When our view of God changes, god does not

​A friend told me a story yesterday about a young lady who came to her and told her she'd recently started reading her her bible. And the young lady relayed that ever since she had, her world had gotten worse and not better.

She wondered out loud to my friend if maybe this was because she'd made some mistakes along the way. Maybe the God of the bible wasn't interested in turning a story she'd messed up into a story that got better.

As my friend told me about this, I found myself thinking - I've been there. I've been there recently. Some of the things we think as a teen are things we are prone to keep thinking as an adult. It's amazing, really, how we outgrow so much yet somehow can't outgrow the echoes of our mistakes.

My friend told this young lady, "that's not how God works."

And my friend is right. I know that. I know that when God isn't turning the story of my mistakes into a story that feels like I'm beyond them, that's not a God who's lost interest in me. That's a God I've started to doubt.

A God I doubt not because I don't think God is God and can do all things God. I doubt because my mistakes tell me God isn't interested in doing for me what I know God can do for someone else.

Someone else who's made fewer mistakes.

Steven Furtick seems to say that kind of thinking doesn't make God smaller. It just means we see him too small.

The reality is the roads of every great bible hero are paved with the exact same mistakes that my road is paved with. And the greater reality is, God didn't use these heroes as a way to demonstrate the power of a new road. He used them to demonstrate what he can do with our old roads.

Because isn't that what we all struggle with most? Our old roads? How do I get anywhere new and beautiful when I'm stuck on this old road?

The answer is I can't. Not alone. And I can't if I can't handle the truth that sometimes life feels like it's getting worse before it starts getting better.

Because God teaches best in the getting worse. God teaches best when he's showing us how to navigate the old roads that haunt us. But God isn't like Siri, shouting out turn left at the light and then make a U-turn at the next intersection. God is like here's a map. Let's look at this thing and figure it out together.

Which sucks some days, because we just want to skip figuring it out and get right to life feels better. We want to pick up our bibles and experience a better story.

Right now.

But the bible is about transformation. Transforming mistakes into something better. Transformation isn't a disappearing act. It's not taking an eraser to our mistakes, it's believing God is big enough to make us ultimately grateful we didn't have an eraser.

Most days I'm there. I look at my mistakes and what God has made of them and think, thank God I didn't have an eraser.

But there are other days, I confess, when I want to open my bible and just feel better. And there are days when I do wonder if maybe my mistakes have pushed God just a little too far away and he no longer sees much use in me opening that bible at all.

And today, I'm here to tell you that is a very reasonable thought born from a very unreasonable view of God. But just because our view of God changes doesn't mean He changes.

I'm thankful for that. I'm thankful that in the moments of this is getting worse not better that it's quite possible I'm experiencing transformation. And when I am willing to see God that way - when I'm willing to widen my view - I trust that when things feel like they're getting worse, that's not always the case.

When I'm willing to hold God's hand in those moments, it is never the case.