The Present Hand of God
Part One: A Personal Opening
By Jeremy Lucas
How long has it been...
Since you've enjoyed being a child of God?
Pause for a moment and then ask yourself again.
How long as it been...
Since you've enjoyed the journey?
In this dispensation of the mystery of His grace...
Do you ever wonder if He still works?
Or even more... if He still cares?
This morning, this afternoon, or this evening (whichever time it is that you're reading), I ask that you close off the world for a few moments and spend some time considering the things you're about to read. All of the above questions may or may not be questions that you ask yourself everyday of your life, but they may very well be the questions that someone you love asks everyday of your life... and it's likely that many of us are caught not knowing how to answer.
"Do I enjoy being a child of God?"
"Is there joy in the journey?"
"Does God still work?"
"If He does, then what is He doing?"
"Does He even care anymore?"
And why would we not ask ourselves these questions? We're bombarded with a world of mixed religion, mixed faith, and compromising emotions that give us plenty of sufficient reasons to say selfishly, "What about me?" I do, of course, use the term selfish loosely. For while we are all selfish beings, the selfishness I refer to regards how our Father in heaven, our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gracious Holy Spirit do or do not deal with our lives. And naturally, we're inclined to look around and say, "Did God do that or did it just happen?"
In order to set the stage for what we'll be addressing in this series, let me begin with a personal opening.
Some years ago, a young, dispensationally-minded woman was sitting in her seat on sunday morning. Week after week, the blend of messages were near predictable. Predictable enough, that is, that you could practically write the sermons before they were spoken.
"We are saved by grace through faith."
A few more words and then...
"We are saved by grace through faith."
Not that this message wasn't accurate, or that it didn't have a powerful impact, but with all the Scripture available to teach, share, and offer insight, these seven words were usually all the young woman (as well as many of you) would hear. That is, until this particular sunday morning and a new series called, "The Role of the Holy Spirit."
Eager as anyone would be to hear something fresh, something enlightening, and something to offer hope, she listened only to hear the following over a period of several weeks...
"God doesn't care about the details of your life."
"God doesn't care about the details of your life."
"God doesn't care about the details of your life."
Why did I repeat it three times? Because that's the impact that saying it one time has on any listener who loves the Lord. By the third time you read it (if you were able to read past the second time), it probably felt louder than the first.
Do you remember being a child and hearing someone refer to you as something you never quite forgot? Perhaps they immaturely called you fat, or geeky, or stupid. But somewhere, somehow, the things that stick in our minds are those things that go against the grain of our confidence. When we're working so hard as children to feel attractive and someone says that we're fat, the effort we made drops short of our tears. When someone calls us stupid, our efforts to feel intelligent become questionable in our own minds. That's the impact that words have on our confidence.
What this young woman heard were the first three words shouting out...
GOD DOESN'T CARE!
The pastor could have been right, the pastor could have been wrong... but it wasn't his accuracy or fallacy that was remembered... it was the words that rung so loud as to silence an ensemble choir from singing in harmony. Words that rung so loud that it didn't matter anymore whether they were true or false. Everything stopped with, "It doesn't matter what you do, He doesn't care."
And for the years that followed, the heart of this young woman went from joy and love to frustration and doubt.
"Does He care? I really don't know anymore."
Her concerns echo in nearly every "grace believing" dispensationally-minded believer that I encounter along the way. No one wants to seem so extreme that they're camped alongside of charismatics, but everyone is fearful that a discussion of His work, His hand, or His ever-slightest motion would suggest heresy that hurls them far from the Pauline grace movement.
I've been tremendously fortunate, in some ways, to have experienced the early part of my faith outside the grace movement. By this, I don't mean that to "grow up in grace" is in any way better or worse, but rather, that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was saved before there was, in my understanding, "right division." Essentially, that there was truly a saving grace that existed before the intellectual triggers were orchestrated and carried out in my life and my mind. That to this day, no amount of knowledge or wisdom can remove the grace that the Lord gave to me long before there WAS knowledge or wisdom as it might be said today.
Diving into this project means, for me, answering some of the heavily broken hearts that have crossed my path in the last number of years. More recently, another woman at G.R.A.C.E. Ministries who asked the question, "What is God doing today?" And at this point, I’m tired of setting these types of questions in the background of discussion and figuring on a later time that’s more appropriate. People in our movement, people outside our movement, and people who do not even know the Lord as of yet either have asked, are asking, or will ask them. It’s time to be prepared. It’s time to have an answer.
This study of God's Present Hand begins in a very unique format that you may not expect. Long before we can address the deeper issues and possible answers for the questions that opened the first session, we need to look at the early stages of our own individual faith. In some ways, this study will offer you a retrospective "look back" into who you were then, who you are today, and how the Present Hand of God does or does not fit into that picture.
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