If you abide in Me and My word abides in you, then you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.

On Worshipful Wednesdays, we take a look at God’s word and His kingdom to see what we can learn about ourselves, Him and/or our relationships with Him.

Ever wonder why there are so many things we don’t and can’t understand about God? About how and why He does things? I would imagine you have. I think we all do from time to time.

Why doesn’t He explain things to us when we wonder about them? Why does He leave us to muddle along without knowing the answers to so many questions?

Have you ever made a statement like, “If God would only explain this to me, I’d _______? (You fill in the blank.) When you were growing up, you expected your parents to explain things to you. You expected your science teacher to explain things to you. Surely God is smarter than our parents and teachers. Why won’t He answer all of our questions? Explain everything we don’t understand?

Last week we talked about the difference between faith and religion. Click here if you missed that one. Remember, we looked at the definition of faith from Unger’s Bible Dictionary, which said “the word is used in scripture most frequently in a subjective sense, denoting a moral or spiritual quality of individuals, by virtue of which men are held in relations of confidence in God and fidelity to Him. . . .”

Both Christianity and Judaism are based on faith. We’ve never seen God, but we believe in Him. We’ve never seen heaven, but we believe it’s there. No Christian since the first century has touched Jesus, but that doesn’t keep us from believing in Him.

You don’t have to believe in the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls or the Empire State Building. You can go there and see these things. Faith is not involved. You know for a fact that they exist.

No faith is required to believe that rivers flow downhill or that leaves fall to the ground rather than rising into the sky. We see these things happen, and we understand the law of gravity behind them, so faith doesn’t enter in.

God wants us to have faith in Him. He wants us to worship Him, enter into a relationship with Him, pray to Him because of our faith, not because we saw him at Wal-mart the other day or shook hands with him at church last Sunday. He wants our whole experience with Him to be based on faith.

If He told us what’s around the next corner, if He let us know exactly how our loved one’s bout with cancer is going to turn out, if He came down and appeared in person in each of our homes, there would be no faith. Our belief would not have to be based on trusting what He said without seeing the proof. If He showed us the proof, no trust would be involved.

I don’t know about you, but I’m glad He doesn’t reveal everything to me. If I could completely understand Him, if I knew the answers to all those questions and didn’t have to trust Him on faith, He wouldn’t be a very big God. I’m glad He’s far too big a God for me to see, touch and understand.

Have a New Testament passage or concept you’d like to see discussed here? Maybe something you’ve never quite understood. I’d love to hear from you about that, too. I’ll try my best to explain it.

For more information about David N. Walker, click the “About” tab above.

For more information about his books, click on “Books” above.

Contact him at dnwalkertx@gmail.com or tweet him at @davidnwalkertx.