"Genie in a Lamp?"

I have a friend who suffered a number of consequential injustices. These injustices have driven her to reading her Bible. In reading her Bible, she ran across a number of passages that provided her with hope that God would “right” all the wrongs she has suffered. Here are some of the passages:

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him! (Matthew 7:7-11, NASB).

After Jesus caused a fig tree to wither, his disciples asked, “How did the fig tree wither at once?” Jesus answered them,

‘Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen. And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith (Matthew 21:20-22).

And,

The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:5-7).

David writes,

Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will act (Psalm 37:4, 5).

Imagine that you have suffered some great injustice from a spouse or family member or close friend. Imagine that their actions have imposed some grave ongoing difficulty, and further imagine that you are seeking help, relief of some kind, and that you are seeking this help from the Lord. So, you turn to your Bible, you read religious books, you find a church and are trying to make sense out of it all. The verses above are brought to your attention, and you make your appeal to God, the God who promises to answer your prayers, to give you the desires of your heart, to give you whatever you ask for.

But nothing happens. Nothing has been restored to you. You are working harder than ever to make ends meet. And most of all, you are disappointed with the God who promised to give you the desires of your heart. What went wrong? What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with God? Did these writers of Scripture lie to us? Is God pulling some cosmic joke on us? How are we to make sense out of this? And, in despair, you give up.

I know of several incidents where someone desperate to get what they wanted, made every effort to do everything to please God. Once the decisive moment arrived and things did not go their way, they abandoned the Lord.

What I have depicted is a caricature of God. We have all seen caricature artists at an

amusement park. Someone sits for a few minutes while the artist draws a comic like image exaggerating prominent characteristics of the person. I have a friend whose road to becoming a professional artist is paved with drawing caricatures.

Viewing God from the few passages above make Him sound more like a genie in a lamp. You just rub the lamp three times, a genie pops out and you tell him what you want.

No one passage in Scripture summarizes who God is or how He works. I am not certain that the sum total of all the Scriptures tell us everything, but they tell us everything we need to know.

Next week I will try to bring this caricature into sharper focus.