Life Search – HeartQuest 101

How to Seek Guidance

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Scott Chafee

People always want to know how they can tell what God wants them to do, the churchy question is phrased like this: “What is God’s will for my life?” You may be interested in reading more on the topic, I have a page covering several issues surrounding God’s will.

I discovered that there are only eight places in the Bible where the word guidance is used (in the NASB):

But I will use the bronze altar for seeking guidance (2 Kings 16:15)
Saul died because he was unfaithful to the LORD; he did not keep the word of the LORD and even consulted a medium for guidance (1 Chronicles 10:13)
Let the wise listen and add to their learning, and let the discerning get guidance (Proverbs 1:5)
For lack of guidance a nation falls, but victory is won through many advisers (Proverbs 11:14)
Plans are established by seeking advice; so if you wage war, obtain guidance (Proverbs 20:18)
Surely you need guidance to wage war, and victory is won through many advisers (Proverbs 24:6)
Woe to him who says to wood, ‘Come to life!’ Or to lifeless stone, ‘Wake up!’ Can it give guidance? It is covered with gold and silver; there is no breath in it.” (Habakkuk 2:19)
And God has placed in the church first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, of helping, of guidance, and of different kinds of tongues (1 Corinthians 12:28)

We may seek guidance, but God provides something better, he provides himself.

The Lord will guide you continually, giving you water when you are dry and restoring your strength. You will be like a well-watered garden, like an ever-flowing spring. (Isaiah 58:11)

Many of us struggle to understand and discern God’s guidance for our lives. We ask questions like:

Should I marry or not?
Should I marry this person or that person?
Should I have another child? Should I join this church or that one?
Which profession should I follow?
What job should I take?
Is my present line of work the one to stay in?

Herein lies the major distortion of knowing and doing God’s will. Does God lead and direct in these areas? Yes. Does he come out and overtly tell us what to do? Rarely.

So how does God guide us? Consider these principles:

God’s guidance concerns itself more with our steps than our overall journey.
God’s guidance is more preoccupied with the present than with the future.
God’s guidance has less to do with geography and more to do with morality.
God’s guidance is more interested in our character than our comfort.
God’s guidance is not insider information.
God’s guidance is that we pursue the Guide more than guidance.

In seeking God, his plan will be revealed to us. His way will lead back through his Word. If the step is more critical than the journey, and the present is of greater consequence than the future, and the Guide more essential than the guidance, what is needed? We need to know the right step to take and to know what we must do in the present. That’s why we need to know the Guide.

God does not guide us magically; he guides us relationally. Therefore, the Bible must be studied so we may become acquainted with the ways and thoughts of God. God’s aim is that we become his companions who walk with him. He already knows us, so now he wants us to understand and know him. The more we understand him, the more real our relationship will be with him and the more likely we are to keep in step with him in the direction he is taking us.

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Why Does God Wrestle With Men?

Posted on March 25, 2009 by Scott Chafee

The Men of Steel looked into this topic; how often do we wrestle with God?

Last time I wrote about Jacob wrestling with God (Genesis 32:24) because wrestling is a man thing, lots of testosterone. I regularly listen to a syndicated Christian radio station called K-Love, and they play a song called By Your Side by a group named Tenth Avenue North. Here are the lyrics:

Why are you striving these days
Why are you trying to earn grace
Why are you crying, let me lift up your face
Just don’t turn away

Why are you looking for love
Why are you still searching as if I’m not enough
To where will you go child, tell me where will you run
To where will you run

‘Cause I’ll be by your side, wherever you fall
In the dead of night, whenever you call
And please don’t fight, these hands that are holding you
My hands are holding you

Look at these hands and my side
They swallowed the grave on that night
When I drank the world’s sin, so I could carry you in
And give you life, I want to give you life

What does this have to do with wrestling? I sense this song pictures us wrestling against God, while He wrestles with us to help us realize that we need Him more than we could ever imagine. As men we are often striving, trying, and fighting the hands holding us.

I suppose that God also wrestles with us so that we will discover what we are made of. He already knows what He created us to be and He knows what we’ve done with His creation. He’s waiting for us to discover who we are, so He wrestles with us so we will know His power and our weakness, His wisdom and our error, His strength and our frailty.

God wrestles with us to make us realize that we are wasting our lives; that we are mistreating our wives; that we really aren’t the “greatest” or the center of the universe.

God wrestles with us to make us see that we need to persevere and not quit in life, our jobs, our marriages, our spiritual lives, or our church.

God wrestles with us until we face the facts. He doesn’t sugarcoat what He has to say. He wrestles with us until we admit, “Yes, I’m unstable. Yes, I’m making excuses. Yes, I was wrong.”

God wrestles with us so that we will start searching for Him and hunting for what He wants us to find. Man is a hunter by nature. God’s commands to the first man were to “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion … over every living thing that moves upon the earth” (Genesis 1:28).

To subdue means to control or conquer, to have dominion means to maintain one’s conquest. Deep inside of men is the need to subdue, the need to conquer, the need to track down and bring something into dominion. There’s a hunter inside every man.

We may be hunting for a contract or business deal.
We may be on the hunt for a woman.
We may be hunting for the perfect new house or car.

Sometimes we don’t even really want what we’re after; we’re just hunting because it is our nature to hunt. Fishermen often catch fish, unhook them, and throw them right back. They say, “Look what I caught,” and then they toss that fish back into the lake. That doesn’t make the man any less a fisherman. It means that he is merely fishing for the sport of it, not for dinner. He is just “hunting.”

Unless we allow God to step in and give us the right goals and guide our “hunting” instinct, we can spend our entire life hunting for the wrong things. Jesus said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness” (Matthew 6:33). He promised that if you seek for it, you’ll find it. (Matthew 7:7). I hope that the Men of Steel can help each of us navigate through this thing called life.

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God Wrestles with You… Alone

Posted on March 16, 2009 by Scott Chafee

The Men of Steel looked into this topic; how often do we wrestle with God?

I am still fascinated and challenged by the wrestling match between God and Jacob, the father of the twelve sons of Israel (Genesis 32:22-28).

I feel that God encounters men in a lonely place where He can deal with us personally. He wants to be alone with us, rather than in the context of cliques and clubs that can keep us from hearing Him at all. When God gets a man to the point of dealing with the deep issues of life, He does so one-on-one. It’s just you and God.

Ask yourself, “Who are you really?” When nobody’s looking … when you aren’t “prepared,” when all the camouflage has been removed, when you don’t have an ego to defend or anything to prove, when you aren’t concerned about your status? Who are you?

When God is ready to do open-heart surgery, He brings you to an “alone” place. Nobody invites a guest into an operating room, and neither does God. His work on you will be done in private.

When God begins to move in your life, you may feel very uncomfortable. I believe the first response of any man at that time is to surround themselves with more people. We feel restless, frustrated, and lonely in our spirits. We feel a greater need to have somebody with us, to protect us, shield us, walk with us, and encourage us. We will soon discover that the presence of other people doesn’t meet the deep longing we have. The loneliness and restlessness we feel in our spirits is God’s call on our lives. He is reeling us in for our one-on-one encounter with Him.

You can be surrounded by people … and still be alone.
You can have sex with your wife … and still be alone.
You can have dozens of close friends … and still be alone.
You can have hundreds of friends on Facebook … and still be alone.

It’s like we finally admit that we are lonely and need something that other people can’t provide, and then we discover we need Someone to fill a part of us that nobody else seems to be able to fill—that’s when God steps in.

I suppose that when we feel alone, it means that somebody we thought we could count on for protection has disappeared. We feel isolated, separated, and alone. When we feel left alone, our hope is usually that someone will come along and comfort us. In fact, we expect that “comfort” is what a loving God would do to a man who is left alone. But God says that He is not coming to comfort us, but to confront us. God came to challenge Jacob, and to wrestle with him (Genesis 32:24). Jacob’s first reaction was, no doubt, “Oh, no, not You too!”

Everybody is wrestling me.
My wife is wrestling with me.
My children are wrestling with me.
My boss is wrestling with me.
My creditors are wrestling with me.
My co-workers are wrestling with me.
My church is wrestling with me.
My own mind is a wrestling match.
And now, You, too, God?

The Bible says that the wounds of a friend are faithful (Proverbs 27:6). A true friend is one who “wounds” you for a good reason. What he says may hurt you, but in the end, it helps you. What he does may seem painful to you, but in the end, you’ll thank him for doing it because it was for your own good.

A good friend doesn’t agree with you all the time. No matter how brutally you object, a good friend will stand right up in your face and say “You’re still wrong.”

You don’t have real help until you have someone who will confront you about what needs to be changed in your life. That’s why I feel strongly about Men of Steel. We each need other men to stand up to us, and to force us to face our sin, to confront us about our lies, to make us uncomfortable about our bad habits, to move us away from mediocrity, to challenge us toward excellence. I value your participation each Saturday! I pray that each of us will find another man in whom we can invest our lives, and that someone else will seek to invest their life in us.

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God Sparing Your Life

Posted on March 2, 2009 by Scott Chafee

The Men of Steel looked into this topic; how often do we wrestle with God?

Years ago at a youth conference (anybody remember Bill Gothard’s Institute for Basic Youth Conflicts?), anyway, I saw a “campaign” button that read, “PBPWMGINFWMY.” Confused? It stood for, “Please be patient with me, God is not finished with me yet.” Men today need to listen to that advice. We want to be fixed, and want God to do it now. But the problem is that it has taken so long to develop the habits that have made us as “lame” as we are that it is going to take a whole lot of time to undo what we have built and start fresh on a new foundation.

Men, none of us has arrived. There is always more work to be done, more home improvement that can be accomplished, more areas in life that could be made better… don’t think so? Let’s go visit your wife! She will likely come up with a bulleted list, or pull out the hidden list she has been working on since you came back from the honeymoon!

God needs to work on each one of us. That should not surprise any man when he takes an honest look at himself… desiring to be the best husband and father he can be for his family’s sake. With all the mistakes of life, we should be grateful that God has kept us alive long enough so He can continue to work on us, in us and sometimes in spite of us. I’m personally grateful for what He has poured into me over the years.

Perhaps you can see God’s hand on your life. He’s brought you through some events in life that made you wonder why He ever saved you? Maybe at some point you were driving home drunk, just an accident waiting to happen… maybe you were arguing with your wife, just on the verge of getting physical… maybe you were friendly with a woman at the office and the flirtatious invitation to get a bite to eat after work was a bit too tempting. God was there, even when you did not realize it.

Some men are grieving over having already fallen, but remember God was still here, ready to forgive and help you get back on the right path. He continues to have you in His grasp. Pray as we have been directed in the Bible, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner” (Luke 18:13).

If God had not been merciful to us when we were sinners, we’d all be dead! Some men have been through so much that they are amazed that they are still alive. Other men would have self-destructed much earlier. Some men get depressed too easily. Others become discouraged too easily. A few become suicidal too easily. Men need to reach deep inside to find their inner Rambo! Put on your camouflage face paint, tie a bandana around your forehead, and grit your hunting knife in your teeth… it’s time to fight! Fight the enemy whose sole purpose is to see you fall. Seeking biblical support for all this fighting? Check out 1 Timothy 6:12, and 2 Timothy 2:3-4.

I am reminded of another man, in the Bible, whose life was spared… the wrestler, Jacob (Genesis 32:30). This is the story where Jacob wrestled with “God” all night, and he eventually dislocated his hip in the process. Jacob came away with a limp, but he also came away a changed man; this event had a spiritual impact on his life. The point is that Jacob needed God. His name meant “deceiver” or “swindler” and he lived up to it. His brother was out to kill him for his treachery. But God was not finished with Jacob yet. His name is changed to Israel, which is the name that is echoed throughout the Old Testament, representing the people to God, specifically the twelve tribe of Israel.

Are you ready to rumble? God has brought you this far for a purpose. He wants to spare your life, if only we will submit to Him. How often have you found yourself wrestling against God, and after it was all over you were amazed that your life was spared? Change may not come quickly, but hang in there; God is not finished with you yet.

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Was the Lame Man at the Gate Distracted?

Posted on February 9, 2009 by Scott Chafee

The Men of Steel looked into this topic; this lame man represents all men and the issues we face:

Who was the Lame Man at the Gate? (Acts 3:1, 2, 3)
What are You Expecting From the Church?
How Did You Get Where You Are?
Are You Trapped at the Gate?
Was the Lame Man at the Gate Distracted?

This is part five from the Men of Steel topic on the Lame Man at the Gate (From Acts 3:1-5).

The Bible says that when Peter and John came to the temple at the hour of prayer, they fixed their eyes on the lame man (Acts 3:4). Peter said to him, “Look on us.” I believe that Peter didn’t want this man to be distracted. If a man gets distracted, he can miss what God has for him.

Peter wanted this man to pay close attention to what he was about to do. He wanted him to intently hear him. Maybe he got right down in his face, locking eyes so that everything else in that lame man’s world just faded away. That’s the way we need to deal with men who are in pain. When we’re the ones suffering, that’s the way we need to look at Jesus. We need to get so close to Him that we don’t see anybody else.

Then Peter spoke to him using a name (Acts 3:6). Every one of us needs a name that is stronger than ourselves, our problems; a name that is greater than our need, a name that is more powerful than our pain. He spoke the name of Jesus. Paul would later write, “At the name of Jesus every knee should bow … and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Philippians 2:10-11).

It is the name of Jesus that is higher than any other name. The writer of Hebrews says, He is “holy, harmless, undefiled … and made higher than the heavens” (Hebrews 7:26). There is no other name that can heal men of their lameness. Then Peter went beyond words. Notice the words of Peter had no visible effect on this man’s life. Men may hear sermons each week and find that nothing changes in their lives. Men all around us in need of hearing about the love and forgiveness of God, yet have not experience any of it for themselves.

Peter put the name of Jesus into action by reaching down and taking this lame man by the right hand and lifting him up. This lame man’s feet and ankle bones were healed as Peter lifted him up (Acts 3:7). Notice that this guy who had never walked, didn’t need any help walking (Acts 3:8). He only needed help getting up on his feet. Now he was standing, walking, and leaping as he praised God.

There are men all around us today who need for us to speak the right name to them—and they need for us to help them get to their feet spiritually and emotionally. We don’t need to be their crutch, but we do need to pull them to their feet so that God can heal and strengthen the lameness in their lives.

How can we as Men of Steel speak Christ to other men, and put into action words that can bring more men into the group? How can we make other men thirsty for healing and fulfillment? What are some practical things that we can do to minister to men in our church, community and workplace? What sort of things do you personally need from the Men of Steel? How can the group help you to become all that God wants you to be? What are the distractions that are keeping you from being totally sold out to Jesus? What are a few steps of faith that you believe God is calling you to take?

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Ministering to the Buster Generation

Posted on December 19, 2007 by Scott Chafee

Broadly defined, Busters were born between 1965 and 1983 and represent about 66 million Americans (roughly ages 25 to 42). They have seen many changes and advances in their lifetime: Roe v. Wade, high technology, video games, television quality and choices, the Challenger disaster, the Berlin Wall came down, peer groups became essential, music had become more cynical, AIDS, the Persian Gulf war, the youthful Clinton administration (his relatively young age and who can forget Monica)…

Their characteristics may be described as desiring freedom, non-work-a-holic, into 60’s nostalgia, survival (from AIDS to pollution to over population), feeling neglected (divorced parents, single-parent homes, virtual communities), rejecting the values of the Boomers and even postponing marriage.

So, where do they fit in the church? Busters value a true family atmosphere (often coming out of a generation of broken families); get involved in local causes in order to see the results of their efforts, have shorter attention spans (the sound bite generation); want a church to meet their own needs (a pragmatic faith that works for them) and a faith that works for others (becoming involved in social, political and environmental issues)…

Let me get to my subject. Gary McIntosh (One Church Four Generations) suggests many ways the church can seek to understand this generation.

Define Vision – we must have a clearly defined vision and a commitment to accomplish the task. He says that “to know Christ and make Him known” is too theoretical to be relevant to Busters. Pragmatic busters want to know how the mission will be carried out; how are we going to get to know Christ and to whom is the church trying to make Christ known?
Keep Worship Authentic – honest, straightforward, tell-it-like-it-is services are attractive to Busters. They can be short or long, but they cannot be considered a waste of time. They are not so much bored with worship but with services that move slowly. Music is important, so we need to use up-to-date music in a variety of styles, even having busters help plan the services.
Focus on local issues – rather than far away places. They will feed the homeless in their own area but seldom will they minister across the country. They want to know that their money is making a difference and do not give because they are asked to give to the regular Boomer channels of missions support. So, experiencing missions is important, even if that experience takes them internationally.
Challenge to Short-term Service – the general rule is to recruit for short-term and to renew for long-term. Long-term commitments are not the norm, so experiencing a ministry first helps develop a commitment to it in the long term.
Small Groups – Busters love feedback and discussion with people they trust. Step-by-step instructions and accountability are usually needed to move from concepts into action.
Answer Questions – since Busters need to sort out various hurts in their lives, the church needs to provide practical messages, classes and groups. They need help with problems they face every day: AIDS, divorce, pornography, immorality, child abuse, drugs and alcohol abuse, STDs. They need honest answers and biblical solutions.
Develop Need-Based Ministry – we might call some of these support groups: divorce care, overcoming addictions, surviving abuse.

We have to understand the driving forces behind the group we are trying to reach. This group is the future of the church. What will the church look like after the Builders and Boomers begin to die off? So, what do you think?

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Christianity Has An Image Problem

Posted on December 5, 2007 by Scott Chafee

There is a fascinating book called, unChristian (Kinnaman and Lyons) that declares Christianity has an image problem. I’ve known it for years but did not really have any research to support it. I often heard stories like:

The church is only after my money
Look at the lifestyles of TV evangelists
Church is boring or irrelevant
Remember Ted Haggard and Jim Bakker?
The church is full of hypocrites
I don’t need to go to church to worship God
Too many priest sex scandals and cover-ups
Christians are too narrow-minded

Once teenagers get their driver’s licenses, it seems participation in church activity is usually the first item scratched off the list. Remember that Christianity is a relationship more than it is a religion. Jesus said that a tree is known by its fruit, so believers not living out what they say they believe is one of the greatest barriers to outsiders giving Jesus a try. Believers in Christ are the church; it’s not the building or an activity we do on Sundays. It seems I read that Gandhi would have become a Christian, but he could not find any of His followers.

So how has the Christian faith portrayed itself to a skeptical generation? What does Christian mean to you? For many, it means very conservative, indoctrinated, anti-gay, anti-choice, angry, violent, judgmental, illogical, hypocritical, too political, building their own empires, trying to convert everyone to their way of thinking, who cannot live at peace with anyone who believes differently than themselves. So, what did I leave out? A lot of this originates from the hurtful past of former believers.

How are Christians to overcome this negative stereotype? Today’s Christians are known more for what they are against than what they really stand for. Its one thing to know about Jesus, it is another to really know Him. Assent to a set of propositions is not what Jesus desires, but that we become His disciples, followers who live out what we believe. We are not alone, there are other authentic pilgrims on this journey.

I heard Greg Stier of Dare2Share Ministries tell a story of when he was a pastor, about being in a coffee shop, studying at a table with all his Jesus books in front of him. As he was leaving to pay, there was a Goth looking kid wearing a Marilyn Manson T-shirt behind him who noticed all his books. “Are you religious?” he asked, “Because I don’t like religious people.” Greg looked at the guy and said, “Me neither, I can’t stand religious people! You know who else didn’t like religious people? Jesus! Eventually those religious people had him killed.”

So, there he was with this kid with the Manson gear, both agreeing that religious people made them sick. But Jesus showed them by rising from the dead! Greg then went on to tell him about Jesus being into relationship rather than religion. In some ways people may be into spirituality or even into Jesus, but they don’t like the church. Sad reality, since believers ARE the church.

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Blind Faith or Logical Reasons to Believe God Exists?

Posted on November 19, 2007 by Scott Chafee

The drought in Atlanta brought out people of faith to the capital steps to pray for rain. Across the street, the Freethought Society protested. I remembered from school, America stood for freedom of religion, but today it is being reinterpreted to mean freedom from religion, like religious expression should never be in the public arena. It appears that you can have “free thought,” but if your free thought leads you to believe in God, you’re parallel to a mindless devotee bowing down before a wooden idol.

With the rise of atheism in the media, many conclude that Christians believe in God as a crutch or an escape from reality. For some needy reason they choose to believe in an imaginary concept of God based on blind faith. But there really are solid logical arguments that would indicate it takes more faith to be an atheist. Take this one for example:

The cosmological argument simply states that the universe is limited in that it had a beginning and that its beginning was caused by something beyond the universe:

The universe had a beginning.
Anything that has a beginning must have been caused by something else.
Therefore, the universe was caused by something else, and this cause was God.

Scientific evidence strongly supports the idea that the universe had a beginning. The view usually held by those who claim that the universe is eternal, called the steady state theory, leads some to believe that the universe is constantly producing hydrogen atoms from nothing. It would be simpler to believe that God created the universe from nothing. Also, the consensus of scientists studying the origin of the universe is that it came into being in a sudden and cataclysmic way (the Big Bang). The main evidence for the universe having a beginning is the second law of thermodynamics, which says the universe is running out of usable energy. But if it is running down, then it could not be eternal. What is winding down must have been wound up.

But beyond the scientific evidence that shows the universe began, there is a philosophical reason to believe that the world had a starting point. This argument shows that time cannot go back into the past forever. It is impossible to pass through an infinite series of moments. It is like moving your finger across an endless number of books in a library. You would never get to the last book. Even if you thought you had found the last book, there could always be one more added, then another. You can never finish an infinite series of real things.

The same goes toward “the beginning of time.” Infinite regress is impossible because there is always one more book on the shelf. So, time must have begun at a particular point in the past, and today has come at a definite time since then. Therefore, the world is a finite event after all and it needs a cause for its beginning. **

Norman Geisler puts it this way:

Finite, changing things exist. For example, me. I would have to exist to deny that I exist; so either way, I must really exist.
Every finite, changing thing must be caused by something else. If it is limited and it changes, then it cannot be something that exists independently. If it existed independently, or necessarily, then it would have always existed without any kind of change.
There cannot be an infinite regress of these causes. In other words, you can’t go on explaining how this finite thing causes this finite thing, which causes this other finite thing, and on and on, because that really just puts off the explanation indefinitely.
Therefore, there must be a first uncaused cause of every finite, changing thing that exists.

Since the universe very plainly had a beginning, it must have been caused or started by something uncaused, which is God. But why do people reject God so strongly? I believe that if we recognize the existence of God, it means that we are accountable to something higher than ourselves. This is not acceptable to anyone who bows to no One.

** From Norman Geisler’s When Skeptics Ask.

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And The Survey Says…

Posted on November 12, 2007 by Scott Chafee

Results of a LifeWay survey of 2000 adults — “Top 10 Issues Facing Today’s Family”

Click on the first phrase to read the desired article.

10. Materialism: “Placing high regard to ownership and consumption as a priority.”
9. Balance of Work and Family: “Pressure to invest energy in work at the expense of family.”
8. Negative Media Influence: “Influx of destructive images and messages into the home.”
7. Lack of Communication: “increasing abbreviation of meaningful family interaction.”
6. Financial Pressures: “Chronic misuse of debt and/or mismanagement of resources.”
5. Lack of Discipline: “The death of respectful behavior as a norm.”
4. Lack of a Father Figure: “The absence of a father in the home or lack of participation.”
3. Busyness: “The participation in numerous activities crowding out quality family fellowship.”
2. Divorce: “The wave of broken marriages and families both within the church and without.”
1. Anti-Christian Culture: “The stripping away of Christian heritage and traditional values.”

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Disappointment With God

Posted on November 9, 2007 by Scott Chafee

Philip Yancey has written a thought-provoking book (about 20 years ago) called Disappointment With God that asked the questions: Is God unfair? Is God silent? Is God hidden?

I suppose that disappointment in anything comes to us when there is a gap between our expectations and reality. If we have the expectation that God should act in a certain fashion (like we read about in the Bible), we can become disappointed with Him when He does not. I suppose atheists don’t feel disappointed in God since they expect nothing and receive nothing. But as believers, perhaps we begin to think that God is toying with us. Why doesn’t He quit fooling around and show himself? Many might say, “If He would just speak aloud one time so that everyone could hear, then I would believe.” Probably the whole world would. So why doesn’t He?

Yancey makes a great observation… the book of Exodus describes this kind of world. It showed God stepping into human history almost daily.

Is God unfair? Why doesn’t he punish evil and reward good people? Why do bad things happen to people good and bad, with no discernable pattern? Imagine a world designed so that we experience a mild jolt of pain with every sin, and a tickle of pleasure with every act of virtue. This would be an elaborate system (or covenant) of rewards and punishments. Since the old covenant served as an object lesson, demonstrating that human beings were incapable of fulfilling a contract (covenant) with God, He needed to bring a new one.

Is God silent? If He is so concerned about our doing His will, why doesn’t He just reveal it more plainly? A lot of people claim to hear a word from God but how do we know they have really heard from God? God simplified matters of guidance in the exodus: should we pack up and leave or remain here for a while? Simply look at the cloud over the tent. He set up other ways, like casting lots and some 613 laws that covered most anything else. Did a clear word from God increase the likelihood of obedience?

Now for the philosophical question: why pursue God if he has already made himself known so clearly? Why step out in faith when God has already guaranteed the results? Why wrestle with the problem of choices when God already resolved the dilemma? In short, why should the Israelites act like adults when they could act like children? This method might help get a just-freed mob of slaves across the desert, but it doesn’t encourage spiritual development in human beings.

Every choice would be a matter of obedience and not faith. Moses met with God, which was no secret, and God’s directness seemed to produce the opposite desired effect. The Israelites did not respond with worship and love, but fear and open rebellion. God’s visible presence did nothing to improve lasting faith. A burst of miracles would not nourish faith today, at least not the kind of faith God is interested in. The Israelites gave proof that signs from God only attract people to signs, not to God.

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