When you emphasize just one attribute of God or try to define Him to fit your agenda or project, you are limiting God or putting Him in a box. Martin Luther told Erasmus of Rotterdam that his "thoughts of God were too human." In J. B. Phillips' book, Your God Is Too Small, the author expounds upon this theme. We will never fully apprehend God nor understand Him enough to peg Him, say we can second-guess Him, or have Him all figured out--He is beyond our analysis and cannot be defined by any human power of reason--God cannot be rationalized either. Throughout all eternity we will ever be learning more of Him and only be scratching the surface. Fathom this: God is perfect!
Common ways people limit God are saying things like God cannot forgive someone taking their life; God cannot meet my needs; my problems are too big or too little; God doesn't care. God is so big that everything is small to Him and He cares enough to meet every need. We are wrong to call God just a mean Judge, kind Father, celestial killjoy, sentimental Grandpa, or Great Spirit. Some people have a wholly inadequate concept of God and this in itself is limiting God--we are to be aware of all His attributes and not just our favorite one (some people even think of the Trinity as comprising the Father, who is the stern one, the Son, who is the nice one, and the Holy Spirit, who is the mysterious one).
A common error is to make God in our image (Voltaire said that man created God in his image) and like presumptuously thinking He is a member of our political party or even a citizen of our country. Some even think Jesus would drive a Harley! This is all limiting God and trying to make a definition to fit our philosophy or way of life. God is no respecter of persons or even teams, shows no partiality, and won't even take sides on sports events--don't believe that praying for victory is going to help; both sides are doing it and the prayers cancel out! May I say, may the best team win?
The reason we cannot define God and understand Him is made clear by an old Greek maxim: "The finite cannot grasp the infinite." You cannot fit something that's infinite into a limited space. We cannot imagine an infinite amount of potatoes, for instance, but we can imagine a God who is infinitely holy, wise, powerful, and righteous. Just like love just is and beauty just is, and beauty remains after the rose fades, and love needs an expression like faith to make it known, but God is love and beauty proves there must be someone to enjoy it, namely God its Creator. We can be grateful that God's love for us in infinite and cannot be measured and that eternity is longer than we can imagine, though God has set eternity into our hearts (cf. Eccl. 3:11).
You must ask yourself, "How big is your God?" And stop wondering if He can meet your needs because He is up to the challenge. The bigger God you have the more awe and fear of God you have. It energizes and expands the intellect, boggles your understanding, it humbles the minds and spirit, and quite simply put, "It blows you away," to meditate on who God is. Einstein thought of God as a "pure mathematical mind" in his early days, and this shows that even great minds cannot fathom God, but need to be enlightened by the Holy Spirit to come to faith in the true God as He is. Someday we will behold the beatific vision and be satisfied with seeing Him as He is and when we see Christ we shall become like Him. The highest calling of man and deepest meditation and contemplation is to dwell on who God is and His nature--we should never grow weary of this but always be up to the challenge and rise to the occasion.
For instance, God is perfect: That means He cannot change for the worse, nor improve for the better. He just is and describes Himself as I Am without a predicate, which means He is our everything and meets our every need and is everything He desires to be. Our existence depends on Him, but He is self-existent and needs no one or nothing to exist or to live and owes no one or no thing. Why do we want to know God as He is? To know Him is to love Him and gives us a great desire to be like Him.
People who know their God, says Daniel 11:32, shall be strong and do great exploits. God's pet peeve is that people don't know Him in Hosea 4:1 and Jesus said in His intercessory prayer of John 17 that knowing God and Jesus is having eternal life. The whole point of believing in God is to know Him. What is God like then? All He has to tell us is expressed in the icon of God--Jesus Himself! God is like Jesus! Soli Deo Gloria!
Common ways people limit God are saying things like God cannot forgive someone taking their life; God cannot meet my needs; my problems are too big or too little; God doesn't care. God is so big that everything is small to Him and He cares enough to meet every need. We are wrong to call God just a mean Judge, kind Father, celestial killjoy, sentimental Grandpa, or Great Spirit. Some people have a wholly inadequate concept of God and this in itself is limiting God--we are to be aware of all His attributes and not just our favorite one (some people even think of the Trinity as comprising the Father, who is the stern one, the Son, who is the nice one, and the Holy Spirit, who is the mysterious one).
A common error is to make God in our image (Voltaire said that man created God in his image) and like presumptuously thinking He is a member of our political party or even a citizen of our country. Some even think Jesus would drive a Harley! This is all limiting God and trying to make a definition to fit our philosophy or way of life. God is no respecter of persons or even teams, shows no partiality, and won't even take sides on sports events--don't believe that praying for victory is going to help; both sides are doing it and the prayers cancel out! May I say, may the best team win?
The reason we cannot define God and understand Him is made clear by an old Greek maxim: "The finite cannot grasp the infinite." You cannot fit something that's infinite into a limited space. We cannot imagine an infinite amount of potatoes, for instance, but we can imagine a God who is infinitely holy, wise, powerful, and righteous. Just like love just is and beauty just is, and beauty remains after the rose fades, and love needs an expression like faith to make it known, but God is love and beauty proves there must be someone to enjoy it, namely God its Creator. We can be grateful that God's love for us in infinite and cannot be measured and that eternity is longer than we can imagine, though God has set eternity into our hearts (cf. Eccl. 3:11).
You must ask yourself, "How big is your God?" And stop wondering if He can meet your needs because He is up to the challenge. The bigger God you have the more awe and fear of God you have. It energizes and expands the intellect, boggles your understanding, it humbles the minds and spirit, and quite simply put, "It blows you away," to meditate on who God is. Einstein thought of God as a "pure mathematical mind" in his early days, and this shows that even great minds cannot fathom God, but need to be enlightened by the Holy Spirit to come to faith in the true God as He is. Someday we will behold the beatific vision and be satisfied with seeing Him as He is and when we see Christ we shall become like Him. The highest calling of man and deepest meditation and contemplation is to dwell on who God is and His nature--we should never grow weary of this but always be up to the challenge and rise to the occasion.
For instance, God is perfect: That means He cannot change for the worse, nor improve for the better. He just is and describes Himself as I Am without a predicate, which means He is our everything and meets our every need and is everything He desires to be. Our existence depends on Him, but He is self-existent and needs no one or nothing to exist or to live and owes no one or no thing. Why do we want to know God as He is? To know Him is to love Him and gives us a great desire to be like Him.
People who know their God, says Daniel 11:32, shall be strong and do great exploits. God's pet peeve is that people don't know Him in Hosea 4:1 and Jesus said in His intercessory prayer of John 17 that knowing God and Jesus is having eternal life. The whole point of believing in God is to know Him. What is God like then? All He has to tell us is expressed in the icon of God--Jesus Himself! God is like Jesus! Soli Deo Gloria!
No comments:
Post a Comment