06072025 Seeking Answers

Dear Missionary Lady,

Greetings in the name of our good and patient God. God knows just what to do to mature us, and He does not abandon His process.

I have often been blessed by Psalm 73, and I have often related to it. In this psalm, Asaph struggles deeply, but he fights for truth. I thank God for reinforcing this lesson for me over and over again. In fact, a large proportion of the truth I know exists because God has forced me to earnestly seek it.

Here’s the danger. (I mean for Christians at large.) When life moves along more or less okay, Christians don’t have a problem with God. But when very difficult situations arise, suddenly their experience no longer matches their idea of God. Sometimes these troubled Christians then make wrong conclusions: God doesn’t care, God isn’t real, etc. Then they get mad at God and turn their back on Him.

Here is my stabilizing truth: What is not true CANNOT be the right explanation. If I am leaning toward an untruth, then there is some piece of understanding that I am missing. I won’t always know what that missing understanding is; sometimes God reserves that knowledge for Himself and simply asks me to walk by faith. Many times, however, I can seek and find the truth.

The process is something like a multiple choice question. Question: Because my life is so hard right now, which of the following is the explanation? A. God doesn’t love me. B. God has forgotten about me. C. God isn’t real. D. God has turned His back on me. E. None of the above.

The answer is E. None of the above. But E is not a vacant or nebulous non-answer. There is truth that fits choice E. If we don’t know what fits there, we have to accept by faith that God knows what choice E is. It can be very helpful, though, if we can discover some of that answer. Then we have stabilizing truth to which we can cling.

So here’s Asaph. He is so disillusioned with the seeming prosperity of the wicked compared to his own struggles (vs. 3-11) that he feels like his efforts to live for God have been totally worthless (vs. 13-14). He is at the point of falling (v. 2). Asaph was looking for the answer in choices A-D, and he was just about to circle one of them. But something in Asaph was not satisfied. How do we know he didn’t like any of the answers he was coming up with? When he ponders speaking his chosen answer, he knows it cannot be correct. “If I say, I will speak thus; behold, I should offend against the generation of thy children” (v. 15). He feels terrible about the answer he is contemplating. “When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me” (v. 16). “Thus my heart was grieved, and I was pricked in my reins. So foolish was I, and ignorant: I was as a beast before thee” (vs. 21-22).

Then he remembered! To his great relief and comfort, he remembered. There is an option E! None of the above! As Asaph seeks to know what option E is, I believe he finds at least three components.

First, he realizes that what he has been concluding is not the truth. “Until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end” (v. 17). He had not been considering all the facts, so his question was based on a faulty premise. Verses 18-20 continues his understanding of the major fact he had been missing.

Second, he remembers that God is with him. “Nevertheless I am continually with thee: thou hast holden me by my right hand” (v. 23). “But it is good for me to draw near to God: I have put my trust in the Lord God, that I may declare all thy works” (v. 28). Actually, Asaph had started his psalm with his conclusion – something that he didn’t see in the moment, but that was later revealed to him as an anchor. “Truly God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart” (v. 1).

Third, he takes comfort that God is ministering to his heart. “My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever” (v. 26). He realizes that God is actively helping him in his struggle. “Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory” (v. 24).

If I ask myself whether Asaph fully understood what option E was, I don’t think he did. But I think he ended up in the place where he was fully assured that option E was correct and that God knew that option was. In the meantime, Asaph contented himself and comforted himself with three contributing truths: he didn’t know all the facts, God was with him, and God could keep his heart.

I don’t mean to imply by this study that I think any of you are at the point of collapse. But even if your trials and struggles are much less intense than Asaph’s crisis, I hope you will be encouraged in remembering that God always knows what option E is. When we don’t know, we can rest in the truth that we do know. We can seek truth to counter our doubts and to encourage our faith. Asaph’s anchors are a good place to start. God knows the answer. God knows all the facts. God is with you. God can keep your heart. Take care, my friends. Rest in God.

Love in Christ,

Peggy Holt

member at Open Door Baptist Church in Lebanon, PA