There are a lot of reasons why I don’t like going to the doctor but I’ll tell you the primary one. I guess you could say that I’m a bit of a hypochondriac and I worry sometimes about getting really sick. When you go to see a doctor, they are not looking to make you feel better by telling you what you want to hear. Their aim is to diagnose what is wrong and fix it to the best of their ability. If diagnosing what is wrong means your temporary pain or discomfort, so be it.

When I really think about it, I don’t honestly want a doctor that would just tell me what I want to hear. If they noticed that something was wrong and chose to not tell me so that I wouldn’t worry, I would probably choose to sue them for malpractice. The better the doctor is, the more accurately they are able to diagnose the problem and guide you toward the best possible solution.

I have a similar problem when I go to God. I want God to just affirm me in what I’m doing and let me know that everything is just fine. I want him to bring me a little comfort here and a little peace there but I don’t really want him to upset the apple cart. I’m generally pretty content with who I am and would prefer to not have to make any drastic changes.

I need to go a step further however, and realize that God sees things from a very different perspective than the one I see from. In the same way that I would not presume to have the same perspective as a doctor given the fact that I have not gone to medical school, so I should not presume to see things the way that God does. In fact, it is infinitely more presumptuous to assume that I have anywhere close to the same perspective as the Almighty.

If God chooses to usher circumstances or variables into my life that are uncomfortable for me, I should not be quick to assume that he is doing something that is not in my best interest. In fact, I should feel far more suspicious if everything in my life is going exactly as I would prefer it. If things are exactly as I would want them to be then I may be dangerously close to being in control of my own life which is not at all a picture of the Christian journey.

I want a God who is my Heavenly Father who is willing to make me uncomfortable in the short-term so that I will experience his fullness for me in the long run. Given how different God must be from us as fallen human beings, we should assume that the path towards spiritual wholeness will contain some difficult operations. God is not merely after cheap external changes but rather internal spiritual transformation.

I guess the point is that we need to expect the unexpected. In the same way that you approach the doctor with a sense of humility because you trust in his expertise, so you need to approach God with an even deeper sense of that same humility. He sees the problems behind the problems behind the problems and has solutions in mind that you would never even dream of. So take the medicine that he prescribes trusting that he has your best interests at heart.