When God Sighed

I'm so glad I serve the God that groans with injustice. He feels my pain. This one word has to be up there with the words - BUT GOD....

When God Sighed
by Max Lucado

Two days ago I read a word in the Bible that has since taken up residence in my heart.

To be honest, I didn't quite know what to do with it. It's only one word, and not a very big one at that. When I ran across the word, (which, by the way, is exactly what happened; I was running through the passage and this word came out of nowhere and bounced me like a speed bump) I didn't know what to do with it. I didn't have any hook to hang it on or category to file it under.

It was an enigmatic word in an enigmatic passage. But now, forty-eight hours later, I have found a place for it, a place all its own. My, what a word it is. Don't read it unless you don't mind changing your mind, because this little word might move your spiritual furniture around a bit.

Look at the passage with me.

Then Jesus left the vicinity of Tyre and went through Sidon, down to the Sea of Galilee and into the region of the Decapolis. There some people brought a man to him who was deaf and could hardly talk, and they begged him to place his hand on the man.

After he took him aside, away from the crowd, Jesus put his fingers into the man's ears. Then he spit and touched the man's tongue. He looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh said to him,"Ephphatha!" (which means, "Be opened!"). At this, the man's ears were opened, his tongue was loosened and he began to speak plainly. (Mark 7:31-35)

Quite a passage, isn't it?

Jesus is presented with a man who is deaf and has a speech impediment. Perhaps he stammered. Maybe he spoke with a lisp. Perhaps, because of his deafness, he never learned to articulate words properly.

Jesus, refusing to exploit the situation, took the man aside. He looked him in the face. Knowing it would be useless to talk, he explained what he was about to do through gestures. He spat and touched the man's tongue, telling him that whatever restricted his speech was about to be removed. He touched his ears. They, for the first time, were about to hear.

But before the man said a word or heard a sound, Jesus did something I never would have anticipated.

He sighed.

I might have expected a clap or a song or a prayer. Even a "Hallelujah!" or a brief lesson might have been appropriate. But the Son of God did none of these. Instead, he paused, looked into heaven, and sighed. From the depths of his being came a rush of emotion that said more than words.

Sigh. The word seemed out of place.

I'd never thought of God as one who sighs. I'd thought of God as one who commands. I'd thought of God as one who weeps. I'd thought of God as one who called forth the dead with a command or created the universe with a word ... but a God who sighs?

Perhaps this phrase caught my eye because I do my share of sighing.

I sighed yesterday when I visited a lady whose invalid husband had deteriorated so much he didn't recognize me. He thought I was trying to sell him something.

I sighed when the dirty-faced, scantily dressed, six-year-old girl in the grocery store asked me for some change.

And I sighed today listening to a husband tell how his wife won't forgive him.

No doubt you've done your share of sighing.

If you have teenagers, you've probably sighed. If you've tried to resist temptation, you've probably sighed. If you've had your motives questioned or your best acts of love rejected, you have been forced to take a deep breath and let escape a painful sigh.

I realize there exists a sigh of relief, a sigh of expectancy, and even a sigh of joy. But that isn't the sigh described in Mark 7. The sigh described is a hybrid of frustration and sadness. It lies somewhere between a fit of anger and a burst of tears.

The apostle Paul spoke of this sighing. Twice he said that Christians will sigh as long as we are on earth and long for heaven. The creation sighs as if she were giving birth. Even the Spirit sighs as he interprets our prayers. (Romans 8:22-27)

All these sighs come from the same anxiety; a recognition of pain that was never intended, or of hope deferred.

Man was not created to be separated from his creator; hence he sighs, longing for home. The creation was never intended to be inhabited by evil; hence she sighs, yearning for the Garden. And conversations with God were never intended to depend on a translator; hence the Spirit groans on our behalf, looking to a day when humans will see God face to face.

And when Jesus looked into the eyes of Satan's victim, the only appropriate thing to do was sigh. "It was never intended to be this way," the sigh said. "Your ears weren't made to be deaf, your tongue wasn't made to stumble." The imbalance of it all caused the Master to languish.

So, I found a place for the word. You might think it strange, but I placed it beside the word comfort, for in an indirect way, God's pain is our comfort.

And in the agony of Jesus lies our hope. Had he not sighed, had he not felt the burden for what was not intended, we would be in a pitiful condition. Had he simply chalked it all up to the inevitable or washed his hands of the whole stinking mess, what hope would we have?

But he didn't. That holy sigh assures us that God still groans for his people. He groans for the day when all sighs will cease, when what was intended to be will be.

Not knowing whether to sprint or be still.

On Sunday afternoon, my wife sent me to Costco to “buy a mattress,” with my brother Will. That is exactly what we did. We bought a mattress. Hours later, back at the house, she said, “Where’s the box springs?” I, having not been told to purchase box springs, said, “What box springs?”

This discussion went round and round, finally settling on the decision that no adult in their early 30s could possibly believe that a bed could be complete without a box springs. Although I tried to tell my wife if she asked me to make her a “peanut butter” sandwich and then complained about the lack of jelly, she would have no leg to stand on, she did not buy it. We ended up being forced to return the mattress since they don’t sell box springs separately in some sort of “dumb husband” section of Costco and had to start the whole thing over again.

That’s why I told the company that moved us their motto should be:

“Signature Moving, stay married.”

Next to hanging up wallpaper in a guest bathroom that initially appears small but is actually inexplicably acres wide, moving tends to be a pretty easy way to get divorced. It’s stressful. It’s intense. And if you do it in August, it’s blazing hot.

Fortunately, the whole thing has been a complete God send and has been incredibly clear and there’s no doubt and God hand delivered a piece of paper that had the next ten years detailed so there’s no concern on that end. As far as being able to accurately list out the exact things we should be doing and the exact timeframe during which we should do it we’ve got that covered. When it comes to accurately discerning the minute details of God’s plan for our lives, all I do is win.

That’s clearly not true.

Despite prayers and hopes, plans and confirmations, life is never so simple that all the pieces line up, giving you a 100-year road map to the future. Sometimes, there is risk involved in moving. Sometimes, if you’re single, you have to stretch outside your comfort zone to start a new relationship. Sometimes, a job you didn’t expect takes you to extraordinarily unexpected places.

And in those moments we often turn to God. But what does he say? We often come to him with two buttons, “Run” and “Wait.” We want him to take his gigantic God fist and pound one cleanly. No hanging chad, we want to know instantly and without any doubt what he would have us do. But often, it doesn’t work that way for you and me, and I am encouraged by a moment when it didn’t for Moses.

The setting is the shore of the Red Sea. Moses has led the Israelites out of Egypt. They are excited, but just as freedom seems possible, they look up and see the Egyptian army marching down on them. In what I’ve mentioned before is the Bible’s first known example of sarcasm, they yell at Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die?” What punks, but Moses isn’t phased.

With wisdom that sounds like it was said by a man with a legit beard, he replies in Exodus 14, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today.” He continues later, “The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”

Hooray you think! Moses got it right finally. His early track record isn’t wicked awesome. He murdered someone. He fled home. He told the Lord he wasn’t qualified to be a leader, but here, here in this moment he relies on God! He gets it. God clearly wants them to wait. Great plan.

How does God respond to that in the very next verse? God says, “Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on.”

I love that. Moses thought he had a plan. He thought he had a next step. He thought the wait button had been pressed and so he advised everyone to wait. And what did God say to that? “Run! Right now, run!”

That to me is a beautiful example of how crazy an adventure with God can feel. You want answers and they just don’t seem clear sometimes. You know in your heart of hearts that you’re supposed to move to Nashville and that God is in this adventure in big ways, but having your daughter change first grade a week before it starts isn’t easy. Your wife leaving the Community Bible Study she’s led for years isn’t easy. Changing a job you’ve had for years isn’t easy. And you wish, you wish there was a roadmap that could tell you it would all work out fine.

But as I’ve said before, we don’t get an itemized solution, we get a savior.

We don’t get a roadmap, we get a relationship.

We don’t get a mission statement, we get a Messiah.

And relationships are daily. Relationships are built on time and closeness. And every time we come just seeking actionable answers. Every time we come for the next ten steps. Every time we come for adventure insurance from God, I think he simply thinks, “come. Come be where I am. Stop making me press the wait or the run button, just come.” Because the truth is, in your life and my life too, on every journey we go on,

God’s presence matters more than a plan.

Copied from: http://stuffchristianslike.net