We often perceive that God has to be powerful and can do anything. We force HIM to show His power, force HIM to do something that we want to. We are sure He will always hear us and help us because what we ask is any good things. We are trying to praise HIM and adore HIM by saying: “Oh God, You are so powerful, You could do anything and You could change anything as nothing is impossible for You.” But, then, after days gone and nothing happen, we disappointed to, and, even mock HIM.
A drunk fights with his habit and intends to stop the behavior, but the more he attempts to stop the more he faces temptation. He then prays to God asking God to change him to be a good man. After several years he still struggles with that, but instead deeper involved as a drunken master. In the desperate and hopeless situation he eventually tells everybody: “God is not powerful. In fact He could not change me. What’s wrong with my request? I asked a good thing!”
A woman experiences a bitter relationship with her husband. She’s complaining her husband of being dull and not as attentive as she expected. The husband even does not care with her, so egoistic as he loves his job more than her. He even forces her to work helping him otherwise she will not deserve getting money from him. The woman then asks God to change her husband. She asks God to change him to become more romantic man so he will be able to gently caring her. Fifteen years passed, their children are growing to teenagers, but the situation is deteriorated.
She then makes affairs with a man. The woman feels falling in love again with the man who gives her the whole things that she’s never received from her husband. She is intoxicated with love, like a teenager who every time and every moment wants a meeting with the boy friend. After knowing the affairs, the husband asks her to end the affairs. He seriously begs apology for all of his faults, and asks her to give a chance for him to rectify. But the woman says: “It’s too late.”
Now the woman tells God: “Oh God, you might touch my husband so that he realized his faults, then asked me regretfully to understand his failures, but now it’s difficult to me to forgive him as I have had someone who cares me and loves me. I got everything that I missed for so long time. I could not forget my boy friend unless You changes me. Tell me if I am doing something wrong, or force me to come back to my husband if You really want me to reconcile with him.”
Then the scandal moves-on. The woman more intensive in meeting and walking with the man. Her friends and relatives deplore her blunt feeling and criticize her demeanor that she would not open her heart – neither for her husband nor her children. “It’s too late,” she repeatedly says. “Why doesn’t God change my husband long time ago? Does God really understand my bitterness, and really have a power to force my husband for repentance?”
***
For some people, God often irritates them. God’s way also confuses them many times. “He is not powerful anymore,” says the drunk man who asks God to change him to be a good man. “God too slow to take action, He always late,” says the woman who asks God to change her husband.
Is God blind or deaf?
We usually demand God to be proactive to prevent us from doing bad things. In our praying we always praise His power that can do anything. We expect HIM to help us in our difficult time. We ask God to be our helper, then we thought everything will be God’s business afterward. That’s why if we’re still doing wrong, that is not our failure, that has to be God’s failure because He didn’t take us out of the evils.
The drunk man wants his attitude to be changed, but he never says “NO” when friends entice him to take alcoholic drinks. He never avoids gathering between drinkers either. He keeps alcoholic drinks as a collection proudly. He enjoys his job which always makes him deal with anything distressful. And when he experiences a distress, he takes it.
The woman asks God for her husband to repent, so their family will be restored. However, she continuously claims she is right and her husband wrong, and surely says the one who needs changes and repentance is him, not her. She tries to stop having affairs with the her boy friend, but, she never stops meeting with the man, calling him, and “sms”ing 1) him continuously. When her husband came to her asking forgiveness, she rejected it. She was doubtful her husband really repented. Her heart burned with revenge. She even accuses God for doing unfair to her, because everybody defends the husband for the repentance, but not consider her hurt feeling for so long time living together with him. She expects everybody understand her difficulty to forgive him, even if she bring the revenge till the end.
Yeah, God is not powerful anymore – HE could not change the drunk man to be a good man as well as change the woman to stop the affairs and forgive her husband. Is God really no longer powerful? I am worry, it is us who make God being powerful or powerless.
Serpong, 20 January 2009
Titus J.
Note:
1. sms = short message service
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