The Big Diehl

My father and pastor has mentioned several times (while on stage) that he gets frustrated sometimes. Understandably so — he gets frustrated when he prepares a weekend message for the church about how to heal a broken marriage - and then all throughout that week, couples call him and ask for Godly counsel on how to heal their broken marriage. They would have heard all of it had they just came to church. I get frustrated occasionally as well in a similar way, only with my blog, not a sermon. Think about how frustrating that must be — we go through the work to help people, but the people that are thirsty for that specific thing — the ones needing it — don’t care enough to show up.

It made me wonder how God must feel.

We claim we want to know God’s will. If we’re really on fire we’ll shout out to God, “Speak to me your plans! Let me hear your voice!” And then get mad at him when he doesn’t answer. Think about that - that’s really what we do, isn’t it?

God already spent 1500 years writing down his plans for us. Not only that, but he inspired a group of early church leaders to compile all of it together into one organized book. It’s called the Bible! He did all this - yet we ignore it and holler out for God’s voice saying, “Why won’t you tell me anything?!”

It’s a wonder we can be so stupid and still breathe!

I’m not saying that God won’t speak through Divine Revelation - he certainly does. But Divine Revelation will never contradict scripture and we should always start with the Word of God that He as ALREADY given to us.

Let me end with some strong words that were said to me once:

“You want to know God? How DARE you say that you want to know God when you haven’t even read His Word — all of it — Genesis through Revelation. –the whole thing straight through.”

That same night I started Genesis 1. I’m reading Hebrews tonight. It’s been amazing how much more I understand God when I’ve read things in their context.