and they weep, and they cry out, and they suffer and they look to heaven, and it is turned to brass and they die. And their children grow up, and they are fettered with the same worn chains. And He walks down those same smelly, filthy streets, and the children are now grown and old, and they are praying prayers of deliverance. God delivered us from Pharaoh. God deliver us from this man who knows not Joseph. God takes us back to our homeland. And He hears and He walks away, and He does not answer, and He leaves them to live and to die without understanding. Do you think that doesn’t affect Him? I wonder sometimes when He walked away if He didn’t regret for His own sake having created us just from the agony He must have known and the choice of neglect He made based on His knowledge of what had to be and what would be.

He left them there, and they grew old and died, and their prayers were never answered, and their children grew and fell down beside those same beds, cots, mats, and pallets with chains on their wrists and cried out to God, and they were not answered. And God walked past them, and for almost four hundred years, God was not known nor heard from by His children who cried out to Him night and day.

And you know what the wonder is? That there were still believers to be praying down in Egypt’s foul land. That after 400 years, nearly 12 generations of prayers prayed night and day that were never heard, and somebody was still believing in this God of Abraham. 400 years without one single prayer answered, and the heart of God broke as He wished to explain. A mother looks up into the face of God by faith and cries out, “Why, oh God, if you are there, do you not answer? My beautiful children will be taken tomorrow away from this house, to build bricks beside the Nile River, for all the rest of their life. My God, why?”

And in His immutable wisdom, free of time and free of space, He wisely knows not to explain. And Israel is confronted with one simple fact. They’ve got a God they don’t understand, and you follow the same God, and you don’t understand Him. I have a word to say to you. Those of you who see God out of every bush, and you can just tell us every day where He is and what He’s doing and why He’s doing it. I think it’s just marvelous. I love you for it. I envy you. I wish I could swap my God for your God. My God won’t tell me anything. Every once in a while, get a little bitty peak, and that’s about it. And the rest of it is by faith. Not about what He’s doing, not His ways, not His here and now dealings. No, sir, I do not understand my God.

Those of you who have all the verses, and you can tell us everything about God, and you got Him in an Aristotelian outline, and you know this God, I tell you what God is doing. This is what God is doing. God is moving today. God is moving, and my wife and I are getting in the car, and we’re moving to such and such, and we know God’s going to be faithful, and we’re going to borrow $500,000, and we’re going to start this hospital retreat ground, ranch, farm, boat, because God has told us to.

You’re going around the corner one of these days, and you know what you’re going to face? You’re going to meet a God who will not live up to your expectations. I’m going to repeat that. Every brother and sister whom I’m looking at right now, you’ve got a rendezvous. You have a rendezvous with a God who does not match your expectations of what God is. You’re going to meet a God who does not live up to your expectations. Do you understand that? One of these days, you’re going to meet a God who’s not going to be what you think God is. One of these days, it’s coming, if it has not already come, you’re going to face a God who did not live up to your expectations. And on that day, the angels are going to find out whether or not you’re a Christian.