Knowing vs learning something...

Sometimes I rely on what someone has taught me about God instead of coming to know Him and His ways for myself. And when what I’ve been taught is not the full truth about a matter, I tend to doubt God instead of doubting what I’ve learned about Him.

For instance, I’ve heard preachers and teachers say that God will always speak to you and assure you in the midst of the storm. I have experienced that.

But I also have experienced times that He doesn’t. When I’ve gone through those times when I didn’t hear God clearly through the storm, I wondered if God had abandoned me or if I had somehow done something to push Him away from me. I had to ask if He was mad at me and letting me suffer in my storm?

But my issue was not that God had not acted according to His character. My problem was that He didn’t act according to what I had believed He would do! My belief was wrong. God is always right.

Sometimes, He wants you to remember that He is with you and that He is able to take care of everything. And He wants you to to know it by faith in the midst of the storm without Him having to speak it to you. Sometimes He waits until the time of trouble is passed before I hear from Him. It’s almost like He’s silent when I need to hear from Him most and then when the calm returns I find that He was there all along; but He was silently watching and He was quietly active in my circumstances. I always wondered why He did that.

Now I get it. In the Bible, when God said, “Do not fear,” He also gave the reason the instruction was possible when He said “for I am with you.” That’s the answer to living a life out from under the control of fear. The ability to operate without fear is in the constant KNOWING that He is with me. If I have to depend on Him to tell me in the midst of every trial and every scary situation of my life, then I don’t KNOW it and I will be afraid. But if I truly KNOW it, then He won’t have to remind me of it every time a problem arises. And I will never fear if I constantly know and never doubt that He is with me.

You don’t come to know something in a way that you will never doubt it by having someone tell you over and over again. It's not something you can just "learn" by hearing it. You come to know something with assurance when you experience it over and over again. And when you experience something over and over again you will know that it is truth in a way that you will never doubt it, no matter how hard times get.

When God does not tell me or show me where He is working it’s because He wants me to know that He is working without me having to be reminded of it every time I face a crisis! I am going to have more troubled times in the future and those times will require an ever maturing faith. God’s silence is for a noble purpose. It is to grow me spiritually and to prepare me to be of greater Kingdom use.

I am convinced that the "overcomers" that will be victorious in times of tribulations that the future holds are those who KNOW the truth about God and His faithfulness. They don't have to be reminded of it!