Don't Try to Figure Him Out

Oh, how great are God’s riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his ways! Romans 11:33 (New Living Translation, NLT)

For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:9 (New Living Translation, NLT)

We can try and try our entire lives to understand God, His ways, and His judgments, but we won’t. And, in the process, we’ll end up frustrated and unbelieving. God is to be believed, not understood. If we could figure God out, there would be no need for faith. Faith is believing something without understanding it. A God that you can figure out isn’t much of a God.

God gives us the ability to seek Him in order to know Him better. We can become intimate with God, but we will never completely figure Him out and know everything about Him. Because He is infinite, He is past totally understanding. We will spend all eternity getting to know Him more and more. Just when we think we have seen everything there is to see about Him, we’ll get a glimpse of something new.

One of the biggest frustrations in life is seeking to know why everything happens the way it does and why God chooses to do things the way He does. Our perspective is limited. We see from a vantage point of time and space, but God is limitless and sees everything from the viewpoint of eternity. His wisdom is perfect. He knows the thoughts and intents of every heart and can orchestrate events for the best possible good of everyone involved and for His glory. We only see what is visible, unless He gives us special revelation to understand a situation or person.

Give up trying to understand why this happened this way and why that happened the way it did. God may show us certain things to help us grow in our faith and in our relationship with Him, but we’ll never know it all. God’s ways really are higher than ours and His thoughts are far above our thoughts. We must choose to be content knowing that God is totally, absolutely, positively good and that He loves us. When we simply trust Him, we’ll find a peace that cannot come through understanding.

Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:6-7 (New Living Translation, NLT)