It’s often said, however, that your greatest strength is your greatest weakness, and there most certainly is a dark side to my ability to analyze and correct. It often makes me intolerant of both people and systems who don’t perform or measure up quite like I think they should.
“Why would you do it that way?”
“Wouldn’t this way be better?”
“Why aren’t you doing it this way instead?”
It often makes me critical of those around me. In my impatience and arrogance, I find fault instead of favor, hold a grudge instead of gratitude, maintain unforgiveness instead of understanding.
And when I look at the world around me, I find that perhaps God is seemingly the most inefficient one of all.
In Genesis, God could have given Abraham the long-awaited promised son, Isaac, at 20 years old. Instead, God gave him to Abraham at 100 years old.
In Exodus, God could have liberated the Israelites from the hand of Pharaoh in 4 days, 4 weeks or 4 years. Instead, he allowed them to labor under tyranny for 400 years.
In Numbers, God could have delivered the people straight from labor to liberty. Instead, he vowed to make them wander in the desert for 40 years.
In 1 and 2 Samuel, God could have anointed David as a teenage boy and sent him straight to throne. Instead, he sent David to the belly of a cave and life as a fugitive for 15 years.
In Matthew, God could have gone straight from the time of Malachi to Jesus. Instead, he waits 400 years and whispers not a word to his people in the meantime.
In Mark, God could have sent out 1,200 men and women to proclaim the gospel. Instead, he sends out 12 seemingly inept nobodies.
And perhaps in the greatest tragedy of inefficiency, God waits thousands of years to send a baby who takes 30 years to grow into a man who faces temptation in the desert for 40 days to only do ministry for 3 years before he hangs on a cross for 6 hours. He then takes 3 days to rise from the dead, appears to his followers for only 40 days and is now taking over 2,000 years to come back and make everything right.
The insanity of an inefficient God.
Why send a baby who took years to grow into a man? Why only three years of ministry? Why not thirty? Why six hours? Why not six seconds? Why three days? Why only 40 days? Why 2,000 years?
Better yet, why do any of it at all when none of it had to happen to begin with?
Because God, in his infinite wisdom, is less concerned about his children merely getting somewhere more efficiently and more concerned about his children knowing his all-sufficiency. He's more concerned about the path that will lead to our greatest good, his greatest glory and the world's greatest gain, whether through inefficient means or not.
What’s most efficient isn’t always what’s best or most needed. And those supposed inefficiencies are really based on my limited human perspective, a perspective distorted and twisted by my brokenness and stiff-necked ways.
In Exodus 13:17-18, it says, "When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For God said, 'If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.' So God led the people around by the desert road toward the Red Sea."
There was a shorter road the Israelites could have taken to the promised land, one that didn't dead-end into a brick wall of water. But if they had taken it, the people would have high-tailed it back to Egypt and the Promised Land would have become Never Land.
In Exodus 23:29-30, it says, "But I will not drive [the Hivites, Canaanites, and Hittites] out in a single year, because the land would become desolate and the wild animals too numerous for you. Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you have increased enough to take possession of the land."
What could have been done in a year was done little by little. If it had been done in a year, the Promised Land, the land flowing with milk and honey, would have become the Desolate Land, the land filled with thorns and wild beasts. The land would have become a nightmare instead of a dream.
Louie Giglio said in part two of his sermon "Waiting Here For You" in December of 2013,
So we all trust Jesus on a Tuesday and go to heaven on a Wednesday. Isn't that a better plan actually? And an angel shows up to ask you, 'Are you really, really, really sure you're saved?' 'I'm really, really, really sure I'm saved.' 'Okay, you're going to heaven today, boom, you're done.' No suffering, no struggle, no trials, no hardship, no dark nights. No 30 years of trying to navigate a broken planet. No 50 years of trying to navigate hardship. No 70 years of having to live with the pain of waiting. You just trust God and you go to heaven. Isn't that the plan anyway?
No.
That is not the plan anyway.
The plan is that God gets glory and we fall in love with Jesus.
And I wonder what song we'd sing if we meet God on Tuesday and go to heaven on Wednesday. Yes, we're glad we're saved but we don't really know what we're saved from fully. Because we haven't lived in the fullness of the freedom of what it means to stand on the other side of the Red Sea and go, "We're not dead. We are alive. We are moving on with God into better places. We are moving into the promise he has for our lives. And it has gotten better and better. Not easier and easier, but better and better as we have followed him. Heaven is going to be amazing because of the waiting we've lived in.
I'm in favor of the "here today, gone tomorrow" plan. Far more efficient, and spares me the muck in between.
It turns out God is not. "But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day" (2 Peter 3:8).
In my sin and depravity, I have bowed down and worshiped the god of efficiency far more than I have bowed down and worshiped the God of all-sufficiency.
In my sin and depravity, I have held it against others when they were not organized like I think they should be organized, analytical like I think they should be analytical, efficient like I think they should be efficient.
The tyrannical ruler of efficiency will always make me a slave, and I will do more than just labor for 400 years under its rule. I will miss the miracle of the desert road that led me to the parted waters and an all-sufficient God.
I will miss God himself.
Paul pleaded with God three times that he remove the 'thorn in his flesh.' God could have done it after one request. He could have done it after none. But instead his response to Paul simply was, "My grace is sufficient for you..." (2 Corinthians 12:9).
His grace isn't just sufficient - it's all-sufficient. His ways are perfect. Every single time. No matter how long he seems to take.
Jesus, may I bend my knee and raise my hands to your all-sufficient ways. My perspective on your wisdom and efficiency is limited and twisted, and I look at life through my lens instead of yours. When I make efficiency king of my life, I dethrone you and become a puppet to an unbending tyrant. Your thoughts are not my thoughts. Your ways are not my ways. Make my thoughts yours. Make my ways yours. Teach me to delight in inefficiency because it is within that space where I will learn you are more than enough, and you are, in fact, perfectly efficient in all your ways. You are all-sufficient, and I am not. Remind me that the people around me - my co-workers, my family, my friends, even myself - are not you. They are not perfect. They are humans, made in your image, but humans nonetheless. Help me to extend grace and compassion where there was once impatience and bitterness for all their shortcomings. May your power be made perfect in my weaknesses and inefficiencies.
