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Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Is your God too small?

Is our God too small?

“Christian minds have been conformed to the modern spirit: the spirit… that spawns great thoughts of man and leaves room for only small thoughts of God.” – J.I. Packer

We are so used to human thinking and that thinking limits us of our picture of God. And with that image of God in our hearts, even His abilities are limited based on our beliefs. The problem here, when we get drunk and engulfed by our limited human thinking, if this is so… then it’s gets hard to love the magnificence of God for who He is. The uncreated, self sustaining creator who has burning passion for us, and instead of this we run towards our human idols that doesn’t run near to comparison to who God is. We think that other human beings can complete us, this is what I think that’s being spawned on our minds when we think of other men to complete us, instead of running towards a God who can definitely make us whole. We have lost the fear of the Lord, we are so full of ourselves that we even forget to tremble when the Lord is upon us. We get blind and deaf in the spirit. We couldn’t discern His presence and with that said, I’m afraid that because of that, we won’t feel the forgiveness of God. Everything else that we know about God is downsized, this is why we don’t experience God for who He truly is.

I believe from there, from a small view of God everything will go haywire in terms of our spiritual hunger. How will we hunger for who God is when you see him in a fun size, its as if we can’t take the Bible seriously anymore because like what Mike Bickle says in his book (Passion For Jesus), “He is only a little more than an elected official-not to be taken seriously.” It’s like being an adult being lectured by a young man… somehow pride would really take a stand here, we can’t react as to what a book says about our situations and decisions. I believe this is the place where passivity and compromise comes from.

Like who I was before, I was a wee bit skeptical on the idea of having a God. Basically all I know about Him was through the school system and the usual Sunday services where I was forcefully brought each week. Simple formula, no knowledge, no experience/encounters = no interest. And only one thing can turn this equation upside down… an experience/encounter would lead to interest and instantly a hunger for the knowledge of God would be birthed within us.

“Compromise and passivity will be solved as the Lord allows us to gaze upon Him with deeper insight into His personal beauty and glory.” –Mike Bickle, Passion For Jesus

The elements of a miserable Christian life is when we can feel our hearts crying out for God, and yet we still submit to the pleasures of our flesh, we feed the struggle that we usually complain about instead of going all out running towards God or going all out running away from God. Either way I believe that’s how we make our lives a little easier. A choice will really have to be made, its either we run towards Him or run away from Him, there’s no middle line.

But in reality, there shouldn’t be a choice, why do we choose to run away from God? Again, it is because of our limited thinking that’s limiting God of what He can do and what He can give us. With a small knowledge of God we tend to create a “what we think” a greater god, than God. This is where we fashion our own golden bulls. Don’t get me wrong, I fashioned one myself before. I believe that the golden bull is a manifestation of our cry for satisfaction. We want to get satisfied, we want to fill the void that only God can fill up, so we dive into creating something that we think that will get us to the end of the line. And this compromise, again, only results if we’re bored and lacking a personal and deep relationship with God where we can experience and encounter what He can do, and what His promises (there’s a lot in the Bible) are.

If you’re living in compromise, and is struggling to get out of it… there’s only one way to climb away from that pit, we need to delete whatever images we have of God before and start from scratch. The deeper we dwell into seeking His full attributes, the more mind blowing His revelations is of Him and us. And there’s no end to these things, as we reach a depth the deeper He’ll bring us to reveal more of His majesty.

Now ask yourself… is your God too small?