Being surrounded is often a reason to surrender. We have all watched TV shows or movies in which the police have found the location of a criminal, they surround the location and then shout out “You are surrounded, come out with your hands up!” Being surrounded usually means that there is no place to go, nowhere to escape, nowhere to run, that it is time to give in and give up. Last week my friend Chris started talking about Hebrews 12 in a way I never considered before. Rather than concentrating on the specific people of Hebrews 11 that make up the witnesses or the weight and sin we are to lay aside he talked about the cloud. Chris began to talk about this cloud mentioned in Hebrews 12 and the characteristics of this “weather phenomenon”. He said that a cloud of this nature is very misty and so dense that it often becomes dark and can drastically reduce visibility. Now, I should give this a little context. We were in the midst of discussing I Corinthians 12, the concept of being many members that make up one body, dependent upon each other to all accomplish the purpose for which we were both created and joined. Then Chris throws out this talk of the cloud and how being in the midst of this kind of cloud doesn’t make it easier to see it actually makes it more difficult at times.
I sat and thought about this while Chris talked, we spoke about it some but I can’t stop thinking about it. God told Abraham to go to a land that He would show him, He told Moses exactly where to go, but gave somewhat vague details about what would happen when he got there. He told Samuel to go and anoint a new king and then revealed that the new king wasn’t who or where Samuel thought he would be. He spoke through Isaiah that a voice would come from behind saying “this is the way, walk in it”, implying that the voice comes once we are already on the path and He spoke through Jeremiah that He knows the plans that He has for us, but at the same time doesn’t really share all the details of the plans. God also revealed Himself to David as a Shepherd, a leader that guides dependent and vulnerable sheep to where they need to be rather than where they think they should be.
The more I study the Scriptures and the lives of men and women that truly walk with God the more I realize that God longs for an intimacy with man that results in complete trust and that leads to full obedience. God longs to be intimate with us and so He orders our paths to create intimacy, the problem is that as men we thirst for clarity. Why do you think there is all of this talk about purpose and destiny in the church? This isn’t new, it’s part of the human condition, but I’m beginning to think that our thirst for clarity may be a part of the human condition that God wants to redeem rather than fulfill. Think about it for a moment, when Jesus was revealed as the Messiah all anyone wanted to know was if it was time for Israel to be restored, even after His resurrection His disciples asked Him “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom of Israel?” After Jesus’ ascension the church, rightly so, waited and contended for His return. However, within a generation some in the church had begun to say that Jesus had already returned while others began to say that He would not return at all. Not knowing the details often reveals our lack of patience and our lack of patience is usually a sure sign that we tie our understanding of what comes next to our willingness to trust the One who promised that He would take care of the future just as well as He has redeemed our past.
When Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, before sin entered the world, they were told to fill the earth, subdue it and have dominion over all of the living things, that is all the instructions they were given. The other glimpse we have into their lives was that God would come and walk with them in the cool of the day. What we see is a life devoid of stress, of fear, anxiety, doubt or an incessant need to know what would come next. It seems to me that their point of concentration was not on what they would do or when they would do it but rather on the One that had created them and put them in the garden together. I actually believe that this is exactly what Satan attacked when he brought Eve the first temptation. He questioned God’s Word and called into doubt their future. “Surely you won’t die” was not just a lie, it was a lie that crated anxious thoughts and fearful doubts. The final straw that allowed Adam and Eve to give in and choose sin was when Satan said “God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” He promised them clarity, “all the things you don’t know now you will suddenly know if you just do the one thing that God has commanded you not to do.” Sometimes we forget that we were created for intimacy that trusts for the future rather than clarity that knows the future. I’m not saying that knowledge of the future is evil but rather that knowledge of the future is supposed to be birthed out of intimacy and that intimacy is rarely if ever birthed out of knowledge of the future.
This is my concern with our fascination with purpose and destiny, is it our continued effort to know God’s plans beforehand? What if we are being given the choice, one or the other, clarity or intimacy? Now, before you ask, I am well aware that I Chronicles 12 tells us about the Sons of Issachar, “who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do” as well as the fact that Amos 3 says that God never moves “without revealing His plan to his servants the prophets”. I believe that both of these Scriptures reveal the kindness of God, He desires for His people to know His ways but not nearly as much as He desires for His people to know Him. In this day and age we live in the redeemed, the followers of Jesus have been filled with the Spirit of Truth and He leads us into all truth, our calling is to intimacy that trusts and obeys. I believe this calling is so profound that God actually is willing to make our way unclear so that we will depend more fully upon the One that makes the way.
The trite old saying is “I may not know what my future holds but I know Who holds my future.” This is a saying that is constantly tested, not in its accuracy but in our belief in it. To go back to the “cloud” in Hebrews 12, the Greek word that is used is literally translated as “a cloud, a large dense multitude, a throng”. The word was “used to denote a great shapeless collection of vapour obscuring the heavens as opposed to a particular and definite masses of vapour with some form or shape.” This means that part of the purpose of the “cloud of witnesses” in Hebrews 12 is to obscure our sight. Why? I believe it is because when our sight is obscured we are forced to depend upon the One that leads us. The more I lean upon those that have gone before me the more I realize that my ideas, plans and visions are limited at best and at worst faulty. Noah was a preacher of righteousness with no converts, His purpose turned out to be devotion to God in a manner that would quite literally save the human race. Abraham married a barren woman, so did his son Isaac and yet both of them were called to have children, not just any children but miraculous children born as much by faith as by procreation. Go through the list of men and woman of faith in Hebrews 11, those that make up the biblical “cloud of witnesses” and what you learn is that none of them knew the plan or the path but they all, at some point in their lives trusted in the One that leads more than the direction they were being led. Look around you at the cloud of witnesses in your own life. I bet that most of the people of faith that you admire and learn from are people that have made it through dark places, quiet places and even lonely places only to find their faith increased and God’s love more sure and real than ever before. We are all surrounded and the cloud that surrounds us is a cloud that obscures the details so that it can reveal the worth of Christ and the love of God. We are surrounded to surrender.
What if today you and I are being given a choice, to forge life on our own, with no obscuring cloud and search out great clarity or to enter the obscuring cloud of witnesses and believe that in the midst of God’s people He will make Himself known and will lead me on the path that brings Him glory? What if we can’t have both? What if we can’t have both clarity of the future and intimacy with God and His people? What if one gets in the way of the other? Joshua asked Israel to choose whom they would serve; I’m asking myself and each of us today to choose which one we desire more and which one we will be satisfied with in our souls . . . to know the destiny of my life or to know the Creator of my life? When it comes to clarity and intimacy, one comes with the other, the only problem is that the order has to be followed or the path can be lost: intimacy creates clarity. In the midst of the cloud you can’t see beyond it, but the beauty is you can see clearly within it. May we become a people that doesn’t look past God’s love but who are so overwhelmed by it that we decide that nothing can separate us from it and so we will just stay here, hidden in the cloud of witnesses, in a cloud made up of the ones that have known God’s love and that God has used to make His love known to us. Thank God that we are surrounded, we must respond by being surrendered to the great love of God and the path of righteousness that might not be easily seen but will always be filled with God’s glory.