Not by part of the verse alone

Reading the whole verse of a familiar line: "He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna; that neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD." Deuteronomy 8:3

It makes sense. I have seen God take care of me in unexpected ways, and it is humbling. But he does take care.

Does the whole verse illuminate why Jesus used "man does not live by bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD" when he was tempted? Yes. Satan tempts Jesus: You're hungry, make bread. That would be the known solution. Jesus remembers that the Father often has an unexpected solution. 

The dangers of being too positive

Evangelicals tell and retell stories about dramatic changes and sudden answers to prayer. They're great. I had this need, I had this problem, I prayed, and God answered! The solution appeared! But how often do we talk about those other problems, problems that hang on for years, challenging us when we pray to keep on asking and not give up?


I thought of this when reading Addie Zierman's recent blog post. It is an open letter from people who left the church to the church.

"Once, we believed quickly and entirely, our faith in the church people and in God all tangled into each other. We believed that you who loved God would be different, and no one ever confessed that Christians are broken too ... We are constantly aware of the darkness: yours and ours. The whole wide world, broken and dying, hurling herself into the abyss."
"We need you to sit with us in the mad season for as long as it takes. We need to hear your stories – the messy ones, the hard parts. We need you to tell us the pain of it without skipping ahead to the happy ending."
"Maybe we can face our darkness if you are honest about yours."

She says its hypocrisy to keep silent. I'm not sure its deliberate hypocrisy, at least not for many of us. But if we only tell the stories of God working rapid transformation, we won't talk about hanging on and being faithful with a problem that doesn't go away.

Addie Zierman's whole post:

The dangers of a single story

Video: The danger of a single story
We watched this video presentation a couple of days ago at work. Chimamanda Adichie, a Nigerian novelist, tells how the first books she loved to read were about British schoolchildren with blue eyes playing in the snow and enjoying ginger beer, and then tells how when she went to the US to study, her roommate assumed she wouldn't know how to use a stove because all she'd heard about Africa was the story of famine and poverty. She says just knowing one single story about another country or another people is a great weakness.

I wonder if in church we aren't guilty of presenting a single story. The story that we've all arrived, we're all OK now. The story that God has solved all our major problems because we're mature Christians.

But Scripture celebrates people who reached the end of their lives believing God would do something, but hadn't yet seen it:

Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated—  the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground.

These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, Hebrews 11:36-39

Scripture tells the story of Peter, who one terrible day asserts that he'd never known Jesus, but then Jesus forgives him, not just forgives him but restores him to leadership. Or the story of John, who before writing inspiring verses that God is love, wanted to call down fire from heaven on people who didn't want to listen. Luke 9:54.

So let's present all the stories God tells in our lives. The stories that even now we may struggle, wonder what God is doing, but don't go away because there is nowhere else to go. The stories how we have not arrived yet, but we're still traveling in hope, trusting that God will do great things even when we don't know when he'll do them.