Tag: trust

Let There Be Light (The Genesis Archives Pt. 1)

By Ife J. Ibitayo

In the beginning, “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light (Genesis 1:3).”

I often forget how easy things are for God. I work hard each day at my desk job. I work hard each night at my writing. I work hard at being a good employee, a good brother, and a good friend. Paraphrasing my father, who was telling me about the stressful early years of his career: “I claimed that my success all depended on God. But I worked as if my success all depended on me.”

Labor In Vain

Fittingly, the first sermon I heard this year was on Psalm 127. Its first couple of verses say, “Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for He gives to His beloved sleep.” Success is not a product of our faithfulness but God’s. God doesn’t “help those who help themselves.” Rather, He saves those who know they can’t save themselves.

Jars of Clay

In the New Testament, Paul writes, “God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us” (2 Corinthians 4:6-7). There’s a reason we have to sleep for eight hours a day and take a day off each week and some weeks off each year. Our tiredness is not a bug in our programming but an important feature of our being.

If we truly believe that God has the power to speak light into existence, we should know that He can singlehandedly speak light into our careers, our marriages, and our children’s lives. We’re called to cast our burdens on Him (1 Peter 5:7) and take His yoke upon ourselves (Matthew 11:29) because our burdens are heavy, but His yoke is light (Matthew 11:30).

Conclusion

I think that I’ll always work hard.  The seeds of that spirit are rooted in my immigrant roots and my upbringing. They echo through the pages of the Bible from wrestling Jacob to struggling Paul. And I hope that everyone who’s spent their days lounging through life can embrace a bit of that can-do spirit. But I think that the best lesson for me to learn in 2022 is not how to work harder but how to rest more.

“‘Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.’”

(Matthew 11:28-30)

The Miserable Mystery and the Marvelous One

By Ife J. Ibitayo

I love reading mysteries. My favorite book is Marooned in Realtime by Vernor Vinge, a sci-fi murder mystery set in the ever-further future. Just as soon as you think you’ve figured out who the killer is, a new wrinkle enters the picture. The author is always one step ahead, breathlessly carrying you along until the ecstatic climax when all the puzzle pieces fall into place. I love reading mysteries, but I hate living them.

I’ve always snobbishly looked down on those who skip to the last chapter of books, having to know the end from the beginning. But if I had the novel of my life, you know I’d already be there! I can’t stand the real-life tension of not knowing.

Miserable Mystery

But life is full of mysteries. I don’t know when I’ll meet my special someone. I don’t know if I’ll be fired next fall or promoted next spring. I wake up each day not knowing if it will contain sorrow or joy. And this stresses me out to no end! How can you control what you can’t understand?

Then there’s God, the most unfathomable being in all existence. God declares to us, “‘My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts’” (Isaiah 55:8-9). Therefore, God is inherently other. Jesus is not Superman, the paragon of mankind, an example of what humanity at its best looks like. Rather, He is a being so beyond our imagination that we can only glimpse a shadow of His true nature.

And so, I’m tempted to despair. If my life is in the hands of a being beyond my comprehension, how can I know the outcome of all my sufferings and hardships, my trials and tears, my burdens and sacrifices?

Marvelous Mystery

The apostle Paul, arguably the most brilliant theologian who’s ever lived, was also confronted by the mystery of our God: “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgements, and His paths beyond tracing out” (Romans 11:33)! But his response was very different from my own. He cried, “To Him be the glory forever!” (Romans 11:36).

Paul rejoiced in a God beyond His comprehension because that offered the perfect explanation to the inexplicable. Only a transcendent God can redeem our terrible circumstances. Good men can mitigate others’ personal hardships. Good countries can ameliorate a suffering world’s issues. But only a good God far above everything can keep this promise: “I cause everything to work together for the good of those who love Me” (Romans 8:28).

Conclusion

In a TV show I watched, I was struck by a particular scene between a mother, who was a district attorney, and her daughter. The daughter kept asking her mother for answers concerning a young woman who was wrongfully murdered. But her mother said she had her reasons for not giving them to her. However, her daughter hacked into her computer. Then she understood why her mother was acting the way she was. When her mother found out about this, her daughter asked her, “Why didn’t you just tell me?” And her mother replied, “Why didn’t you just trust me?”

There are millions of mysteries with millions of answers that we’ll never know here on this earth. We can spend our lives asking God, “Why didn’t you just tell me?” Or we can believe that even more than any mother, any district attorney, or any superhero, our God is trustworthy.

“As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things.”

(Ecclesiastes 11:5)

Impossible Perfection, Possible Generosity

By Ife J. Ibitayo

I don’t find generosity as easy as I thought I would. We’re in the middle of a pandemic and still reeling from the greatest drop in national GDP since the Great Depression. And here I sit, a young, gainfully employed bachelor without any meaningful dependents.

I live in one of the top ten wealthiest counties in the United States in the richest country in the world. While families have been scraping by to put food on the table, I’ve been eating out every week. While unemployed millions struggled to pay enough their bills to make it to the end of last year, I bought a new laptop for Christmas. What is wrong with me? But let’s be real, my story is not all that unique. What is wrong with us?

Impossible Perfection

I’ve been thinking about the story of the rich young ruler a lot recently. There once was a young man with power, money, and authority who approached Jesus. He had lived his entire life righteously, and yet he still felt he was lacking something. Jesus knew what that something was, so He told the young man, “‘If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow Me’” (Matthew 19:21).

I think this is one of the hardest sayings in the Bible. We’ve spent decades of our lives earning our keep. We love our house in the suburbs with our blue Ford F-150 and our new Apple iPhone. We relish waking up in our own bed, drinking our morning coffee from our special mug, and typing away on our precious laptop. Yet we forget our impoverished neighbor. We pass by on the other side of the road as they shiver their nights away beside the Walmart down the street.

This is not so much a call to action as a plea for introspection. Why can’t I sell my phone, my car, or even my house to love my neighbor? Is this too high an ask for anyone? I’m clearly being unrealistic, aren’t I? Yet this is exactly how the early church lived. Acts 4:34 says. “There were no needy people among them, because those who owned land or houses would sell them.”

Possible Generosity

One of the most quoted verses of the Bible is Matthew 19:26, “‘With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’” Unfortunately, the context of this verse is often lost as well. Notice that this saying is only five verses after the story of the rich young ruler. Upon hearing the steep cost of perfection, the young man left in great sadness. Then Jesus declared how impossible it was for the rich like you and I to enter into heaven. But when the disciples asked who then could be saved, Jesus replied with this promise.

In my own strength, I can only close my fists tighter and tighter, no matter how hard I try to open them. But God is love, and if I surrender myself and my riches to Him, then I have a sliver of a chance of loving others the same way He does.

“Teach those who are rich in this world not to be proud and not to trust in their money, which is so unreliable. Their trust should be in God, who richly gives us all we need for our enjoyment. Tell them to use their money to do good. They should be rich in good works and generous to those in need, always being ready to share with others. By doing this they will be storing up their treasure as a good foundation for the future so that they may experience true life.”

(2 Timothy 6:17-19)

Between an Army and a Watery Grave (40 Years of Muttering with Moses Pt. 2)

By Ife J. Ibitayo

For Part 1 on “Hope or Hopelessness”, click here.

After years of slavery, months of miracles, and a tragic night of death (Exodus 12:29), the Israelites were finally freed. Pharaoh drove the Israelites out of his land.  The LORD then navigated them into a box with the desert beside them and the Red Sea in front of them. Then He roused Pharaoh to pursue the runaways with the most fearsome technology of his day: the battle chariot.

With an unpassable liquid wall before them and an awesome army behind them, the Israelites cried to Moses, “‘Didn’t we tell you this would happen while we were still in Egypt? We said, “Leave us alone! Let us be slaves to the Egyptians. It’s better to be a slave in Egypt than a corpse in the wilderness”’” (Exodus 14:12 NLT)!

Some of us feel similarly boxed in today: We moved for a job that vanished when the economy cratered, another baby is on the way when we don’t know how we’ll keep feeding our first. Our strength and sanity have reached their snapping points. Many of us may be where are we now in spite of being faithful to God or because we felt like we were acting in accord with His will. But now we’ve come to our own Red Sea with the enemy closing in on us by the minute, and we wonder if those surging waves will become our watery grave.

How We Got Here

Famous gospel singer Marvin Sapp once said, “The only reason why you’re in that position now is because God has ordered your steps.” Here Sapp emphasizes the sovereignty of God. We are not caught between a rock and a hard place because God fell asleep at the wheel. We’re here because He deliberately drove us here.

Why We Are Here

The question then becomes, “Why are we here?” God told the Israelites, “‘Don’t be afraid. Just stand still and watch the Lord rescue you today. The Egyptians you see today will never be seen again…When my glory is displayed through them, all Egypt will see my glory and know that I am the Lord’” (Exodus, 14:13,18 NIV).

The LORD is glorious and awesome in power, working miracles and wonders for His people. But when life maintains its ho-hum rhythm of ease and predictability, these truths tend to escape our grasp. Sometimes the only spark that can rekindle this flame is difficulty.

Where We Go From Here

The LORD then told Moses, “‘Tell the people of Israel to go forward’” (Exodus 14:15 ESV). Keep in mind, God gave the Israelites this command before He parted the Red Sea. As they trudged ever closer to those murky waters, many must have foreseen a sodden, bloody end for themselves. But as we all know, the LORD led the Israelites through the Red Sea, and the LORD defeated the Egyptian army. The only part the Israelites had to play was not turning aside or turning back. They had to keep on moving forward.

Conclusion

After six months of isolation, most of us are not where we’d like to be: socially, emotionally, and financially. As we wait for the LORD to part our Red Sea and slay our enemy, we can lambast Him for bringing us here. Or we can trust that He will successfully lead us to the other side.

“Don’t be afraid, for I am with you. Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.”

(Isaiah 41:10 NLT)