Get Ready for the Hard Questions

Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great. I Tim. 3:16

Several months ago I was in the car with a friend and her young children when her four-year old son asked, “Mom, where was I when you were a baby?” There was a momentary pause in the conversation as his mom scrambled for a true but understandable answer for her preschooler.
Every parent, at one time or another, is asked a question that requires a calculated, yet delicate, response. Generally when those questions arise, the child is not looking for some great philosophical answer; he’s just trying to make sense of his world.
I never heard his mother’s response because his question caused me to stop and think. It made me think about us, God’s children, and the questions we tend to ask our Father. Just like this child, when we ask the difficult questions, it’s because we are trying to make sense of our situations and circumstances. And, just like a small child, we are sometimes not ready, due to our own immaturity, to understand God’s answer.
It is a loving parent who discerns how much a child is ready to understand, and then responds accordingly. God, too, is a loving parent. As we read the scriptures, we see repeatedly that God reveals things “at just the right time.” Jesus continually spoke in parables so that those who were ready to hear the truth would hear it while those who chose to harden their hearts would be “ever hearing but never understanding.”
What about us? Sometimes we are the children asking questions of the Father, trying to understand his thoughts and plans. Other times, we are the “parents.” People may turn to us and ask us the questions they don’t know who else to ask. Be wise and discerning in your answers because each person is at his own level of maturity. Think about the parable of the sower…what is the condition of the soil on which you are about to spread the seed?
Prepare yourself today so that, as a child of God, you will be fully mature and able to understand his answers to your questions; and as a spiritual parent to those less mature than yourself, you will always be ready to give a wise and appropriate answer. And remember, you can’t teach or explain that which you do not know. Therefore, study to show yourself approved.

The mouth of the righteous man utters wisdom, and his tongue speaks what is just. The law of his God is in his heart; his feet do not slip. Ps. 37:30