I owe this post to Andy Lewis, the Senior Teaching Pastor at Mitchell Road Presbyterian Church (Greenville, SC). I “attend” there Sunday mornings as a regular practice and am blessed to sit under his teaching (as well as others who share that ministry). This came up a few weeks ago as part of his message where Abraham negotiated with God about the coming destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Most of you will be familiar with that passage, so I won’t go into the details. That story itself isn’t my point anyway, but it did get me to thinking.
There are multiple stories in our Bible where an individual interacts directly with God and intercedes (maybe even begs) for a different outcome than has been laid out. Abraham did it in this instance. Moses did it when God said he’d wipe out all the Israelites. David’s Psalms are full of this kind of dialog. Job (associated with my current Sunday morning book) went through it. Our Divine Older Brother himself searched for “a way out” at his darkest moment. None of them were ready to just sign the “Carmax deal” that offered one set of outcomes … take it or leave it … no negotiating, no questions. And no need to deal with any of that pesky “mystery” either.
That’s what struck me as Andy took us through this passage. Abraham didn’t presume God wouldn’t “change his mind” and proceeded to ask for that. He went to bat (primarily for his nephew Lot) and sought a different outcome than the deal on the table would indicate. He knew God wasn’t the “Carmax God” and acted accordingly. He was willing to embrace the mystery and mess of actually interacting with the Father. And he did it with full expectation that God would listen and may actually change.
And please don’t hear what I’m not saying … you won’t find me in the “just pray harder” camp nor will I bow to the “it’s all in God’s hands/will” crowd. Both of those are non-biblical interpretations that either put too much on us or make us more like robots. Again, look at what Jesus did in the Garden where he clearly asked for something different but accepted that ultimately God would work the best “good” out of it all. If you go back to the beginning of this blog and understand why my late brother Mike called it “the Crooked Path”, you’ll probably get my perspective a bit better.
One more thought from Andy this morning that really prompted me to write this down. The message came from 1 Peter (part of a brief series) and the point that really struck me was that Jesus already took on the full weight of Death so that we would only have to pass through the shadow of death. That just reinforced what I read in Keller’s book today. It doesn’t absolve us from engaging God, but it does give us a calm assurance that the winning is already done, even while still shrouded in mystery.
