Perfectly Actual

“They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served the created rather than the Creator…” (Romans 1:25, NIV).

I was praying during my morning run a few days ago and thought of my lecture to medical students that day, a complex lecture exploring different molecular pathways that lead to the malignant transformation of cells. God nudged me as I ran and asked me to inject His name into the discussion.

This seemed perfectly reasonable as I ran alone in the dark, but when I came to the lecture with 200 students in the auditorium, it really seemed inappropriate, considering their expectations for a purely scientific presentation. I hesitated as I spoke but moved forward with God’s plan and simply added, “God has designed us with these incredibly integrated checks and balances, such that we remain in balance, keeping our cells from continuously becoming malignant.”

 I have no idea what God was doing for any of those students with that simple faith flag, but I’ve got an idea what He was doing with me.

I know He was working on my obedience. I had no doubt that God had asked me to speak His name. It was not easy at the time, not because I thought I would be disciplined, but because I thought I might sound foolish. Perhaps I did for some…doesn’t matter.

I suspect God was also working on me to help make the connection between my thoughts and my beliefs. A student once said of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “He believed what he thought.” I may think often about God designing the intricate molecular checks and balances in our cells, but do I truly believe it? If so, why is it difficult to teach it?

Oswald Chambers once taught,

“We have to live perfectly actual lives, not actually perfect…Faith does not make me actually perfect; faith makes me perfectly actual.”

I believe Chambers meant that we must live out the truth of life as we find it, not as we might wish it or imagine it. Science is actually a fantastic instrument with which we study and use the intricate design of our universe. God is actually the one who designed this universe and can work through or around it as He pleases. The science we discover is God’s truth. God’s work in this world is just as true. Living actually includes teaching both the science and the Creator in a perfectly actual way.

Dear Father,

Help me to believe what I think and live what I believe.

Amen