Who He Is

The biggest problem we have in the world today is how we view and approach God. Let that sink in for a minute.

Think of the way people refer to God. The Big Guy. The Man upstairs. Is such a casual response really appropriate? Think of the reasons people often seek God. "God, help me with ...", "God, heal me of ...", "God, give me ...", it turns God into an ATM, a medicine cabinet, or Santa. We casually approach Him with our needs, hoping He will solve all of our problems, but we never offer Him the reverence and honor that His very nature demands. God exists to serve us, take care of us, and handle all of our problems. It makes us central and God secondary.

I'm amazed at the arrogance, and I'm guilty of it in my own life. So often my prayers dive right into what I need God to do for me, how I need His help. Over the past few months I have spent a lot of time pouring out my needs and requests to God, and every time I'm reminded of how Jesus instructed us to pray. "Pray, then, in this way: 'Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.'" (Matthew 6.9-10) Prayer is to begin with God being acknowledged and honored for who He is. Prayer is to begin with a focus on God's desire and God's plan.

Galatians 4.9a says, "But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God" and that is why prayer is to begin as it does. It is not a big deal that I know God. He spoke the universe into existence. He created light itself from the words of His mouth. He invented the scent of a rose, the colors of the rainbow, the sound of water falling over rocks. God formed man out of the dust and breathed into Him the breath of life. When man disobeyed and sinned, He immediately went to work at restoring him to righteousness. He came to earth as a man, lived a perfect life, modeling how He intended for life to be lived, and then died in our place to pay for sin. He rose from the dead and sent us His Holy Spirit so that we could be empowered to live as He showed us. It is not a big deal that we know who this God is, we should, but the fact that this God knows us, loves us, and died so that we could have a relationship with Him is a big deal. It is not a big deal that we know Him, but that fact that He knows us, that is huge.

This year I have felt led to read My Utmost for His Highest. I read it years ago in college, and its been moved from shelf to shelf over the past ten years, but with my current life situation and the focus that God is trying to give me, I have felt the need to work through it again this year. On January 1, Oswald Chambers said,

"But before we choose to follow God's will, a crisis must develop in our lives. This happens because we tend to be unresponsive to God's gentler nudges. He brings us to the place where He asks us to be our utmost for Him and we begin to debate. He then providentially produces a crisis where we have to decide - for or against. That moment becomes a great crossroads in our lives. If a crisis has come to you on any front, surrender your will to Jesus absolutely and irrevocably."

This is where I find myself right now, dealing with crisis. In hindsight, I've seen how God has been making gentle nudges for years. The last few times I've read Wild at Heart and The Way of the Wild Heart I felt the need to explore the subject more, and begin the process of masculine initiation. I had no idea how, and felt like I was very alone in the process. Because of the feelings I shared yesterday it was difficult to ask for help, and so I made the mistake of trying to figure it out on my own, and ended up settling for a theoretical head knowledge of masculinity.

I don't know how many times my wife suggested that we do marriage counseling together, but again, the same feelings that wouldn't allow me to seek the guidance of men prevented me from seeing the issues in my marriage that I couldn't fix. My wife and I became more and more distant because I didn't want to take the gift of God's nudging. And so this past September the crisis occurred. God's nudging had done all that it could, but I had not responded to any of it.

Since then I have been on a journey, one that in all honesty could have happened much differently had my approach to God not been so casual, and arrogant. It has been an experience of learning who He is and who I am. On January 2, Chambers wrote, "God does not tell you what He is going to do - He reveals to you who He is." This is where we need to live.

God does not exist to solve our problems, we exist to know Him. God created us to have fellowship with Him and worship Him. He did not create us because He was bored and needed something to do, and so He made a bunch of needy humans to occupy His time. We were created to know God so that we could glorify Him. And the most amazing thing is that God desires for us to know Him. He is so far above us, and yet He does not look at us with arrogant disdain. He looks on us with unconditional love, and invites us to know Him.

It is not a big deal that we know God, but it is huge that God knows us, and invites us to know Him intimately. My hope is to come to know God more, and to exist solely to know Him and glorify Him.

"Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another."

To God alone be the Glory!

Strength and Honor