Fath Explained

There’s always so much talk of faith – step out on faith, have faith – that’s the crux of being a Christian. But it’s always in the context of not understanding what’s going on, or not having an answer for why or how. What about the kind of faith that can be explained? What if you have an explanation and still choose to believe that God delivered. What about deciding that a coincidence isn’t a coincidence but was truly, truly from God? Is it still faith if it’s logical, reasonable, or even – gasp! – scientifically possible? Does having an explanation alleviate the possibility of faith? Can we only believe in what isn’t possible? Is that really all faith is, that’s the only facet to faith?

Proverbs 3:5 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.”

Okay. Got it. When I don’t have an explanation, I should trust in the Lord. I should have faith. But what about when I do understand? Is my faith less if there’s a reasonable explanation? Let me give you an example: My husband and I got into a, well, let’s call it a disagreement (you can read this to mean that I was being a total brat and he was just along for the ride). I decided to go sleep on the couch in our family room. As I was trying to fall asleep, I keep hearing “Go sleep with your husband” in my head. It kept playing over and over as I was trying to fall asleep, like getting a song stuck in your head that the harder you try to stop thinking about it, it plays more and more. Yea, that was this. I knew it was God telling me to chill out, stop being a brat and go sleep with my husband. But being the defiant person that I am, I refused and finally said – out loud, mind you -- “No.” Just as I said this, a toy that’s on hangs on our refrigerator for the baby to play with went off. It startled me but as I got up to turn it off, I was still defiant. (Oh, it was already off by the way.) So again, I lay down and tried to fall asleep and the same thing happened: “Go sleep with your husband, Go sleep with your husband, Gosleepwithyourhusband.” And again, I say out loud, “No.” This time the light over the stove turned on. Again, it startled me but didn’t frighten me. I knew God was talking to me. But my pride was not having it. So again, I got up, turned the light off and went and lay back down on the couch.

Now, let me just pause right here to backtrack a little. When I became a Christian, the one deal I did make with God was that I would obey him, BUT in the rare, very rare instances I didn’t and he needed to get my attention, I made God promise he would never send a vision of Jesus. He could do the burning bush, the big booming voice. Heck, he could even bring down the angel Gabriel; but under NO circumstances is He allowed to send a vision of Jesus. I know some people would be awed and inspired if they saw Jesus but not me. I know myself well enough to know that whatever message was trying to be relayed would be muffled by my very-girlie shrieks. You know, the whole “I Can Only Imagine” song doesn’t inspire me. That’s not a song that gets my praise on. It’s a song that gets my spook on. Seeing Jesus would send me running to the hills at light speed. You get the idea? Okay, now back to the story…

So where was I? Yes, I had just lay back down after defiantly disobeying twice. So as I’m nestling in, getting comfortable, it starts again, “Go. Sleep. With. Your. Husband.” You know the tone, where every word is its own sentence. It’s long , drawn out and intentionally slow giving you the chance to understand that if you disobey, there will be real consequences. I do this to my kids all the time and usually end it with “You have two choices. What are you going to do?” So, “Go. Sleep. With. Your. Husband.” And again I say, “No.” I swear to you, there was a moment of calm and I felt peace sweep over me. I really thought I had won, that God had decided to just leave me alone in my defiance. I really wasn’t hurting anyone anyway; right? Sleeping on the couch wasn’t hurting Paul? Heck, he was already asleep, probably grateful for the silence. It wasn’t really hurting me. I was going to get a good night sleep anyway. The couch is pretty comfortable. I nestled in, got comfortable and started to drift.

And then……I saw something. It wasn’t anything tangible. It was very abstract. But I knew what it was. And I heard (I’m totally not kidding here) “I’ll do it.” I was up the stairs, nestled in close to my husband in about 3.2 seconds.

So what’s the point of that story? The point is, a few nights later, my husband and I were standing in the kitchen and I was telling him the story. He’s a skeptic when it comes to that sort of thing so I knew that although he didn’t think I was lying, he didn’t know how to believe me either. Anyway, all of a sudden, the light over the stove came on. It was in that moment that I realized two things: one, that the light over our stove is on a timer; and two, that my “miracle” from God had actually been a happenstance.  It was something that could be explained away. It’s a coincidence. There’s a scientific explanation for it.

What the heck? My moment with God was really a relationship between me and a light? What kind of garbage was that? I should have let him send Jesus. Okay, maybe not. But here’s what I’ve realized. It takes just as much faith to believe in what you can explain than to believe in what you can’t…maybe even more. If God is behind the initiative and innovation of whoever invented not only a light but a light with a timer, why couldn’t God then use it to tell me to stop being a brat and go sleep with my husband? I can’t help but wonder how many miracles are missed because people refuse to have faith in something that’s explained. There are so many scientific treasures that are coming to light that we, as Christians, refuse to be inspired by because we want to keep God’s miracles in the context of the unexplained. Maybe others can use explanations as ways to prove God doesn’t exist or that His Word is wrong, but to us Christians, science and explanations should only make us more grateful in the God we have. It should make him even more real. And I, for one, am grateful that He’s allowing us the knowledge to know just how great He is.

And coincidentally, just after the whole “lean not on your own understanding” scripture in Provers 3:5, verse 6 says, “In all ways acknowledge Him and He will make your path straight.” We should absolutely believe in God even when there’s no explanation, when we can’t figure it out. But in everything we can explain, there should be an acknowledgement of Him as well.

God spoke to me that night, loud and clear. It might not have been the unexplained phenomenon that would stand up to any critic, but instead He used something that was already in place to send me a very clear message. What is more miraculous than that?

So next time you’re tempted to dispel and completely deny any explanation of God’s wonders, hold on to your faith tighter. It takes more faith to believe in the explained than the unexplained.

Til next time….