You Will Understand

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Isaiah 55:8-9

I was wrestling with God in prayer one morning. Some things weren’t happening that I wanted to happen. I was frustrated that housing in Kansas City wasn’t lining up a little easier. I was frustrated that better houses weren’t opening up in our target areas. I was frustrated that it felt like we’d have to move from an awesome house to an average house.

I let God know about it. I kept saying, “God, I don’t understand what you’re doing. What are you doing here, God? I don’t understand what you’re doing.” This complaint-prayer was the main refrain of the morning.

Then, I loaded the kids into the car to drive up to the baseball tournament in Pennsylvania that my oldest was playing in. A few minutes into the drive, the SiriusXM radio DJ, Ashley Till, mentioned that she picks a scripture verse every morning and takes it with her throughout the day. She shared with her listeners that her verse for that day was John 13:7 where Jesus says to His disciples, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” Read that again. I was stunned.

Sometimes God takes a long time to answer prayers. Sometimes He answers within the hour. This was the latter. She quoted a verse that directly answered the question I had been asking God that morning. And it came within minutes of getting in the car. Thank you, Jesus!

God heard my complaining and answered directly, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” This verse named my situation perfectly and then offered a future promise of understanding. Later you will understand. This is one of those verses that asks us to trust even when we don’t understand. Maybe this is a verse for you today.

The original context of this verse is when Jesus washed the disciples feet the night before His crucifixion. They didn’t understand what He was doing. They felt confused and awkward. The Messiah wasn’t supposed to be washing feet.

The disciples were looking for understanding based on their past learning and experience. Jesus was clueing them in on the fact that God’s understanding doesn’t always come from the past but often comes from the future. Jesus’s act of washing their feet in that moment would only be understood based on what was about to happen (His death and resurrection) not based on the disciples’ previous understanding.

Isn’t that interesting?

God often does things that we won’t understand because they are rooted in the future, not the past. We search our previous understanding and experience for some kind of understanding, but sometimes it can’t be found in our past. Often, we will only understand what God is doing right now once we have stepped into the future that God is already in.

God knows that right now we do not realize what He is doing, but He’s not troubled by that. In the present moment, pregnant with confusion and misunderstanding, we have to trust. Yet, we are given a promise that eventually, when we see what God sees from His future vantage point, we will understand. Maybe that future is 5 years from now. Maybe that future is eternity. But the promise still stands. One day, we will understand. And that is a truth we can hold on to today.

Future Generations

In the third year of Hoshea son of Elah king of Israel, Hezekiah son of Ahaz king of Judah began to reign…He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, just as his father David had done. He removed the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles…
Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before him or after him. He held fast to the Lord and did not stop following him; he kept the commands the Lord had given Moses.
2 Kings 18:1-6

King Hezekiah was a bright spot in an otherwise dark season for the people of God. Most of the kings had turned away from the Lord until Hezekiah, and Israel had already been conquered by Assyria. Only the kingdom of Judah was left.

Hezekiah’s faithfulness is contrasted sharply with his son Manasseh’s and his grandson Amon’s. Here is what scripture says of Amon:

He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, as his father Manasseh had done. He followed completely the ways of his father, worshiping the idols his father had worshiped, and bowing down to them. He forsook the Lord, the God of his ancestors, and did not walk in obedience to him.
2 Kings 21:20-22

So while Hezekiah was completely faithful to the Lord, Manasseh and Amon were worse than the former kings of Israel in their disobedience and infidelity. Yet, when Josiah–Amon’s son and Hezekiah’s great-grandson–became king of Judah, he made a hard turn back to the Lord. Scripture says, “He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and followed completely the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left” (2 Kings 22:2).

King Josiah is the one who rediscovered the Book of the Law in the Temple of the Lord. Josiah is the one who re-established the covenant of God and enacted massive reforms throughout the land leading the people back to the worship of God alone.

This is a good reminder that the faithfulness of one generation can impact future generations. Though fidelity to the Lord may skip a generation or two, though there may be some prodigals in the family line, God has a way of honoring the faithfulness of former generations by causing a flourishing of faithfulness in future generations.

I sense this in my own life. I had two faithful grandmothers who I know often prayed for their grandchildren. I can’t help but sense that my own experiences in ministry are a result, not only of faithful parents, but of faithful grandparents. And I’ve also learned that even further back in my family line were some pastors and evangelists. It makes me wonder about how spiritual inheritance works in the Kingdom of God.

Our God is a God of the generations. When God sent Moses to set His people free, God told Moses to refer to Him as “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob“(Exodus 3:16). He’s a multigenerational God who often keeps His promises to one generation by fulfilling it in the next generation.

Peter reminds us that God thinks in long-term plans and doesn’t rush to accomplish His purposes. What we often perceive as “slowness” is really just God’s patience with us.

But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you…
2 Peter 3:8-9

What if the things happening between you and God right now are God answering the prayer that one of your ancestors prayed centuries ago? What if the spiritual gifts and open doors that you’ve experienced are, in part, a result of the faithfulness of past generations?

We must also wrestle with these questions: What are we doing now that will have ripple effects in the Kingdom of God down through our family line? What prayer are we praying now that our great-grandchildren will receive the answer for? What seeds are we planting now in the Kingdom of God that will bear fruit a century from now?

How God sees you

The angel of the Lord came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites. When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.”
Judges 6:11-12

The Midianites would regularly come in and destroy the land of Israel by consuming all of their crops and livestock. This left Israel impoverished and afraid. Gideon was so afraid of having no food that he was threshing his wheat crop inside a winepress to hide it from the Midianites.

Then the angel of the Lord shows up to Gideon and says two things that are completely contrary to the situation. He says, “The Lord is with you…” And then calls Gideon, “…mighty warrior.” Both parts seem to be very untrue at this moment in Israel’s history. God seems very far away from Israel and from Gideon. And, riddled with fear, Gideon is in no way a mighty warrior.

This is what God does for us. God sees in us who He created us to be, not who we are in the moment. God speaks the future over our lives when we are still in the present. By the end of the Gideon story, it will become obvious that God is with Gideon and that he is a mighty warrior. But when these words are spoken in this moment, they sound ridiculous.

God’s words have creative power. So words from God that declare our future have a way of pulling us into that future. What God says about us in this moment is more true than the circumstances that we see around us. His words about us are more true than our own self-image or self-perception. Our job is to believe His words above everything else we see with our physical eyes.

I’ve had this personally happen to me. I’ve had people come up to me and give me a prophetic word from the Lord. When they said the word to me, it sounded ridiculous. It sounded outlandish and fanciful. Yet, looking back years later, I realize that every bit of that word was true. And more than that, because that word was spoken, it had a gravitational force to it that pulled me into that future.

God still does this with me today. There are moments I’ve had in prayer where I sense God saying something over my life. Yet what God says seems unbelievable. But what God is teaching me is to trust His word over the circumstances I see around me. I’m learning to trust His words about me more than I trust my thoughts about me.

So, what is God saying about you? What word does He have for your life? If you don’t know, ask Him.

Ask this question: Father, how do you see me?

Then sit quietly and listen for spontaneous thoughts that enter your mind that don’t feel like your own. Or look for mental images that come to mind that seem to appear spontaneously. This is often how the Holy Spirit will respond to the questions we have for God. You may be surprised at what He says, but choose to believe His word over your own self-perception.