Aaand…we’re back! After a whirlwind transition from the United States to Kenya, Jennifer and I have come up for enough air to start writing again. Thank you for waiting patiently!
The whirlwind included getting our house and belongings ready, a 24-hour trip across the globe with 8 suitcases, settling into a small duplex with amenities far below what we spoiled Americans are used to, wading knee-deep into the hoopla of applying for work permits and tax IDs, finding our way around, figuring out what groceries are available compared to the U.S. and spending a week in the mountains for cross-cultural training.
Exchanging one way of life for a distinctly different one got me thinking about 1 Timothy 1:4: The stewardship from God that is by faith.
The Greek phrase translated as “stewardship of God” in the ESV and several other translations is Oikonomian Theou. Recognize that word? It’s where our word economy comes from! That’s why several other translators chose the wording “the order of God.”
That resonates with me in the midst of chaos. Life in Kenya is anything but orderly. Traffic is a mess. Stores are packed. Most roads cause your organs to get rearranged. Bureaucracy is confusing and unpredictable. Even getting through one day is never as you expected – unexpected messages, phone calls, requests, and last-minute changes in plans that alter the course of your days as you had envisaged it. Jennifer and I literally wake up every morning, and the first words out of our mouths are: “I wonder what’s going to happen today?”
Perhaps you can relate. Even in our far more orderly and punctual First World, life is getting increasingly unpredictable and fast-changing.
How do you maintain your sense of order and peace in the midst of unpredictability, confusion, and chaos?
The secret lies in pursuing “the order of God that is by faith.” Let’s pick that apart so we can understand it more clearly.
The order of God (its synonyms are economy, stewardship, order, administration, and management) refers to the spiritual order of things—in other words, the organization of His kingdom. It’s much different from how the world is organized and often runs counter-intuitive to human logic. For instance, where we see a chaotic and confusing process of applying for work permits in a foreign country, God’s administration puts people and connections in place to guide us, help us, and smooth out the process. And where you may be confronted with changes, adversity, problems, or pain that appear to have no way out, God is already at work in the unseen realm on your behalf.
That leads us to the key question: how does God’s order in the unseen realm become our order in the visible world?
By faith.
Abiding faith in our loving heavenly Father and His designs for our lives brings us the order and indestructible peace we need and desire and that God wants us to have.
That abiding faith comes from our daily abiding in His Presence. Enjoying His company, seeking His face, and delighting in His perfections and glory produces deep, constant faith that implicitly trusts Him to intervene and sovereignly work in and through the problems we face.
I often compare this to being plugged into a constant power source versus being a windup device. Many of us are winder-uppers. We try to quickly produce faith by bringing our problems to God and searching for quick sources of encouragement, only to find that our peace in Him dissipates after a while. But when you are plugged into the source of peace, strength, wisdom, love, power, comfort, and guidance that our Lord is, we find our trust in Him unbroken, unwavering, and our peace undisturbed by problems or chaos.
God wants us to live by His order through abiding faith in Him. It results in joy, delight, strength, and peace that defies the limits of human strength and understanding. And it returns to Him in the form of grateful and worshipful hearts. We often have to fight our own screaming emotions, the weakness of our flesh, and distractions from the devil to protect and maintain abiding faith by spending quality time with Him. Trust me – that struggle is real for us right now. But it’s worth the fight!
Living by the order of God through faith is a slice of heaven on earth and a foretaste of what is to come when we reach eternity in His presence!
Try it, and be encouraged.