Seriously, God...how could I not see you before?
Seriously, God...how could I not see you before?
"It was always you. Creator, sustainer...you're my author and finisher. Brooke Poindexter "Author Finisher"
When accidentally leaving your keyless fob in your car, you aren’t supposed to be able to lock yourself out, but somehow in a Walmart parking lot an hour away from our house my family and I were locked out of our van. Hiking with the family that day was fun, but tiring. We were hungry, and getting into this car stood between us and dinner.
Our puzzle wasn’t without some helpful advantages. Before going into Walmart we had cracked open a rear window just a touch and tilted up our moonroof so our dogs could have plenty of air. Our first attempt of breaking into our car included asking our dogs to hit the unlock button. As you can guess no wunderkind pets here.
Second, could any of us fit our hand in the slight rear window opening? With the thinnest hand and forearm, my daughter made some progress toward the rear sliding door lock, but the thickest part of her arm eventually got in the way.
Using extra tools felt like a good next option, so we went into Walmart to see if we could buy something or get a pole from the staff. A helpful employee in the Home and Garden area was a Godsend. We took a series of poles from him, and our kids took turns scaling the van roof and trying to push the automatic unlock buttons from the small opening in the tilted moonroof. The kids came so close, but eventually I had to get my middle-aged self on top of the roof subjugating myself to the snickering of each passing Walmart patron. It’s cute when kids are on top of a car…not so much when a middle-aged man is laid out on top of a white van.
With each attempt to hit the automatic unlock button, I could imagine sitting down for dinner, but yet I couldn’t get any further than my kids. By this time my wife was fed up and called the police, but they said they didn’t have the tools available to help.
At this point as I watched another family walk by and laugh at me, I asked myself, “Would we be here all night? “
But with a stroke of genius my son told me turn on the car with the stick and lower a window. That was so obvious and easy now that I saw it right in front of me. Within seconds after his suggestion I had a window open, and we unlocked a door. It never felt so good to pile into our dusty van. Sometimes what we have to do is in clear sight, but we just don’t see it….until we do.
Since launching Seriously God? I know we have spent a lot of time sharing our hardships, questions, and frustrations with ourselves and with God, so we could meet others in their spiritual valleys. The other side of that is we want to see Jesus with you as well. As we have worn our hearts on our sleeves we haven’t wanted to only focus on our troubles, but it is really easy to do that. It is easy to be caught up in everything that isn’t right about yourself and others and what’s not working. It is even easy to begin to hate situations and others around you. For me this whole time my solution has always been Jesus.
Jesus is like that “on” button in my car staring straight at me while I struggled and schemed to break into my car in every other conceivable way.
The solution is in plain sight.
Jesus deserves my attention and my worship because he is everything. Saying God is “everything” can become really easy to say without meaning, but it means much more bumped up against all my pain and frustration. I can now worship Him with my full heart—the good and the ugly. It always felt like I had to worship with only my good part. I can see why King David wrote so many Psalms bearing his heart and then giving God glory. In expressing both his heartache and praise to God he worshipped. Psalm 13 is a great example of that.
1How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
3 Look on me and answer, Lord my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
4 and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
5 But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
6 I will sing the Lord’s praise,
for he has been good to me.
Going forward we will continue to bear our hearts to meet those Christians in their heartache and uncertainty because not every Christian is ready to hashtag PTL. But we direct that frustration to Him and illuminate how we are seriously surprised by God’s goodness too. Seriously, God…you can be that good? We fix our eyes on the author and perfector of our faith (Hebrews 12:2).
For those who have been on this journey with us this is a call if any of you have a heart to share your FULL hearts regularly on our platform or can recommend others who wear their hearts on their sleeves, contact me directly or at squestionmark@gmail.com. Let’s worship Him together.
Jesus is right there in front of us even when it doesn’t feel like it. This Easter weekend tell us how good He is.