How big is God, how great and wide his vast domain?
To try and tell these lips can only start.
He’s big enough to rule this mighty universe,
Yet small enough to live within my heart.
a what’s happening blog as a theological thoughts blog so forgive me. I promise
I’ll talk about what has been happening on my trip either in this or another
blog to come shortly. But these are some thoughts about what I have been
learning about God both prior to and on the race. Right now I am sitting
on aroof top in Turkey
hearing the Muslim call to prayer blasting out over the city and something
strikes me. The Muslims understand how big the God is that they serve but I
think that is all they seem to see of Him and it drives them to serve out of
fear. There is nothing personal about God as far as they are concerned. And ya
know what I have realized in my life recently? That I for a long time had a
similar view of God. He was huge, powerful, controlled everything and that if I
wasn’t in His show I better watch it because I’m probably gonna get knocked out
of the way. This really bothered me. I knew that God supposedly wanted a
personal relationship with me but more along the lines of a dictorial (word I
made up) father figure. “You will do your home work and your chores and you
will go to college and get a degree, you will marry who I say whether you like
it or not and then you will be a plumber for the rest of your life. That is my
will and you better do it or get out of the way.” Yeah that sounds pretty bad
right? The plumber tithing is just for illustration’s sake but seriously, that
is how I had kind of painted my perception of Him.
A couple
years ago now I had a shift in this perception. My earthly father has never
been this dictator that I saw God as and I think I finally realized the truth
in the scripture when the Lord talks about how much more the father in heaven
wants good thing for His children, even than their earthly fathers who are
imperfect. I was at a cross roads moment where the box I had put God in and the
box I had actually put myself in were both blown off. What I thought I had
wanted, what was the most important piece to my puzzle was actually not what I
thought it would be, and in this realization I came to understand that God was
not what I thought He was either. This realization was tough for me and I was
hurting a bit over it but I accepted it and was trying my best to find God in
it and He showed up. I heard Him say to me, as real as if a physical person had
said it that “I know what you are feeling because I feel it also and I am with
you.” AHHHHH, this was unreal! This god who was bigger than everything, who I
knew was over me and over all was also really and truly a god who was small
enough to live in my heart and walk right beside me, not over me, but beside
me. Of course He is over all and over me but that is not what I think He thinks
is most important. If it were, He would not have sent His son to die in our
stead but rather would have just flexed His power and smashed us all into
submission and punishment. That is not what He wanted. He wants to be right
with us and be next to us and walk with us. So He redeemed us and sanctifies us
so that he can be with us. He sent His son to become “a man of sorrows and well
acquainted with grief.” The only reason to do this is so that He could say to
me in that moment “I know what you are feeling because I fell it also and I am
WITH you.”
So this god
is big enough to rule all and should be feared as the Muslims believe. But what
we should fear is hurting Him by refusing what He wants for us and we should
fear our arrogant nature assuming who He is and what He wants. If we serve Him
with an open mind and open heart He will give us everything. I got to walk
through the city of Ephesus
and read the book of Ephesians out loud to tourists in the great theater, the
same one that in Acts 19, Paul’s traveling companions, Gaius and Aristarchus
were dragged to and Alexander, a Jew, made a defense for them to the Ephesians
for preaching the Gospel. I’m traveling the world to study its people and
simply be Christ to them (wow I’m not worthy of that). This is a dream I am
living. No way did I ever think it possible that in a few short years of
walking with Christ, I would have already traveled to nine countries with seven
more on the immediate horizon. He is a god small enough to know my hearts
desires and a god big enough to make them happen. To do anything less than walk
with Him and seek mine and His heart’s desires would be a living death. Where
else could I go? Only He has the words of life. All I can do is serve Him.
