“Can you hear me now? Good. Can you hear me now? Good.” Little did I know watching those Verizon commercials as a teenager that the journey of choosing God–and it is a journey, not a pit stop–would play out exactly like them. “Do you choose me now? Good. Do you choose me now? Good.” At least, I think he says, “Good,” because the only way your life becomes cousin to a Verizon commercial is if you keep saying, “Yes.”
It’s easy to praise God when things go well. Enveloped in the joy of fulfilled dreams, the relief of an answered prayer, of being spared, is it even a conscious choice? It seems gratitude must make your devotion automatic. As Satan said of Job, “Doth Job fear God for nought? Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? Thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land.”
Of course you’d love a God who prospered everything you touched.
Remove the hedge, though, or never put it up at all, and how attached is your heart to him now? I’m sure we all hope we’d be like Job, who “sinned not, nor charged God foolishly” when he lost everything. That we’d still choose him now. And now. And even now. Notwithstanding this unanswered prayer, that dashed hope, those new grains of salt in the wound. Or the opening of an entirely new one.
But it’s hard to trust when you feel forsaken. To praise when you hurt.
To not go along with Satan’s prediction of Job and curse God to his face.
When the hedge is gone, choosing God is an effort. One you’re not always sure is worth making.
It’s Okay If Your “Yes” Isn’t Immediate…
In the movie Facing the Giants, after medical test results crush their hope for children, Grant Taylor asks his wife, Brooke, “If the Lord never gives us children, will you still love him?”
I can’t say for sure what they’re meaning to portray when her eyes well up and she silently lays her head on his shoulder. But I know how it strikes me because I know what my own response to that question has been.
She doesn’t answer because she doesn’t know. Love the God who could but doesn’t grant her heart’s deepest desire?
She’ll have to think about that.
If it’s easy to answer that question affirmatively, either you’re the Apostle Paul who’s learned to be content in all things–you might be; I’m not there yet–or you’re not really in pain. Real, raw disappointment is hard to think or love around. It doesn’t just roll off your back.
It doesn’t roll off mine, anyway. When I’ve asked myself if I would still love him, husbandless, childless, and whatever-else-less–that’s where my life and those Verizon commercials differ. There’s quite a conversation that goes on between, “Do you choose me now?” and, “Good,” because sometimes it’s rather difficult to say yes.
“Do you choose me now?”
“Well…there’s a knife in my heart, and it kinda feels like you plunged it in, so…”
I trail off, and God prompts, “So…what?”
And that’s where the heart examination begins.
…As Long As It’s Coming
Some might say, “So, no,” and be done with it. Bitterness shuts them down and God out.
The Pauls of the world say, “So, yes!” and carry on.
And then there’s the rest of us, who can only cry and say, “I don’t know.”
Those are hearts that want to say yes. Who know God didn’t really plunge the knife in. Or if he did, it’s not as brutal as it feels but comes with purpose and blessing. But our trust got broken with our hearts. If it’s not true we got the short end of the stick, it feels true.
It takes time–and usually an intense internal battle–for it to stop feeling true.
And God says, “That’s okay. I can wait.”
Brooke Taylor did eventually say yes. Leaving the doctor’s office after the shattered hopes she resurrected are dashed once more, she stops at her car, looks up, and says, “I will still love you, Lord.”
There comes a point where you can say it. And mean it. Right there in the disappointment. It still hurts, even if you love him. But it hurts worse if you don’t.
You know because while you’ve been trying to answer that question, you’ve tried it that way. Indulged in bitterness, lashed out in anger, given God the silent treatment.
And realized that’s no way to live.
I think that’s always what makes up my mind. The foul taste of who and what I’ll be if my answer is no.
God is like the hope he gives us. Hard to live with sometimes because you can’t always understand what he’s trying to tell you. But impossible to live without.
So, a few steps or maybe miles down the road, when the raw ache has ebbed to a dull throb and what your heart knows has gained some ground over what it feels—
“Do you choose me now?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Choosing God Again. And Again. And Again.
If you’ve seen the movie, you know that while Brooke is in the parking lot surrendering, the nurses inside are realizing they confused her results with someone else’s, and one of them runs out to tell her she is in fact expecting!
Sometimes God rewards your decision to love him with the very thing you vowed to love him without.
But what happens when he doesn’t? When you really do have to love him without it? For an extended period or–forever?
That’s where your life becomes a Verizon commercial.
You’ve chosen God because to not choose him is worse. You’ve made tentative peace with the possibility, or probability, his plan doesn’t include what you hoped it would. But you can’t help it. You hope anyway that someday…
But as time goes on without someday, the wound, which got some balm but never really healed, gets bumped and jostled and opened again. The tears come back, passing your peace as it leaves, and through the fresh waves of pain, the question comes again.
“Do you choose me now?”
And again, all you can do is cry. And say you don’t know.
But I’ve found that you actually do know a little more than last time. You still do the whole bitter silent treatment thing. But it doesn’t last as long because you remember how it went last time, and that it wasn’t worth it. And you know it’s not getting you any farther this time.
Having chosen God once, it’s easier to choose him again. And again. And again.
It’s not a sign of weakness that you have to choose him again and again and again. It’s not because you’re too dense or wicked or human to figure this out.
To loosely paraphrase something my dad said, returning to God takes a lifetime of proving.
A lifetime of proving is a lifetime of choosing.
I hope I’m coming to a place where, when God asks, “Do you choose me now?” I can skip the anger and “I don’t knows” and be content enough to say yes without hesitation.
But no matter how fast I say it, the choice still has to be made. Things will keep happening that require it. Some happenings will make the choice easy. Some will make it difficult. But in all things, God–and I–need to know where I stand.
Choosing God Because He Chooses You
All of this has been a synopsis of the challenge it is to choose God when the investment seems to yield little to no return. To love him though he doesn’t seem to answer when you knock, or give when you ask.
The challenge is real. The struggle is hard. We’re human. God’s ways aren’t ours. And they’re hard to submit to.
But this subject cannot be closed without acknowledging in abject humility that God makes such an investment in us every day. He chose us in a stable in Bethlehem. In Gethsemane. On a cross on Calvary. Knowing how many times we would not choose him back. How little return we would give him on his investment.
He chose us anyway, and still does, and always will.
So if you’re having a hard time finding a reason to lock your love around him–remember he locked his around you first.
He’s not letting go.
Return the favor.
It’s worth it.
If you’re trying to decide whether to choose God now, I hope something here has helped you say, “Yes!” Share your experience in the comments, and share this post with someone else.
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