Fingerprints of God

Have you ever realized how much we use metaphors? It’s almost hard to speak without them. You can think of a metaphor for almost anything. And what’s more, it’s nearly impossible to find something you can’t think of a metaphor for. The Lord created this world to point to himself. C.S. Lewis says that the Lord cannot give us happiness outside of himself because it does not exist. I think that is also true of the world around us. The Lord cannot give us insight apart from things that point to Him because they do not exist. 

If you are looking for Him, God can be found all around you. I like to think of them as God sightings. If you aren’t looking for Him, you might call them coincidences. I’m sure I am not the first person you have ever heard say the words, “I don’t believe in coincidences.” But I am not just saying that for the cliché. I truly believe that there is no such thing as a coincidence. Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that in ALL THINGS God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.” Even in the story of Joseph, when his own brothers sold him into slavery, it is clear that the Lord had a plan even in that. Joseph says, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives" (Genesis 50:20). 

I believe that the Lord is in control of all things. I don’t think that statement is too hard for most of us to grasp. But then, as soon as we say we believe the Lord is control, something crazy happens and we think, “How can the Lord possibly have planned this?” 

I think there is a huge component that we miss when we simply look at the verse that says, “God works for the good of those who love him.” I think a lot of times when we read that verse, we think, “Well, I love God so He is going to bless me, my life will be prosperous and anything that isn’t awesome is from the devil.” We miss the second part of the verse that says, “who have been called according to HIS purpose.” It does not say, “And we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him so that they might have better lives than those who don’t like God very much.” 

My mind immediately goes to Psalm 37:4 that says, “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” It’s another nice verse that we like to read and think, “Well I delight myself in the Lord, so I should be getting what I want by now.” I am not saying that I have never thought those things, I read the verse that way for most of my life. We focus on “and he will give you the desires of your heart” rather than focusing on delighting ourselves in the Lord. This verse was not placed in the Bible so that once we became Christians, we could expect God to give us all Ferraris. 

In fact, that verse is a command. It is calling us to delight ourselves in the Lord and then backing it up with a positive side effect of following this command. Not the other way around. It does not say, “When the Lord gives you the desires of your heart, that’s when it becomes easy to delight yourself in the Lord.” When we are truly delighting ourselves in the Lord, our hearts start to look more like His. And when our hearts look like His, our desires align with His desires. Therefore, when we delight ourselves in the Lord, our desires become the same as the Lord’s desires and he, then, grants us those desires, most specifically to be completely satisfied in him. 

This idea works similarly with Romans 8:28. When we have been called according to HIS purpose and not our own, our idea of good looks a lot like His idea of good. Rather than looking for an opportunity for God to miraculously provide us a Ferrari, we start looking for an opportunity to join in the Lord’s purpose. He is working for our good. But He is working for greater good. He doesn’t want us to have an average good, He wants us to have the GREATEST good. He came so that we might have life and have it to the FULLEST. 

We can often think of this in the context of our own lives because we are selfish beings by default. We can constantly see coincidences or “God sightings” and see that the Lord is working for our good. I’ve touched on the idea that our idea of good does not always match God's idea of good. But this is still too small an argument. 

God is described in the Bible a lot as our Father, and we see the evidence in passages like this where he claims to be working for our greater good and wanting what is best for us. But God is also powerful, mighty, strong, kind, compassionate, Holy, and on and on and on. So yes, God works for our good, but ultimately, God works for His Glory. So when we find ourselves in those moments thinking, “I believe God works for our good, but there is no way that this is good for me,” we have to trust that the Lord is planning something for our greater good, but that there is another factor involved: that in all things, ultimately God will be glorified. I’m thinking that was about how the Israelites were feeling when they were heading out of Egypt. 

We have all read the story. Plagues and miracles. So many times, Moses goes before the Pharaoh and says “Let my people go!” and every time Pharaoh says no. So God sends little reminders to nudge Pharaoh in the right direction. I remember reading this story countless times wondering why on earth the Pharaoh wouldn’t just let them go. Some of those plagues were pretty bad, I think I probably just would have given up at that point. It says over and over again, “The Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart.” I remember wondering why on earth God would do that. If His ultimate goal was to deliver His people from slavery, why did He take so long to get them out? He’s God. He could have just sent sent down some fire from heaven and burned Egypt to the ground or came to Pharaoh in a dream and said “Let my people go, or you’ll be sorry, my friend.” But what we miss, sometimes, is that even though God’s goal was to deliver His people from slavery, His ultimate goal was His glory.

Every time the Lord hardens Pharaoh’s heart, He says, “...so that they will know that I am God.” Over and over and over again it says the words, “…so they will know that I am God.” God’s ultimate goal is not our good, but His glory. And through His glory, we come to see Him and know Him, which, in turn, is our greatest good. 

God’s ultimate goal is that we know Him. God is Holy, set apart, far above anything we can ever comprehend or imagine. He created this universe, and purposely imprinted everything with a clue to who He is so that we might be able to better understand this God who is so far beyond anything we can understand. Why do we constantly hear songs called, “Grace Like Rain,” or “Like an Avalanche”? Why did Jesus constantly speak in parables? He has placed everything in the universe to point back to Himself and help our human minds grasp a little piece of who He really is. There are no coincidences. Only fingerprints of God.