When We Don’t Understand

Ephesians 2:10 (ESV) “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them”.

Questions. A friend of mine recently posted on social media talking about her toddler at home—“we have officially entered the WHY stage. Any tips for our sanity and patience are much appreciated!”. Interesting how our desire to want to know “why?” begins at such an early age. As humans, we’re hard wired to understand what’s going on around us. We want to know why the sky is blue, the grass is green and how that caterpillar becomes a butterfly.

In order to appease our young children who desire to learn and expand their knowledge, we can often provide short, scientific answers that help them better understand. Yet, as we grow into adulthood, those short, scientific answers don’t quite seem to do the trick anymore. I’ve found that to be especially true when we begin to address our surroundings and circumstances from a totally different perspective—a higher, heavenly one. When we attempt to truly live our lives from that place of understanding, things suddenly get really complicated.

When we ask God “why?”, sometimes we have to wait for His answer—hours, days, weeks, even years. Answers are not always black and white, easily explained or understandable. And, painfully, at times it’s not the answer we want. We may not get an answer at all. However, entering into a space of “I don’t understand” and choosing to trust God anyway is where true freedom lies.

In my walk with Christ, I have found this requires me to shed my old humanity and choose to walk in step with the Spirit. As the apostle Paul writes in Galatians 5:17, we must not only shed our old humanity, but we most work to cultivate the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

The transformation process that must occur in our hearts to allow us to live from a place of trust is painful, difficult and many times overwhelming. I have been in a season of my life during the past year where God has been healing me from the inside out. I am a physical therapist by trade, so I understand just how much work it requires to survive this process of a “posture change” when we choose to realign our hearts with God. We must lean into the truth that He is merciful, kind and always good, even when the enemy attempts to use our circumstances to convince us otherwise.