Getting older creates unique and subtle changes. On one hand, my world is much more narrow as I drift further away from my twenties. The list of things I really care deeply about has shrunken considerably. There are less hills worth dying on. The stands worth taking are more refined. The “life or death” situations are fewer and farther in between. There are less “things” that evoke passionate, intense responses. Simultaneously, my world gets more broad as I ease into my forties. The situations I face are less black and white. The word “nuance” has become more valuable than the word “definitive”. It’s as if each year allows me a measure of elevation above my life, giving me different perspective. 

When I was younger I retreated from anything generating tension. I had a disdain for stress. Now, I embrace tension because I have discovered within it, something necessary. Tension keeps us balanced. It makes us more well rounded. I causes us to be more refined. It allots room for consistency. 

I’ve lived in circles and been a part of tribes, which lambasted the word “balance”. Along the way I too have been cynical of the word because I feared it was code for compromise, complacency and stagnation. To this day I have some struggle with the term because I never want to use it as a license to settle into any version of mediocrity or cowardice. I do not want “balance” to be a nice word for an unwillingness to take a stand. I never want it to give me permission to cease progressing. I do not want “balance” to prevent me from challenging the edges of life. Nonetheless, “balance” and I have become more well acquainted in recent years as I have learned to be comfortable in tension. When it comes to His nature and ways, God frequently trends toward this/and more than this/or. With all of His Omni-ness on display, it is a futile endeavor to attempt to pigeon hole God.

To be clear, I am not talking about tense situations so much as I am talking about tension in our thinking. Leaning into tension has helped me know God on a deeper level. Wrestling with and accepting a lack of certainty, has allowed me to explore God without the sense of betraying Him. I can come into knowledge of God without feeling as if I am abandoning a truth I have held dear in prior years. Below are just a few of the tensions I have in my soul.

• Faith for a miracle vs. Faith to endure
  
• Dramatic God encounters vs. Incremental spiritual development
  
• Meditation vs. Declaration
  
• Revival experiences vs. Deep biblical truth
  
• Sacrifice vs. Consistency
  
• God being near vs. God moving on my behalf
  
• Standing in support of my brothers vs. Bringing prophetic correction
  
• Kingdom citizenship vs. American citizenship
• A myriad of theological and doctrinal truths

These don’t even take into account all of my every day life tensions as a husband, parent, friend and employee. There are a vast array of ideas on the above mentioned tensions. In my younger years I spent great effort trying to establish stances, prove points and validate my thinking. Dogmatism was a desired trait. Unfortunately, it seems all of us have an innate mechanism which is triggered by tension, and it attempts to coerce us into running away from the tension and running into the arms of certitude. Certainty gives us a sense of comfort. Definitive feels like a secure home. It wraps our life in a nice, convenient package with a pretty bow. It makes what we face more controllable and understandable. 

The problem is we worship a God who is uncontrollable and more often than not, a mystery. Personally, I wouldn’t want it any other way. God is found in the tension. He resides in the uncertain. These tensions serve as shapers on the Potter’s Wheel. Ultimately, God wants to be known by you. He is more concerned with us discovering Him than with us having definitive answers to life’s big questions. If we retract from tension and always seek certainty we will likely find yourself on the path of the foolish. Only the foolish are so narrow minded and arrogant to believe they are absolutely right and that scenarios are very clearly defined. The foolish path of needing absolute definition will eliminate us from the other paths in other realms of the nature of God. It’s ok to not know. It is often in the “not knowing” that true knowing is developed.