Then I felt like He was challenging me. Why was I not equally fascinated with Him. If God is beyond my comprehension and He has all power and authority, all wisdom and truth are found in Him, how can I not spend every waking moment pondering His greatness? How can I not be consumed with thoughts of Him? It took me a while to ponder this. These are great questions. How can I spend so much time looking at things that don't matter a bit to my life at the expense of the one thing that is of ultimate importance? To be clear, I do try to give time to God and His word every day. What He was challenging me on was much more than this.
It took me a while to think and pray about this. I did not have a quick answer but when the answer hit me, it hit hard. I have settled for easy answers about God and His nature because then I can play the expert. If I limit my thoughts of God to a manageable size and timeframe, then I can be confident of the things I know. I like certainty and by placing limits, I can be certain that I am right. I can even be certain that those who disagree with me are wrong. I can pull out verses to agree with my position and dismiss those that you counter with as being out of context.
The challenge I felt was to give up certainty so I could step into something bigger, so I could step into the life of Jesus as Holy Spirit leads. Not quenching the Spirit has a lot to do with laying down all of our preconceptions so He can lead wherever He wants. He desires to challenge us in the areas we have put limitations on Him. He is tearing down the fortress I have built to defend Him so that He can teach me to allow Holy Spirit to defend Jesus, even when He is using my mouth to do it.
The problem is that I have to overcome my religious prejudices. Denominational thinking has corrupted my vision. I have learned to see God through a lens that is not His. I have rejected the things that fell outside the scope of my teaching. Doing this allowed me to master the subject matter. It also create a divide between me and other members of the body that had a different perspective. It hindered my ability to learn from them. God began to deal with this years ago when I started reading books from a lot of others that came from different backgrounds and learned from them. Today, He just blew my wrong mindset apart. He pointed out how much more there is to learn and understand. I am learning that the picture is bigger than I can see and sometimes, these others can add an important perspective that I have not seen before.
Man's thoughts about God will always fall short. Our doctrines will always be insufficient to fully explain who God is and what He does. There will always be more if we keep our hearts and minds open. God is calling us (me) to a life of fascination. He is so much more than I have allowed Him to be. He desires our fellowship with Him to be anchored in truth but that truth is more than we can fathom. We need to get out of the limits of our minds and allow ourselves the freedom to be led by the Spirit wherever He goes. We can trust that we have a Father that will protect us from falsehood. We have a Holy Spirit that is guiding us into all truth. Jesus is interceding for us. It is safe to explore with Him.
All of this does not mean that we can reject absolutes. God never changes. He is who He has always been. He does not mute part of His character to emphasize a different aspect of it. He is not balanced. He is infinite and eternal. He is fully who He is. His love and judgment are not in conflict. He does not have to set His justice aside to show mercy. He is God and all of Him is in harmony. He is not compartmentalized. He is just more than we can grasp. Our explanations of Him are something less than the truth.
I want to challenge you today to listen to a teacher that you disagree with. Don't listen to critique. Listen to be taught. Ask Holy Spirit to teach you something new about God that you have never grasped. Allow Him alone to set off warning bells of falsehood. At the same time, allow Him to reveal truth that you have not grasped before. Don't try and judge the message or the teacher but ask Him for discernment. Let Him speak truth and reveal Himself as more. When we do this, we might just be surprised to learn that not only is God bigger than we have allowed but that a lot of people we disagree with know things that we don't. They have insight we don't.
Fascination with God begins with our recognition that we don't know everything about Him. It then recognizes the value of the insight and discernment of other parts of the body and concludes with humility. We can begin to explore the greatness and the bigness of God in new way. This exploration will draw us deeper into fascination with Him. The cycle will grow as we realize how little we actually grasp of God. Getting to know Him is an eternal project so we can't possibly be content with what we can learn of Him in our 80 years.
In Rev 4 we see the response of the elders and the angels around the throne of God. They, for all eternity live in this fascination. It is enough for them to bow in worship and proclaim His greatness for all eternity. We give Him 20, 30 or even 60 minutes a day and think we know Him. We know in part. We prophecy in part. Now we see in a mirror dimly. Then we will fully know just as we have been fully known. Let's give ourselves fully to fascination with what we cannot fully grasp and humble ourselves to admit we only know the few things we know.
For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. [1Co 13:9-12 ESV]
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