Encouragement
Organized Chaos – The Damascus Road
Many of us like the feeling of being in control and having command over our lives. However more times than not we find ourselves in some disturbance or disruption. We find that there are many moving parts to the chaos which can be more than we can grasp. But if we step back and observe from God’s vantage point we find it divinely organized toward a better end, toward an expected end.
Oxymoron
The phrase “organized chaos” is an oxymoron.
ox·y·mo·ron – a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear together
Examples:
pretty ugly civil war bittersweet walking dead doing nothing
Organized Chaos
I want to talk about when God uses organized chaos to complete His purpose of reaching an End Goal.
I have noticed on more than one occasion that God tends to use chaotic situations to facilitate his plan toward an End Goal. We ourselves can bring on the chaos or He’ll allow it through some other means, it doesn’t matter, He will use it.
Following are several biblical examples to support my claim.
Growing Israel
In this first example the desired End Goal is to grow Israel into a great nation. The need arises to shelter the young nation from destruction during a time of severe famine.
The chaos begins when Joseph is betrayed by his brothers, sold and enslaved in Egypt (Genesis 37:12-36). However, the enslavement led to the preservation and incubation of the budding nation of Israel. The End Goal was achieved when Israel entered Egypt numbering seventy “souls” and according to history left in the millions (Genesis 46:3).
The Davidic Covenant
The prophetic End Goal was to seat David’s lineage on the throne of Israel forever (2 Samuel 7:12-16). This would be accomplished through Jesus Christ, through Mary, a descendant of Nathan, David’s son. However, the problem was the throne was occupied by King Saul, the Benjamite.
Chaos was introduced when Goliath, the enemy giant, defies King Saul and his army (1 Samuel 17). David’s victory over Goliath facilitated his journey to the palace (1 Samuel 18:6-8). Eventually the deaths of both King Saul and his son Jonathan in battle led to David being Israel’s king.
Love May not Always Find a Way
We know how much David loved Jonathan and Jonathan loved David. They were like brothers. Samuel had already anointed David as king over Saul. Why couldn’t God just let David find favor with Saul and be introduced to the palace that way?
The reality is, God had to move Saul and Jonathan out of the way for David to become king and for the people to accept David as king. Jonathan was heir to the throne by blood. It required the demise of both Saul and Jonathan for David to be accepted as champion and king of Israel.
Sometimes in the chaos, God must move something you love out of the way for you to get where you got to go. The way in which God gets you to the End Goal is not about your feelings and preferences, it’s about advancing the Kingdom of God. Yes, God is love but love does not trump Purpose, it inspires it. God loved his Son but gave Him over to crucifixion so that we could be saved. Which brings me to the next example.
A Pure Sacrifice
The world had a need for a Savior, an unblemished sacrifice.
Chaos ensued when there was alleged adultery surrounding the conception of Mary’s baby, the baby Savior. When Mary came up pregnant before she and Joseph consummated the marriage, it was preposterous for the family to believe Joseph had not been intimate with Mary or she had not played the harlot. On top of that Mary claims the child was conceived by the Holy Spirit. Can you imagine the response to this explanation?
“Conceived by what???”
“Seriously Mary!”
“A spirit?”
“Oh, excuse me, you said the Holy Spirit?!”
“What kind of nonsense, witchcraft gibberish is this???”
Please note the Holy Spirit was not given until thirty-three years later, after Jesus’ death (Acts 2:1-4). So, there was no experiential knowledge of the Holy Spirit by common people at that time. So, the stories Mary and Joseph were telling were quite unbelievable.
Nevertheless, The End Goal was achieved and Jesus was born. Born amid the rumors, consternations, the whisperings, some of which were probably never rectified in the minds of some, the world receives a Savior.
Married to Chaos
Can you see the story of prophet Hosea in this? Hosea did not know if the children his prostitute (hopefully former profession) wife bore during their marriage were his or not. Chaos! But he treated them as his own. Although circumstances were different, Joseph too had to accept the raising of a child he knew was not his. During that time, that was not the norm. No man was expected to do that.
In Hosea’s time the wife could have been justifiably stoned to death. In Mary’s time, public divorce and disgrace was the option. But all was in God’s plan to use organized chaos to show God’s love for a backsliding Israel in Hosea’s story and to facilitate the birth of Jesus Christ, our Savior in Mary’s case.
Sometimes the chaos manifests itself in rumors, nay-sayers, non-supporters, ostracism but wind is wind whether from the force of nature or someone’s mouth, both appear but for a moment. So, ride it out.
Gospel to the Gentiles
From the beginning God’s plan was to present the Gospel to the Gentiles.
Saul was the chaos. Saul was a card-carrying bounty hunter to the early Christians church and an enemy of the gospel (Acts 9:1-2).
The Damascus Road Saul travelled led to the End Goal. Saul, the zealous Pharisee became Paul, the zealous apostle to the Gentiles after conversion (Acts 9:15).
What I am seeing through these examples is that God determines a promise, an appointment, an anointing, a deliverance around you but the road you travel to get to that appointment, that anointing, that promise, that deliverance is chaotic, it’s a Damascus Road.
The Damascus Road
The Damascus Road is a road of conversion and transformation. Transformation from a human perspective to God vantage point. This road is designed to disturb your peace and even knock you out of your saddle.
It is a road that will put you at odds with God in what you thought He wanted you to do to realizing what he really anointed you to do.
It is a road where you won’t find comfort and understanding with your old running buddies because they can’t relate. Neither can you find a complete sense of identity with the new running buddies because they are running in a direction that God did not direct you. It is a road designed to make you turn to no one but God; to be utterly dependent on Him.
This is what Paul found on the Damascus Road. Paul’s time on earth was at the beginning of the church age. According to the scripture, we are experiencing the end of the last days of the church on earth.
Paul’s zeal was needed to jumpstart the gospel at the beginning of the church age. Equally, as we near the end of the church dispensation, how much more zeal should we employ knowing that we as believers will be someone’s last stop before they enter eternity?
Recreated Creation
So regardless of the chaos that keeps coming at you in various forms, do not lose sight of the fact that there is an End Goal. Know that the chaos serves to bring us a much better end.
We see it clearly in creation …
“In the beginning Elohim created heaven and earth…”
Then chaos!
“And the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the waters…” Genesis 1:1-2
Over the next six days Elohim took that void and recreated the earth and not only that, He made Adam and Eve, arriving at a better end than was at the beginning.
You get the pattern.
Fire the Farmer
So, if God sends chaos to facilitate His End Goal, what do we as recipients of his affection and glory have to complain about?
Our complaint would be like…
“Man, that farmer on that tractor doesn’t know what he’s doing! From where I am standing, he just keeps plowing the same ground over and over again uprooting and destroying the poor earth worms. What a waste of time and how heartless he is!”
What you are not taking into account is the reason he’s breaking up that field. He is doing what seems to be a waste of time to you but his end goal is to plant a crop for your sustenance. And what looks to you like he is plowing over the same ground again and again is solely based on your vantage point. You are looking at the field where your line of sight is limited. You’re looking at the field sideways. If you move to face the front of the tractor you will see the farmer is moving incrementally across the entire field and not plowing up and down the same row! Your vantage point does not reveal the whole truth, the farmer’s truth.
We do not have God’s vantage point during his plowing up of our lives. We have the side view that complains,
“I don’t like this!”
“I don’t want this!”
“This is not fair and this needs to stop right now!…in the name of Jesus!”
We add the name of Jesus to make it not so much of a rant.
However, if I’ve moved your needle even a little bit by the examples I’ve given, to believe there can be some sense behind madness, some calm in the storm, some organization in the chaos, you know that God is up to something. Ask God to help you move from a human point of view that provides incomplete information to God’s view that reveals the situation from His vantage point. Although God may not reveal everything to you, He’ll give you enough understanding to give you peace. Enough peace to know the worms had to be sacrificed for a greater good.
Just as he gave those worms up for the people the crop would feed, God will give a people for your life.
A People for Your Life
Isaiah 43:3-4 NIV
3 For I am the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior;
I give Egypt for your ransom,
Cush and Seba in your stead.
4 Since you are precious and honored in my sight,
and because I love you,
I will give people in exchange for you,
nations in exchange for your life
At one time I thought this meant he’ll send people your way as you need them during your lifetime. But a closer look at this reveals that God will give people up for you! Yes, it means he will choose you over others.
The death of Saul and Jonathan, the annihilation of the ancient Amalekite people (1 Samuel 15:6-8), the destruction of the world during the flood (Genesis 6:5-6,12-13), the destruction of the world to come foretold by prophecy (Revelation 21:1) are all from God’s vantage point. Don’t expect to understand it all. We do not consist of the same substance as God…we can’t sit at the same table, we can’t sit in the same seat as God, so how do we expect to understand or judge His ways with our human logic?
“O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!” Romans 11:33
An Expected End
Jeremiah penned Jeremiah 29:11,
“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.”
Jeremiah was writing to Judah …all of whom had been carted off into Babylonian captivity.
It was to them he wrote, God does not mean you evil, his thoughts are of peace.
Yeah, right! We’re in shackles on our way down this Damascus Road to a foreign land. And He doesn’t mean us evil?
You see, God’s love language is speaking and seeing future. He doesn’t speak present; He doesn’t speak circumstances; He speaks what we will become. That’s why Judah’s then state of captivity did not match God’s language of Peace and an Expected End.
Sometimes the promises we pull from the Bible don’t match our present state. But remember God doesn’t speak present he speaks future.
Reaching Forward
Paul says in Philippians 3:13-14,
“I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
Jeremiah’s words, although truth, did not change the road Judah was on or the fact that God’s plan had to run its course before they could realize their Expected End.
We all have those Expected Ends. Things that we believe God for. Sometimes it doesn’t seem to get the light of day with God but know that God is working within the chaos using the wind, the lightening and the rain to strategically position people to where they need to be in order for you to receive your Expected End.
Isaiah 55:8-9 KJV
8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Too Old to Expect
Maybe your chaos is that you’re considered the older generation where things don’t work like they used to and you’re operating at half strength But let’s see what scripture says about old age.
Psalm 92:13-14 KJV
13 Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God.
14 They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing;
Simple as that!
Conclusion
What message do I want to leave with you today?
That chaos is not consuming. The only thing consuming in chaos is if you panic. If you through your flesh thrash about like someone overboard without a life jacket. It may feel like it, it may look like it, but remember Who is in there with you. Regardless of what is coming at you, stay on the Damascus Road. It may be chaotic, but there’s light on that road, God speaks on that road, God sends people for your life on that road, God gives you “Next” on that road. Stay on the road, stay in the chaos until God brings you out. Your faith is being stretched to get you to the place where God purposed you.
God says He’ll prepare a table for you in the presence of your enemies. That means you’ll dine in the midst of chaos and He’ll say to your enemies,
“Can’t touch this!”
Don’t let the chaos cause you to lose focus, there is an End Goal God has for you at the end of the Damascus Road.