It happened while I was sweeping the living-room floor of our home about a week ago. I had an epiphany—"a moment in which you suddenly see or understand something in a new or very clear way," as per Auntie Merriam-Webster. It wasn't the first time I've had one, and it was pretty much the same before too: I'd be doing the most normal, the most mundane of tasks (usually household chores); and then some profound truth hits me.
I used to think that this was the work of my brain, that maybe said profound truth was stored in the deepest recesses of my subconscious and occasionally, randomly gets dredged up. Simply put, I thought my epiphanies were from myself.
Of course, that couldn't be farther from the truth. And that truth is, these epiphanies are the fruits of God revealing His wisdom to me—to all of us—through the Holy Spirit.
Anyway, going back . . .
I was reeling a bit from what God had shared with me then. It was a huge relief for me as that epiphany, that revelation, had to do with a part of God's nature that I had always been scared to acknowledge—that part being God's holiness.
When my dear friend and small group leader, Patty, first shared the gospel to me (it was over a catch-up date sometime in October 2015, and we hadn't seen each other or really communicated since 2006), she talked about man's need for salvation and how this salvation cannot be attained by good works. That conversation was quite a trip, to be honest, as even then God was already beginning His work of helping me unlearn all that I thought I knew. But more notable than getting to know about the solution to man's problem of sin was being (re)introduced to God Himself.
Patty shared with me four truths about God's nature: God is sovereign and all powerful; God is holy; God is just; God is loving. To give more meaning and insight into these truths, I'm gonna provide brief discussions on each below.
Sovereign and all powerful
From parting the Red Sea (Exod. 14:21) to bringing the dead back to life (John 11:43–44), God has exhibited incredible power that is undeniable and His alone. Even to this day, God's power is seen in the intensity and inexplicability of natural phenomena, in awe-inspiring miracles, and in radical changes in people's hearts. Along with that power is God's sovereignty. No matter how things look and turn out, He is in control of everything.Holy
Wholly unlike us, God is perfect and can commit no sin; therefore, He also cannot tolerate sin. Yes, we are all on an even playing field—murderers and occasional liars alike. Sin is sin no matter how you slice it; and no amount of charity or good works can rectify or offset our wrongs, our sinful natures.Just
God is fair in everything. There will be times when it feels and seems like the wrongs done against us have not been, at the very least, acknowledged. But let's flip the biscuit for a minute. How about the wrongs that we have done against Jesus? Because God is fair and just, He provided the ultimate rectification, the offering to end all offerings, for all our wrongs—past, present, and future—through Jesus Christ.Loving
Not only is Jesus's sacrifice the perfect solution for the problem of sin, it is also the perfect display of God's perfect love for us, His children. When I think about my own faults, weaknesses, and shortcomings, and compare that to the standard Jesus had set, it further cements the fact that there is nothing in my broken self for my perfect God to love. But that is who God is: He pursues and loves us still despite the darkness in our hearts because He is love (1 John 4:8–10).With all those core traits of our loving Father and my realization of my own sinfulness, perhaps now you see why I'd been putting His holiness in the back of my head for so long. But when God revealed His wisdom to me that afternoon as I had a broom in my hand, I became relieved, joy filled my heart, and I kinda kicked myself internally for not realizing it sooner.
Brace yourself for the nugget of wisdom: with God's holiness, there is no malice.
This then spurred on another realization of why it is important to keep in mind who God is, not just what He can do. God can not only bless us in one way or another and turn the impossible into possible, but He can also lead us to painful decisions and allow heart- and bone-breaking events in our lives (Job 1:12, 20–21). And because God is God, sovereign and all powerful, He doesn't have to explain anything to anyone.
See, without the knowledge of God's holiness and the importance of focusing on who He is, it's easy to think of Him as distant and vengeful and punishing. It's easy to malign His character. It's easy to put Him in a box, judge Him according to our very limited and very faulty human logic.
I know that all this may be hard to grasp, especially if you are at a season in your life when the waves just keep barreling in and there is no dry land in sight. But now that you have the knowledge of who God is—the sovereign, powerful, just, loving Father without a hint of malice in His heart—you can readjust your sights on your circumstances and have this as a takeaway: there is a much greater purpose for your current pain than you can see or attempt to rationalize right now.
Stay golden and God bless you!
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