It is "both- and"

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I think I often complicate honest and simple thoughts I would want to write about and that's why this post comes later than it should've had. Anyway, I am now writing and I think we are living interesting times. I'm happy to be alive and to know that this period of time was meant to be mine. I've been feeling very happy during this year, experiencing little dreams of mine coming true, little love nuggets, small, caring gestures from God, who was showing me how much He cares about my heart and my relationship with Him. He has been filling my soul box with such delight that I am overwhelmed with excitement and joy! This is how life should be... but... it isn't... I know, we live on this earth where we have to still go through seasons to cope with the changes that require us to mature and learn love well. I'm in... being on this journey, although I won't and don't, at the present, understand many things that happen in and around me. I really like how being and living on earth is not about living after rules and putting things into little compartments or boxes, but it's about enigmas, mystery, adventure, uncertainty... the unknown! I know my body and my mind don't really like those things, which make me even happier.

I have been learning about the topic of predestination and grace for more than two years and there was a fight in me to accept all that I was finding out while searching for answers. The thing that mostly helped me was to study God’s sovereignty and that's how I got to write a few posts even here to my blog. I've been thinking about lots of verses, an example would be Jeremiah 10:23: "I know, Lord that a person’s life is not his own. No one is able to plan his own course." or even Jeremiah 18:6b "As the clay is in the potter’s hand, so am I in Your hand." It’s nice to have these two verses as a reminder that my life depends on a good and loving God. But let me tell you more closely what I have been learning: It takes both predestination and free will, faith and works, male and female, spirit and truth, young and old, skill and zeal, attractional and missional, evangelism and social justice, gifts of the Spirit and fruit of the Spirit, grace and obedience, preaching and teaching, house churches and mega churches, theological and practical, persecution and freedom, it is about heart and head, this earth and the new one, counseling and deliverance, medicine and divine healing, discipleship and outreach, traditional church and contemporary church, liturgical and non-liturgical, holiness and relevance, servanthood and sonship, submission and freedom, prayer and action, talent and practice, dying and living, maturity and childlikeness, the world will grow darker and also the glory of God will cover the earth. We don’t have to focus on separating these things and try to take part and find verses and experience to stick to one and neglect the other one. When doing that we always end up with division, not unity or love or peace. Putting all of these together get me to the Source. Who knows these secrets? Who holds them together? The answer is Yeshua! I've learned I don't have to understand everything and I don't even want to speak about everything. I'm ready to say that I don't know something when I really don't know. I won't come up with an answer and I won't withdraw from my relationship with God because I don't know some things or things don't work out as I have foreseen them. I will draw closer and seek relationship with the One who knows it all. That’s my purpose, my desire and yearning. 

2 Timothy 2:7 was highlighted to me while thinking about these, where Paul told Timothy to “think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.” I know many people want to go down the road of one of these, while minimizing the other. Some stress the “think over what I say”, which is the role of reason and thinking, but they loose sight of the decisive supernatural role of God working in the mind to be able to see and embrace His truth. "Then the LORD asked Moses, “Who makes a person’s mouth? Who decides whether people speak or do not speak, hear or do not hear, see or do not see? Is it not I, the LORD?" (Exodus 4:11) We have to embrace both human thinking and divine illumination. It’s not “either-or”, it’s “both-and”. Paul is not saying that God is giving us understanding, so we shouldn’t waste our time thinking over what He said. But he neither says to think hard over what He says because it all depends on us and God doesn’t help our minds. I think God’s ways are higher than ours, so we won’t understand everything, but while searching, He’s revealing deeper things to us by His grace. "Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete" (1 Corinthians 13:9), we don't know some things and we have to settle with this fact and not follow the urge to have to explain everything. Please don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we should be complacent and settle for less. I'm just saying the "both-and" explanations I gave, are true in the context of relationship, seasons and of what God is doing. The reason why there is not only one way is because we as human beings would start relating to a law instead of a Person. This way it requires your pursuit of the Person of mystery. Let the unknown and mystery not offend you or pull you away, but actually draw you deeper into relationship. Be encouraged to know the One that knows everything. So lean in with everything you've got.