Don't Put God In Your Box Of Convenience!

"... 'I live in a high and holy place, and with the oppressed and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and revive the heart of the oppressed'" (Is. 57:14, HCSB). 
".., 'Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it' ... 'This is the gate of heaven'" (Gen. 28:16, HCSB).   

We all tend to limit God naturally because we are limited in our perspective of reality.  But God cannot fit into our boxes or definitions. He is beyond analysis and description!  To define God to your specs is to make Him one-dimensional and that cannot be, for He is infinite and that means we cannot fathom His limits.  No adequate definition of God has ever been penned, we cannot define Him nor describe Him fully or exhaustively, but we can know Him truly!  The first Greek ancient philosopher, Thales, the father of Western philosophy, was asked to describe God and he couldn't.   The Bible doesn't attempt to describe God either, but to make Him known.

The ancients could only conclude that God must be eternal, infinite, and immutable as well as immaterial to be God at all!  The Latins said that the finite cannot contain or fathom the infinite! God doesn't measure up to your personal specs in your calculus!  But the infinite can penetrate the finite and that's what happened, so we can know Him; this is why the Bible never attempts to fully describe God, but only to make Him known and knowable.  '

There are many ways we put God in boxes:  when we just see God as our Savior, or our Lord, simply as our Father without being our Provider,  or without Him being our Judge or Maker to be accountable to.  People who know little doctrine may see Him as the "man upstairs" or "the Great Spirit in the sky" or even the "Sentimental Grandfather, or Father Time."  Seeing Him as our Santa Claus or Genie is also going down the wrong road, and many prayer warriors make this mistake in their prayers (the purpose of prayer is prayer and getting God's will done, not in making petitions like giving God a wish list--it changes us, not God.

God is the Creator of the time-space continuum, which means He is outside His creation and has all-mighty power over it as the Creator, not an enslaved creature like us as part of creation! With Him, time is not of the essence and is no factor.   God's immensity refers to the fact that He cannot be limited by space--He is fully everywhere all the time, which is interpreted as necessitating that He is just as much in one part of the cosmos as another and not any less so--as Christians, we believe in the God who is there and also the God who is in us!  What a wonderful truth:  as big as God is, He can come to live in our hearts so that we can experience His eternal, divine, unconditional love!

God is also eternal and outside the time limits that we find ourselves limited and defined by.  He doesn't think in terms of time like we do because it's always "now" with God--eternity past and eternity future are the same--but He is able to act and function in time for our benefit so that we can know Him. Jesus made the leap into the time-space continuum with His incarnation and became limited with our constraints in His humiliation and kenosis or the emptying of the independent usage of His Deity. Yes, God is "not far from any one of us" (per Acts 17:27) and He also dwells in the heavens and "inhabits eternity" (cf. Isaiah 57:15)!  He is there, and He is not silent, according to Dr. Francis A. Schaeffer!  

We must never ask ourselves or others, "Where's God?" but "Where isn't God?"  And more appropriately:  "Where's the church?" We must always tell ourselves that God did something about evil--He made us!  It was wisely said, "What's wrong with the world?  I am.  Sincerely yours, G. K. Chesterton."  God chooses to live through us as He inhabits our hearts: His heart to love others through, His voice to spread the good news; His ears to listen to those in need; His hands to lend a helping hand to the needy and destitute--anyone in our orbit who needs our aid is our neighbor and we are to be Good Samaritans.  "The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing," it has been wisely said by Edmund Burke.

We must attribute three seminal traits to God for our salvation though: His love that cared about our plight and condition; His holiness that necessitated Him to accomplish it; and His justice that had to be satisfied in Christ on our behalf--all three must act in accord and unison for our redemption. 

God is big!  In fact, so big He holds the universe in His hands as the hymn goes:  "He's got the whole world in His hands..."  He is able to roll up the heavens like a curtain and to create a new heaven and earth at will!  God is so big, in fact, that everything, by contrast, is small and trivial; all our petitions and requests are as nothing to His infinity and magnitude.  Caveat:  It's not how big our faith is but how big our God is--faith must be aimed high!  Let's not just attempt great things for God, but expect them!  (cf. Willliam Carey's sermon).

Luther accused Erasmus of having thoughts of God that are too human!   We tend to see things from man's perspective:  How big is your church? Or, how big is your ministry?  God sees potential even in the small matters!  We never worry that our concerns are too trivial when we realize how big God is because it's all the same to Him!   Nothing too big for His omnipotence; nothing too trivial for His love to escape His concern for us.   Soli Deo Gloria!

God's Answer To Superstition

In antiquity, the Jews held physicians in low esteem as a rule, despite the Hippocratic oath because they resorted to the superstitious nature of man.  Superstition is a form of unbelief and is an attempt to attribute the work of God to something mechanical like fate or happenstance.  God is the God of Providence, fully in control of the situation at hand bringing all to His glory (cf. Rom. 11:36; Eph. 1:11).

Usually, when people were desperate they went to the physicians for some cure, if they could afford it, and it was expensive because sometimes they used herbs and spices that were rare to come by. Lepers were considered ceremonially unclean according to Rabbinic Law, but Jesus was willing to become Mr. Unclean personified for our sake to identify with our disease of sin and heal us, as well as forgive us--giving us power over it, so we aren't its slave anymore.

Jesus didn't want to be primarily known as just a divine healer or worker of miracles, but as the Savior, the Christ! Myrrh, for instance, was like the snake oil of antiquity, or the cure-all and panacea, pedaled for almost any ailment and this is one superstition that the charlatans were known for--but Jesus was for real and worthy of our faith, for He bore our illness and with His stripes, we are healed (cf. Is. 53).   

There are Christians today who don't pray, except as last resort, and even pagans will pray in superstition or for "good luck."  But luck, chance, and fortune have no place in the Christian faith.  God is in control of all, even the throw of the die (cf. Prov. 16:33).  What's so hypocritical, is that even when unbelievers pray and their prayers are answered, they find some reason to chalk it up to luck or chance and not give God the glory for answering the prayer.  We blame God for all tragedies and give ourselves all the credit for our fortune (cf. Prov. 19:3).

The woman with the hemorrhage was also "unclean" and when she "touched" Jesus, He became ceremonially unclean, but Jesus wasn't concerned with Himself, but with her frame of mind, faith and salvation and in Mark 5:21ff had become broke because of the expense of paying the physicians to heal her, but no avail.  As a last resort, she must have heard of Jesus' healing powers and sought Him out and "touched" Him in faith thinking that would heal her.  Jesus made it clear to her after the fact that it wasn't superstition that healed her, but her faith in Him.  He is the healer.

If superstition was the answer, anyone who touched Jesus would be healed, even without faith.  It is said that athletes are the most superstitious of people and even their fans can be, thinking that wearing team logos brings their favorite team good fortune or "luck." They don't want to "jinx" their team--Go, Twins! Knock on wood (saying this tongue-in-cheek)!  To have the Christian worldview, we ought to say that we are blessed and not lucky!

But Ecclesiastes says that luck and chance happen to all, it's part of our reality, how we interpret things, not how God sees them.  We ought to get over the notion that God deliberately takes sides in a game though or that winning is everything, and it's not a matter of skill and sportsmanship--blessings are showered on all, for God is good to everyone! (cf. Psalm 145:9).

This aforementioned woman's healing shows us that we all need to confess our faith to make it confirmed and not to be ashamed of our Lord and that He is part of us and lives in us. We must not keep our faith or healing privatized!   She reached out in faith the best she knew and this is all God asks:  take that leap of faith toward Jesus as personal Lord and Savior, don't just be glad He heals others--make the healing yours!  We are all unclean before salvation and need to come to Jesus for our healing and reinstatement.

The woman found out that she didn't "interrupt" Jesus but He mattered to her (we all do!)--He is never too busy for us (a good lesson on priorities for us all!).  There are no distractions to Jesus' agenda and in God's economy, we all matter the same, since God doesn't show favoritism or partiality--He's no respecter of persons (cf. Rom. 2:11; Acts 10:34).  Jesus always has time for us and is never in a hurry (neither late nor early but always on His timetable) so much that He would feel an interruption like the disciples thought. They were the ones who needed their priorities altered, realigned, and readjusted to God's timetable and agenda: Guess who needs an attitude check!

We all need to come to Jesus in faith to be made clean and healed of our sin, realizing we matter to God as individuals and expect a miracle in faith, in effect making contact with Jesus and touching Him or connecting to Him.  Jesus is never too busy!  He is ready to give us His undivided attention!  People are too ready to superstitiously attribute their salvation to"walking the aisle" or "raising their hand" or "coming to the altar," but we must realize that it's faith in Christ saves, not faith in faith, faith doesn't save, Christ saves!

In conclusion, when you have a strong faith you're less likely to "knock on wood" or worry about "black cats," or anything superstitious like the "full moon" or "Friday the thirteenth!"   Salvation is a form of freedom from the tyranny of ourselves to have our full faith in God.      Soli Deo Gloria!