God Works in Our Messes

God loves to reveal Himself in the messes of our lives.  In fact, I would argue that God often allows messes so that we may learn to depend on Him in a greater way.  When life is easy, we tend to put God on the periphery of our lives.  Messes have a way of reminding us of our need to put God at the center.

CS Lewis wrote, “We can ignore pleasure, but pain insists upon being attended to.  God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”   If we are willing to admit it, we learn to pray the most earnest, draw close to God with more passion and become more willing to follow Jesus when we face things that are beyond our abilities.

That is one of the themes of Jonah.  Even though his mess was a result of his own stubbornness and sin, it was the very thing that God used to draw Jonah back to Himself.  We see Jonah turn back to the Lord during the storm and after being swallowed by a great fish.  “I called out to the Lord out of my distress and He answered me.”  (Jon 2:2)

But we also see through Jonah’s mess how God used it to touch others and those around him.  In Jonah 1:16 we see how the sailors also turned to the Lord after seeing the storm stilled, when they “feared the Lord exceedingly and then offered sacrifices and vows to the Lord.”  

Why does it take a big mess in our lives to turn to the Lord?  The short answer is that when life is going smoothly, we are tempted to come under the illusion that somehow life can be managed without God.  And so through the mess we discover what CS Lewis wrote long ago, pain is God’s megaphone to rouse us from being deaf.

There are two profound truths we discover in the book of Jonah.  The first is this: God is still there when life gets messy.  In fact, God is not only in the midst of our messes, but allows them so that we don’t remain deaf and blind to the true reality of things.  The true reality of things is that God created us to be in relationship with Him and there is no greater lie than when we try to live life out with God on the sidelines. 

A second truth we discover in Jonah is this:  God can use our messes for something good.  Here we see the great truth of Romans 8:28-29, where “God works all things together for the good, to those called according to God’s purpose.”  God allows suffering, pain and messes in our lives that we may be “conformed into the image of His Son Jesus.” 

We don’t like messes, but as we look to the Lord by faith and hold on to His promises, the Spirit will help us to begin seeing that through them God can orchestrate something good through them that we may be vessels of His glory.  When we see that than we will be able to say with the Apostle Paul, “we rejoice in our sufferings.”  (Rom 5:3)