Author: emilyschuch

I was born and raised in Oklahoma. I graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 2011 with a B.A. in Philosophy. Go Sooners. I'm a stay-at-home mom to two precious little ones. I like Jesus and words and when I find the time and the brain power, I like to use my words to talk about Jesus.

God is Always Watching. Good or Bad?

emilyschuch1 Comment

I recently stumbled across a video on Youtube that piqued my interest.  In the video, there was a panel discussion between four known Christians and Christopher Hitchens, a well-known atheist.  I can’t remember who all of the Christians were, but among them were William Laine Craig and Lee Strobel, published apologeticists (is that the right word? haha).   I must say, poor Mr. Hitchens, was considerably outnumbered, but this didn’t seem to trouble him at all.

I knew Hitchens to be one of the “new atheists,” but hadn’t ever heard him speak.  I am pleased to say I found him to be much more calm and rational than I expected.  Despite the fact, that I totally disagree with his atheism, it is always pleasing to find that you can have intelligent and generally friendly debate.  He had several objections to Christianity, many of which were reasonable objections that Christians can and must answer.

However, it was more his underlying or implied objections that I found particularly intriguing.  After watching the video, I chewed on the things Hitchens had said.  One of the main reasons he objected to God’s existence was because God was always watching.  He said this invaded our right to privacy.  This seemed to me to be a very weak and petty objection.  Just because God is always watching doesn’t mean He doesn’t exist.  What I think Hitchens was really saying is that He didn’t like that God was always there and always watching what everyone was doing.

It is in this, that Hitchens gives himself away, as most atheists do.  He betrays the real reason that he doesn’t believe in God.  The real reason is that he doesn’t like God.  He doesn’t like that He’s there and that He’s watching.  But why?  I was struck by how Hitchens and I could have such different reactions to the fact that God sees everything.  For him, this was a terrible thing, terrible enough for him to willfully deny that God was there at all.   Are his feelings merited?  I think to some extent, they are, though denying that God is real is hardly an appropriate solution.

Indeed, God is omnipresent and omniscient.  He sustains the world from day to day and a sparrow does not fall to the earth without His knowledge.  There is nothing He does not see, nothing He does not know.  This truth will either inspire in us great fear or great hope, fear if we are not in Christ and hope if we are.

I must say Mr. Hitchens, you are partially wise to recoil at God’s “all seeing eye”, but the truth is that you should be much more afraid than you are.  God is watching and this is, indeed, a terrible, fearful thing.  However, trying to wish Him away will not help.  Whether we believe in Him or not, “they eyes of the LORD are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good.” -Proverbs 15:3  “His eyes are on the ways of men; He sees their every step.  There is no dark place, no deep shadow where evildoers can hide.” -Job 34:21:22  Nevertheless, many of us still try.

The other day, the little boy of the family I babysit came home from kindergarten.  Upon getting home from school, he quickly ripped open his backpack, opened his folder, took out a green slip and ran to the trash can to dispose of it, all right in front of me.  I was, of course, suspicious and fished the note out of the trash and surely enough, it contained a report from his teacher that he had been misbehaving at school.  Obviously, he was trying to hide the evidence so he could escape the displeasure and discipline of his parents.  Needless to say though, he needs to work on his sneakiness.

While this was amusing, it is revealing of our human nature.  It struck me that we are often much like him, foolish enough to think we can hide our misdeeds from the God who sees all.  Or, more foolishly and also, arrogantly, we suppose that He doesn’t see, saying with the wicked of Psalm 73, “How can God know?  Does the Most High have knowledge?” -Psalm 73:11  But the truth is that He does see and He will deliver judgment upon our misdeeds on this earth.  “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight.  Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” -Hebrews 4:13  This is a sobering and fearful truth.  Whether or not we acknowledge His existence, He is there and He will judge.  If we are not in Christ, we will receive the just penalty for our sins: the wrath of God.

However, if we are in Christ, the reality of God seeing and knowing everything is transformed from a dreadful reality, to a precious one.    God is ever watching us, but with a gaze of love and not of judgment.  I delight in the truth that God sees me.  I rejoice that “He guards the course of the just and protects the way of His faithful ones.” -Proverbs 2:8  I hope in the reality that His eyes see all and “range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him.” -2 chronicles 16:9  I do not fret over the trials and injustice of this world, because I know that “the foundations of the earth are the LORD’s; upon them He has set the world.  He will guard the feet of His saints.” -1 Samuel 2:9  Because I trust in Him, because I love Him and am called according to His purpose, I know that He will watch over my every step and ensure that all will work for my good.

It is important to note that this is not a truth that should feed our pride, but rather, our humility.  The only reason we can delight in God’s omniscience is not because we have done such righteous deeds.  This is not a delineation between the wicked and the righteous based on their deeds, but based on their hope in Christ.   We see in Psalm 37 that the difference between the wicked and the righteous is that the righteous put their hope in God and take refuge in Him.  “The salvation of the righteous comes from the LORD; He is their stronghold in time of trouble. The LORD delivers them from the wicked and saves them, because they take refuge in Him.” -Psalm 37:39-40  Were it not for the cross, we should be just as terrified as the wicked because we would still be the wicked, but because of God’s grace to us in Christ, we who put our hope in Him find salvation from our sins and delight in God’s oversight of our lives.  

So, if we are in Christ, let us celebrate that God watches over our every step. We know that with His own sovereign hands, He has planted the seed of our faith in the soil of His grace and salvation, given us in the death and resurrection of Christ.  He will watch over it with care, tending it with the nourishment of His promises, protecting it from threat and harm that it may grow into completion and receive all that has been hoped for. If we experience trials or injustice while we tarry on this earth, we shall not despair for we know that He sees and His gaze is not a passive one.  He is not indifferent to our struggles for as His children, we are called by His name, and He will always bring glory to His name.  He watches over us, eager to do us good and to supply all our needs.    Let us then, find hope and strength, knowing that He knows our course and will graciously give us all things in order to persevere, to run the race marked out for us until one day, our faith will be our sight and we shall see Him, the God who sees us, face to face.

 

 

 

 

The Desires of Our Hearts

emilyschuch2 Comments

Desire.  It lives within us.  It drives us and can consume us.  In and of itself, it is not wrong, although it can be. Scripture tells us that “after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death” (James 1:15).  This kind of desire, which leads to death, is desire gone awry, desire that is outside of God’s good and proper order.  It pays no heed to the laws of God and in my experience, usually springs from a warped and short-sighted understanding of reality, demanding instant gratification.  It is desire that will not wait, but rebels or ignores God in order to obtain its object.

Because of this, we can give the word “desire” a negative connotation.  We feel we need to repent of it, as if it was wrong to want.  As sinful beings, our desires can’t be trusted, but must be stamped out.  And so, we go about trying to deny that we long for anything.  We can live in fear of wanting.  The truly righteous must be those who have successfully beat down their desires, locking them away so they can serve God fully.

I would like to suggest, though, that it is easier to attempt to kill our desires than to face them.  To live openly with the depth of our longings, makes us incredibly vulnerable.  It takes far greater faith and strength to allow ourselves to desire fully and deeply, all the while waiting upon God to supply fully and deeply, than it does to smother and deny the the reality of our desires.

Indeed, Scripture tells us that the righteous are not emotionless robots who want nothing and think only of duty, but that they do have desires, desires which God promises to fulfill.  He tells us that “what the righteous desire will be granted” (Proverbs 10:24) and that “the desire of the righteous ends only in good” (Proverbs 11:23).  

So we see that desires are not wrong.  On the contrary, God created us to have them and He wants to use them for our good.  So what to do we make of desires that are not granted?  Do we conclude that it must have been sinful to want them?  Did we want them too much?

We can often feel that way, that God is somehow unhappy with the strength of our wanting.  We can see God as a stingy miser in the sky, who delights in withholding from us the things we want most.  The truth is that God is just the opposite.  It is He “who satisfies our desires with good things” (Psalm 103:5).  The picture that Scripture paints of God is that He is rich in love and mercy and that He delights, not to withhold His riches, but to pour them out to do good for those whose hope is in Him.  He lovingly says no to some of our good desires because He eagerly desires to give us something far greater.

So I wonder if it is not that we want too much, but that we do not want enough.  Maybe God frowns not upon the fact that we want, but that we want so little when He wants to give us so much more. C.S. Lewis understood this saying, “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too week. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea.  We are far too easily pleased.”

Perhaps then, God refuses some of our desires not to kill them, but to refine them, awakening them and directing them to higher and more worthy objects and pursuits. He says no to things we want, not so that He can deprive us, but so that He can give us more of Himself, the infinitely merciful and loving, the supremely majestic and worthy, the altogether good and righteous God.  Thus in answer to the deepest desires of our hearts, we receive a far greater treasure than we sought: “Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20).

A New Venture

emilyschuchLeave a comment

I suppose it is long past time I got myself a blog.  I’m not really sure why I haven’t before nor why I have now suddenly decided to do so now.  Nevertheless, here it is, my new blog.  Hopefully, I will actually write on it.  Better yet, hopefully, I will actually write things that are worth reading.  If not, I will at least have the pleasure of taking advantage of today’s technology to freely and easily send my thoughts out into the world.

As many who know me can testify, I dearly love to write.  I think my passion for it springs from my love of learning.  When I learn or discover truth, it excites me and makes me want to tell other people.  That is essentially why I write.  I want to share the Truth of God because, in the world we live in, it is our most precious commodity.  Like a beautiful tapestry, it is more intricate than I can begin to fathom.  I don’t see every thread or quite understand how they are all woven together, but I do see that they do hold together to form a complete, cohesive, and beautiful picture.   It is a picture I never grow tired of gazing at nor of beckoning others to come and gaze with me.

I thought the name of the blog, “Thirsting for Glory,” was fitting because it is my hope that that would be the defining characteristic of my life.  Thirst implies a deep need and longing that drives us to seek that which will satisfy.  I want to increasingly thirst for glory, not my own, but the glory of God.  It is strange to say that in a way.  Normally, we think of thirst being satisfied and then decreasing, not increasing.  A thirst that only increases after tasting its object would seem torturous and anything but satisfying.

However, when it comes to the glory of God, it is quite different.  When God is glorified through our lives, our souls are totally satisified, for that is the purpose for which we were made.  At the same time, it makes us desire to know Him more, treasure Him more, and therefore, glorify Him more.  You see, we can never have enough bcause the glory of God is infinite.  It is at once, infinitely satisfying and infinitely desirable.

So it my hope that this blog, in some small way, will reveal the infinite worth, beauty, and glory of God in such a way as to make myself and others thirst for more.

“O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and wearly land where there is no water.  So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory.  Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you.” -Psalm 63:1-3