Does God ever seem cryptic to you?

John 16:15 – 33

I don’t understand God? I can’t understand what He is trying to tell me? How do I know what He is saying? Everything seems so vague. These are the types of response I get when I ask, “What is the Lord saying to you?” When we are struggling with something, God will, need for healing, direction or pretty much anything, it can be very difficult to understand what the Lord is saying.

Jesus is explaining to His disciples exactly regarding His death and resurrection. To Jesus it is crystal clear to the disciples it is cryptic. I wish everything the Lord guided me into were always crystal clear; my experience has been that often it is not.

Reviewing what the disciples were going through in this chapter and comparing it to my experience I want to share with you some my conclusions. We know that God does not jerk us around. He is a loving, caring God. He is the one who told us that His Word would be a light unto our feet and a lamp unto our path. He wants us to understand His will. We must believe that or otherwise our view of God is skewed. Our walk is a faith walk. Simply put we must trust the Lord, that He is good and has our lives in His hands. Secondly, in our humanity, we have a way of naturally messing things up. Think about it for a moment, if the disciples knew plainly days in advance that Jesus was going to be crucified what do you think they would have done? Would they have tried to convince Jesus to stay away from Jerusalem? Would they have gotten weapons to prepare to fight? Would they have begun telling the crowd that was rejoicing triumphantly on Jesus entrance into Jerusalem what was going to happen and raised an army to protect Him? We don’t know but the Father needed for Jesus to lay His life down willingly for His people so our sins might be wiped away.

I know it sounds tough but something you need to note; in hindsight it is all very clear. Think about it in your own life, if you knew exactly what you were going to go through before it happened would you have tried to change it? If you changed things would the growth be as intense or the victory as sweet? He always speaks to us. He always guides. However, sometimes for our own sakes, He is a little more cryptic but in the end we can understand. The disciples understood Sunday morning what Jesus meant. They went through their sorrow and personal faith challenges and came out victorious, even Peter. God changed them, they walked by faith, they learned to trust, and they saw God at work. What a great thing!

What about you? What trial are you facing? What struggle are you going through? God does love you and will speak and guide you. Read the Bible, keep in prayer, talk with people that you know hear from the Lord, and most of all have faith that He really does love you!