I THIRST

If you come to Scripture with a wrong view of the character of God, you will keep trying to make God fit into your pattern for what he must be like….and when you do this, the Jesus in Scripture and the Father also, will continually NOT FIT your model. They will be harsh with people and you may not understand why.  God may demonstrate righteous rage and drown everyone on the planet and you kind of have to just step around that and not dig in too deeply, because when you do you may not like what you find.  Jesus may answer someone with what seems like a lack of compassion and you don’t understand it.  The biggest thing that is usually done is to close one’s eyes and create their OWN God...a God that pleases and acts predictably and is satisfied by oceans of self-effort.

 

Or, you will be perplexed, you may decide to dig deeper and find out WHY the disparity between your understanding and the God of Scripture exists and that is the best, most helpful thing you can do. You will read Scripture with hunger and you will cry out to God for understanding.  This response will lead you to Life.  Or you can keep squeezing God into your mold and when he breaks free and makes a mess of your mold and your plans and your opinion of yourself, you can close your eyes and keep trying to squeeze and press him in—or you will walk away from this difficult God and wash your hands all together.

When unbelieving people question you about a God of war and the slaughter of his enemies…When they bring up the issue of hell and ask how a God of Love could be involved in anything like that….What do you say?  I confess to you that these are new questions for me.  Of course I have heard them, but I did not really answer them adequately…either to my questioning friends or to myself. I was the believer who is determined to believe in a God of love and who just basically ignored all of the examples of a God-who-is-hard-to-figure-out.

Yesterday I saw a video of Francis Chan and he was bringing up issues like these…and all my squirming and side-stepping came front and center and I decided I would take his (Chan’s) challenge to see for myself what the Bible has to say.  To ask God to explain to me and to accept by faith whatever it is that I find.  I am determined that I will KNOW GOD…as He really is…not just how I want Him to be.  I have no doubt that He exists…or that He really does love me.  I have seen too many examples of Him at work to have any doubt of that.  This is IMPORTANT stuff…because if I do not know and understand (as much as is possible) what God is really like, then I will not know or understand how I might please Him. OR what I must do to receive the life and the gifts that I know He has for me. 

 

I just read a devotional by John Piper and he said that God is a roaring mountain stream which is self-supplied and the God we try to make for ourselves is a trough that we must constantly labor to keep filled.  The Pharisees in Scripture and way too many people these days, try to labor to keep their supply of God filled.  All that He is to them is a consequence of their own effort…and this enraged Jesus.  Piper said at the end of the devotion: the only thing that we can offer God is our thirst.  

 Jesus said in the Beatitudes, “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for Righteousness, for they shall be filled.”   I believe that the same can be said about those  who hunger and thirst to know God…as He really is.  Lord, fill me with the knowledge of You as You really are.  Throw all of my suppositions and my mamby-pamby efforts to please you right out of the window.  Show me what it is you want from me and then supply the resources to give it to You.  I want to know you.  I THIRST to know you.  Give me the Living Water so that it removes my thirst for anything other than You.