Created, not Built

I read this blog post the other day, and the follow up post by Stephanie, who also lives in Colorado. It is about how we have come to believe that God has a specific, unalterable plan for our lives and that if we don’t make the right decision in a given situation, we may miss out on receiving God’s “best” for us. As though God has an infinite number of back up plans for when we screw up that He can use to still bless us, even if what we are getting isn’t the ultimate.

“Being confident of what God wanted was like trying to nail fog to a wall, and yet, if I missed it, I was destined to fail…The underlying assumption is that our lives are being built.  We are like Lego machines, and certain people, places, jobs, schools, etc., are necessary to put together a predetermined outcome.   We assume specific components belong in just the right place, and if we pick the wrong piece, the structure cannot be completed.  If I make a choice outside of God's will, my life will never be what it was supposed to be.”

Stephanie gave up on this belief, and it set her free to trust God more, trust herself more, and live in true peace without worrying about what she is missing out on.

These posts struck a chord in me, and helped me to see God and how he works a bit more clearly.

My husband and I moved to Colorado about six years ago for several reasons, the most important being that I wanted to attend Denver Seminary, and he wanted a larger job market. But before decided on the Denver area, we were praying for guidance. However, we never specifically heard the voice of God saying, “Go there, and do this.” We are both quick decision makers, so taking several weeks to finalize our decision felt like agony, especially when we never really got a straight answer from God. In the end, we settled on moving to the Denver area and proceeded to make plans. I kept waiting for the door to close but it never did, so we kept moving. The only real sign we received is that during a visit to Denver Seminary before we moved, I got the confirmation at the visit that I had been accepted. It felt like a giant thumbs up after months of uncertainty.

I was afraid the whole time that if I wasn’t going to the right seminary and studying the right thing that I, too, would miss out on God’s best for me. I still feel this today, especially as a new mother with a lot of school debt from getting my Masters from Denver Seminary. I have this degree. I should use it, right? If I don’t, all the knowledge I gained starts to disappear. My Hebrew literacy is already going down the drain, what’s next? All those amazing, heavy, and expensive books on the shelf, what good are they if I am not using them? I am only two years out from completing my Masters and I already feel like I missed the boat on using it to its fullest because of what I have and haven’t done with it. That’s one of the reasons I started this blog – I love writing, but it’s also a way for me to use the degree we are still paying off. And for a long time I have been haunted by the question: Did I do the right thing? Was going to seminary the right choice?

Yes. It was. Because, as Stephanie points out in her blog:

“Your life is not being built.  It is being created.  Creating is vastly different from building - it is organic, textured, three dimensional…Our lives are not sitting in a box, counted and measured and waiting to be assembled.  It is more like fashioning a work of art than building with Legos.   God does not need specific pieces to achieve the best possible outcome; instead, He uses the elements of life itself to shape my heart to reflect His image. When I am open to God's presence in my life, He will create something rich and meaningful out of it.  Period.  Our lives are much more three dimensional and complex than any preplanned structure.”

When I was in high school I took several Ceramics classes and learned to throw clay on the wheel. It was fun, and being able to see things created under my hand was a very gratifying experience. One of the projects in the last ceramics class I took was to make a set of something. So, given my family’s insatiable love of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, I decided to make a set of ice cream bowls and an ice cream scoop. I had given parameters for each bowl – the tops were to be 5 inches wide, and the bases should be 3 inches, and they should be 3 inches high. But the five bowls I ended up with were very different even if they did fit the given parameters. The curves on each were different which meant that while they were stack-able, they didn’t stack perfectly. As I worked on these bowls, I had to use a myriad of different tools to get them to the size and approximate shape I wanted. Wood tools, metal tools, sponges of different sizes and shapes, buckets, wires, and my own two hands. Then once the bowls were complete on the wheel, the finish work began to put the “foot” on the bowls, and clean them up so that they were as similar and as perfect as possible. Again, I had at my disposal close to a hundred different tools. While I only used around 20 for this given project (and not all of them on each bowl), there were still many more available if I had been creating something different.

Like my bowls, we are not built by machines that randomly select our life events, we are shaped and molded with our Heavenly Father’s hands and the situations we travel through to bear His image and to grow in likeness to Him.

God has already given us His best. He gave us Christ, if we accept him and his salvation, then we already have God’s best. He is not holding back on something better for us because we made a bad decision and failed at some point in our past. Romans 8:32 says: “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”

I think the issue stems from two places: first, we believe that the cross was Plan B. It wasn’t. The cross was Plan A all along. God knows everything. He knew before he created the world that Adam and Eve would fail and there would be consequences, and a need for redemption. And God said, “OK,” and created the world anyway. When we affirm that Jesus is God, we affirm that he has existed from eternity past with God. Jesus knew that he would need to die one day to redeem us, and he was okay with it too. God created, and He continues to create.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Genesis 1:1.

Interestingly, throughout Scripture the Hebrew word בָּרָ֣א (ba-ra), which means “to shape or create,” is only used of God and divine activity. Only God creates. Mankind does things, and makes things, and builds things, but only God creates. This speaks to God’s originality, wisdom, and sovereignty.

This leads to the second reason we fear making the wrong decision and being against God’s will: We forget that He is the one in control of His creation, and this leads us to doubt Him. God creates, we build. If we do not trust God to create good things, how can we believe that we, as his follower, can build and make good things as well? Trusting God is a big issue because it affects our ministry and ability to disciple and be discipled. It affects our ability to love with abandon.

God has not created us to be creatures of fear, but created us with a spirit of love, power, and self-control. He created us to handle life’s many decisions and to trust and love Him through each one of them whether we get the thumbs up, the open door, or the still quiet voice whispering directions in our ear, or we don’t. We don’t need to always wonder if we are making the best and right decision because God has already given us salvation and is working through each situation we face, every day, to sanctify us so that we can share in His glory. There is no greater joy than knowing God approves of us and is working out all things for our good. “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28).”

We still need to prayerfully consider our actions, and be discerning about whether we are doing good or evil. But God often gives us many good things to choose from, and each choice has its own blessings and consequences. Choosing X over Y and Z, and enduring trouble or uncertainty doesn’t mean that Y and Z didn’t also come with their own troubles and uncertainties. We must be faithful in our choices and realize that God uses our every circumstance to mold and shape us into who He wants us to, not into who we want to be.

God never said he would make our paths easy, He said He would accompany us down it and that the end would be glorious.