My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever. – Psalm 73:26
In the Bible, “but God” is a powerful phrase. It reminds us of our own limitations but God’s limitless power. Reminds us of His grace and mercy. But sometimes we take that phrase and twist it with our own selfishness.
What do I mean by that?
Well, let me give you an illustration from my own life. In my post I’ve Never Seen the Righteous Forsaken, I shared about God telling me to quit my job. My response? “But God, what about insurance? But God, what about my paycheck? But God…”
Does this sound familiar?
The meaning of that phrase changed, and not in a good way. Instead of saying, “But God’s got this. But God’s in control,” I used that phrase to question Him.
As humans, we’re good at taking something that can showcase God’s power and turning it into something negative. Take marriage, for example. An institution God created is often treated as nothing more than a piece of paper.
(For more on God’s plan for marriage, check out my post Marriage: A Picture of Christ and the Church.)
The same can be said for trials. Instead of trusting God’s plan, we spend most of our time questioning Him and what He’s doing. Sometimes, we even get angry and push Him away. And while I think questioning God is a common symptom of our humanity, I wonder why we’ve decided we’re entitled to answers. Why we can’t simply say, “I don’t know what You’re doing, but I trust You.”
Because if we’ve learned nothing else from reading the Bible, surely we’ve learned God comes through in the most unexpected ways. How He intervenes just when it seems all hope is lost. And while questioning Him is as easy as breathing, we can do better. Should do better.
I think our faith would be stronger if instead of focusing on all the things we don’t know, we look to the things we do know.
God loves us (John 3:16).
God will never forsake us (Hebrews 13:5).
God will supply all our needs (Philippians 4:19).
When you start thinking about it, you realize you could keep going on and on. And you realize that what you know trumps what you don’t. Because the biggest thing we know, what we Christians can all attest to is this: We don’t deserve His love, but God gives it anyway.
Now that’s a great use of the phrase.
You see, “But God,” should be about Him. When we say, “But…” and begin to question Him, we take the focus off Him and turn it on ourselves. We take something meant to glorify Him and His strengths and make it about us. We take a powerful phrase and turn it into a selfish one.
So the next time we’re tempted to overturn the best phrase, let’s instead overturn our thinking. Let’s decide to focus on God’s strength instead of our weakness. Let’s remember it’s not about us.
It’s about Him.
