Our trust in God must be complete for us to experience completeness. A pathway of progressive perplexity pushes us toward profounder surrender. Expanded revelation opens our lives to more mystery; the more we learn, the more we realize we don’t much. The more answers we receive, the more questions we have because we have enough revelation to ask them. We live in increasing levels of enigma. One open door reveals a room we didn’t even know was there.
Trust with God isn’t built upon knowing everything. Trust with God means resting in the greatest reality that He knows everything, and that He reveals everything we need to know to trust Him enough to say “Yes!” Trust doesn’t demand all the answers before we obey. Trust says “Yes” when it is a great risk, and the deeper we go in obedience the greater mystery surrounds our trust.
“Abram went, not knowing…” [Hebrews 11.] Abram did know to go because God revealed this instruction, but Abram didn’t know where he was going. Still, ‘Abram went.”
At various stages of going and obeying, Abram reveals that he still has more questions than answers about where to go, who will be his heir, and “how in the world does God think He is going to make this all happen?” Each step into obedience brings Abram face to face with the profounder perplexity of God’s promise. Every day he ages, Abram’s questions deepen. Every year of personal prosperity demands a son to inherit this increase. But where is the son God promised?
Your Trust is More Important Than Your Revelation
Those who know me attest that I am thrilled about revelation. The Bible is so full of the eternal – No! – the Bible is eternal! It does not contain God’s Word; it is God’s Word. And, I am thrilled about revelation increase in my own life as a child opening gifts at Christmas.
I am thrilled with prophetic revelation. This is not about something greater than the Bible or something completing the Bible, since the Bible is enough and complete within itself. This is about the everyday “He shall be in you” and “He shall lead and guide you” and “He shall teach you” that Jesus promised.
God speaks today! And, Jesus involved in His kingdom and ecclesia means a here and now revelation of strategy and assignment for His leaders and people. Revelation is more important than calculation. Revelation is more powerful than reason. Revelation allows and enables us to think God’s thoughts. For those who say, God removed the messy by giving us the Bible, I must remind you that arguing the Bible is messier and the Bible is used to perpetuate the greatest errors of church history. So, lighten up on the scare tactics about prophetic revelation available here and now!
However, prophetic revelation does not remove the mystery from God or the mystery from our obedience. The idea that God needs to explain Himself or reveal everything He is doing before we obey is the fruit of rebellion, unbelief, and religion. We do what God says without hesitation, keep asking questions, and following orders. We walk right into greater mystery when we obey God.
If you are waiting for more answers before you start walking the direction God has marked for you, your unbelief is rebellious. “They did not enter in because of unbelief” speaks of a demand to be in control, make the big decisions, use the Scriptures to obligate God to do what we think they say He should do, and play God instead of playing our part as humans.
Many modern American Christians say by their actions, “God, You need to do a better job of being God.” They are saying this because they demand that God remove the mystery from their obedience. They refuse to obey “because God said so.” They stomp the left foot like four-year-olds. They pout with the protruding bottom lip of eight-year-olds. They slam doors and run away like twelve-year-olds. They are basically spoiled spiritual brats with something to prove.
These Christian cannot be trusted with adult things because they have never learned the basics of “do it cause I told you to” as spiritual children. They grow up expecting the keys to the car when they cannot be trusted with such a dangerous experience. They grow up expecting to be given greater freedoms without shouldering greater responsibilities. They believe they are ready to have a kingdom opinion when they cannot even keep their room cleans, take out the trash once a week, and avoid becoming a victim of Internet porn.
Trust Him When You Don’t Understand
But the most mature Christians face the most perplexing questions. The truth is that more revelation does not remove mystery. Revelation expands mystery. We mature enough to ask the right questions.
Remember that Jesus amazes the leaders of His generation in Jerusalem by the questions He asked them. The questions He asked…
Later, He refused to answer their questions because they were not mature enough for the answers. Their motivations for demanding answers were motivations of rebellion and unbelief. They wanted answers to better craft their refusals of obedience. They were using the eternal Scriptures to develop their own answers to God’s mysteries because their refused to obey God until they could be in control.
For the mature, walking through mystery requires greater risk and trust than remaining on the safer ground of analysis, reason, research, and conclusion. In God, wisdom is His strategy to accomplish His purpose. In man, wisdom attempts to wrap the package up with reason and knowledge so it is humanly secure. When human wisdom secures the soul, we have hardness of heart. When God’s wisdom whispers “Go,” we have the joy of a pioneer.
Human wisdom gloats about going to places we’ve been before to boast of man’s purposes. God’s wisdom walks us into fullness so we can produce fulfillment of God’s purposes. Human wisdom can recognize achievement and excellence because it removes the mystery. God’s wisdom recognizes leadership and promise because it increases mystery.
Mystery of the Hidden
The term “occult” means “hidden.” We are forbidden to live by the “hidden” of the occult because it is a storehouse of lies from darkness and hell. The term “mystery” basically means the same thing. A mystery is something real that is hidden.
The occult is something unreal, an imposter of hell that is revealed to capture and enslave by convincing people they are in control. The mystery of God is something hidden to preserve and reserve it for adult kingdom leaders who can receive it and bring something of God to fullness and fulfillment by empower people who are submitted to God’s control.
Revelation from God always puts me in a position of trusting God more. Meddling with mysteries of the occult is my effort to gain control by usurping spiritual power, trusting myself to control in the delusion that I can control things with spiritual power.
God has many mysteries that we cannot remove unless we are God. We are not God! We will never be God! We will live with Him eternally and never remove mystery from Him.
Knowing God does not require us to know everything about God. Loving God does not require that we remove mystery from Him.
So, walking with God expands mystery. Demanding to know everything exposes our immaturity. Demanding to be in control gets us nowhere with God. He simples stops revealing until we obey what the revelation we’ve already received. Not to punish us even—simply because we cannot see any greater revelation from the vantage point of our last disobedience. Disobedience and blindness share the same space.
Every step a prophetic people take demands a greater level of trust in the One who leads them. While a prophetic people enjoy greater revelation, they experienced greater mystery. The moment a prophetic people demand to know it all or even demand to know more before they obey, they have set up camp somewhere on the journey instead of moving further toward their destination.
