I Just Don’t Get IT, God!
“Everything difficult indicates something more than our theory of life yet embraces.”
C. S. Lewis
Have you ever faced a situation where your faith did not fit into what was happening in your world?
Me too.
I recall vividly one early morning as I walked on the treadmill, crying out to God about a painful situation. My prayer that morning began, “I just don’t get it, God…” I’ll never forget the response I knew in my spirit came directly from Heaven.
You can be confident of this: when I begin a good work, I’ll carry it through to completion. (See Philippians 1:6)
I decided then and there to relinquish my “I just don’t get it…” concern into the hands of God who I believe—although admittedly don’t always trust—knows what I don’t know and sees what I am not capable of seeing.
A God whose ways and thoughts are far higher than mine.
I read a lot—regularly from three or more books at a time. Often, I become aware of a theme running through these variety of books. Lately, the theme of not understanding God’s ways has kept reoccurring.
One of my current reads is Win the Day by Mark Batterson, a favorite author, who tells an “I just don’t get it story.” His beloved and influential fifty-five-year-old father-in-law died unexpectedly, shaking “our family to the core.” During his season of deep grief, he read Deuteronomy 29:29. Of this passage, Batterson said,
“It says that the revealed things belong to us but the secret things belong to God. That’s when I created what I have come to call my Deuteronomy 29:29 file. That file is full of things that don’t make sense to Mark…questions that won’t get answered on this side of eternity…”[i]
My “I Just Don’t Get IT, God!” file resides in my head. I think I’ll leave it there rather than creating a hard-copy file. My ‘file’ is full of musings about injustice, abuse, suffering, grief, loss, unanswered prayers—yeah, lots of unanswered prayers.
If you’re wrestling with an “I just don’t get IT, God!” prayer, my heart is with you. Even though I don’t know your unique circumstance, I know how very difficult this process is. As I type these words, I am praying for you. I’m asking God to comfort you, to give you next-step clarity, and fill you with hope.
Blessings on our journey…
[1] Mark Batterson, Win the Day, 47, Multnomah, 2020