Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him. —Job 13:15, KJV
It is my experience that sooner or later nearly every Christian—virtually ten out of ten—will find some occasion when he or she feels God has betrayed them. But it is also my pastoral experience that roughly only one in ten will breakthrough the betrayal barrier.
Why should I write like this if my statistics are not very encouraging? For this reason: you can be that rare person who does break the betrayal barrier.
Most people, when God is smiling on them, can worship with jubilation, give cheerfully to His work, sacrifice time and pleasure for Him, and be expected to volunteer for any help needed at one’s church. But let God appear to betray them, and these same people, I am ashamed to say, indicate a rather different story. Such people never discover the joy awaiting them on the other side were they to break through the barrier.
Are you wanting more of God? He invites you to break the betrayal barrier. A. W. Tozer used to say that we can have as much of God as we want. I disagreed with that at first. This is because I felt I didn’t have as much of God as I wanted! But I have decided that Tozer was right: we can have as much of God as we want, but that wanting more of Him gets tested—by the betrayal barrier. It comes unexpectedly and at the “worst” time. It is not my feeling of wanting more of God—as when I worship or respond to an inspiring message—that proves I really want more of Him; it is how I respond to things that happen to me later on that proves I really want more of Him.
Excerpted from Pure Joy (Charisma House, 2006).
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