I recently read C. S. Lewis’s sermon “A Slip of the Tongue.” There, Lewis considers the human tendency to be wary of close proximity with God. While we may desire to know the Lord and to serve him well, we nonetheless approach him with caution, fearful of what he may require of us if we get too close. Lewis recognizes that we would much rather play at religion than embrace it fully, for we know that true religion, while being our only way to know true life, is costly.

I’ve been reading through Job lately, and I think a similar theme is at play in that story. There, Job expresses confusion at his circumstances, and he desires an audience with the Almighty. “Oh, that I knew where I might find him,” Job says, “that I might come even to his seat! I would lay my case before him and fill my mouth with arguments. I would know what he would answer me and understand what he would say to me” (Job 23:3-5). And despite the mistaken diagnoses of Job’s friends, Job maintains his cause. He wants to lay his case before God and receive answers.

Then God answers. The Lord speaks out of a whirlwind not with answers to Job’s concerns but with a series of questions about the details of creation (Job 38:1 and following). After chapters filled with speeches and arguments from Job and his friends, speeches presuming to speak of God’s character and ways in the world, God himself speaks, and all fall silent before him. The men understood their place when God answered.

Do we want God to answer us when we cry to him? Do we want to hear him speak? Do we want to enter his presence? In one sense, I’m not so sure we do. When God speaks, our misconceptions and misunderstandings about him and his ways tend to crumble. And while this is a good thing, it’s uncomfortable. The voice of God humbles and corrects us, revealing our arrogance and error and presumptions. We cannot remain as we are when the Lord speaks. We dare not.

But in another sense, we do want God to speak. Misconceptions and misunderstandings tend to be comfortable, but they’re also unhealthy. They reflect hearts and minds that aren’t as surrendered to the Lord or as conformed to the image of Christ as we might assume. If life and salvation are found in God alone, then we must recognize, as Lewis recognized, that to avoid surrender is to shrink back from life itself. If we would live, we must live on the Lord’s terms and not our own. Therefore, we must learn to know him and love him as he is and not as we wish him to be. He requires our all, and we do well to let him have it.

Lewis highlighted a common hesitancy, and his point is confirmed by the story of Job. Close encounters with the Lord change us in deep and profound ways, and those ways are not necessarily comfortable. But as Peter so insightfully said all those years ago when Jesus asked the disciples if they wanted to leave him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God” (John 6:68-69). There is no other Savior, no other King, no other God than the LORD. There is no other life or love or happiness than what he offers. So we seek him while he may be found, knowing that we will tremble and be changed when we find him. But we seek him anyway, for he is worth the effects of the finding.

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