Last weekend I went on my annual, “Wander in the Wilderness with God”. My family graciously allows me three days in the “wilderness” to be in quiet and solitude with God to simply hang out. Inevitably, God gives me such a downpour of love I can hardly contain it (See Teacup in the Monsoon from last August). This time was no different. I wanted to share one of the lines of thought that came to me in the wilderness. This is part one of a several part series.
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I want you to be challenged and challenged often. You should be often confused, perplexed, and sometimes annoyed by God as you try to navigate through this life as a Christ-follower. Thoughts of Him and His way should wake you up some nights as you grapple with surrendering your own will to Him. You should read stuff which completely up-ends your common belief system. You should doubt often, search for answers, and not find them.
If you aren’t wrestling with God to some extent you aren’t following Him. If you are completely challenged and caught off-guard by Him, then you aren’t obeying Him. If you aren’t absolutely ruined for the confines of this world and longing for more of Him, then you aren’t living the abundant life He promises.
God isn’t a pleasant conversation over a nice cup of tea in a casual coffee house – although He can be. His presence fills a mountain, shakes the very earth, and will disintegrate your flesh if you come to close.
God isn’t a laser light filled sanctuary with really cool music with a smoking horn section – although He can be if He chooses. He is a still small voice which causes you crumple to your knees exclaiming, “What a wretched, wretched sinner I am! I am unworthy to tie your sandals.”
God isn’t a feel-good movie which leaves you loving the world. God is a man, born in a barn, working his fingers to the bone, ridiculed, cursed, tested, rejected, betrayed, abandoned, tortured, and killed for the very people who nailed Him to a tree.
God isn’t a nice, neat activity you can check off your to-do list. He is every “thing”. He is over all, in all, and through all. He is.
God is bigger than you think He is. He cannot be contained. He speaks to everyone a little differently; through a bush, in a tabernacle, through a cloud of smoke hovering at the top of a mountain, in a rainstorm, in a dream, as a man sitting down to eat supper with you and your wife, in an earthquake, in a still small whisper, through a mistake, through another person’s mouth, through their trials, in a story you read about people you’ve never met, through a movie or book, through angels, through a booming voice and a descending dove, through a man who calls to you and says, “follow me”, or when He says, “Father forgive them for they no not what they do”, in the laughter of a child, or through the rush of wind in the trees, to the call of a humpback whale, in the symphony of sounds in the rain forest, or the deafening silence above tree-line on a mountain top, He speaks.
He moves. He compels. He welcomes. He convicts. He challenges. He nudges. He reveals. He restores. He heals. He destroys. He resurrects. HE IS…