GOD IS ALL THERE IS
On my commute this morning (2 1/2 hours so plenty of time to think) I was reflecting on this coming Sunday’s lesson for class. It is hard to get across the lesson that everything in the Christian life, including the Christian disciplines, starts with and ends with God. Then, Michael W. Smith’s rendition of “Breathe” (providentially?) came on the radio and it all came together for me.
God is all there is – he is the environment in which we “live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). We have no life, purpose or use apart from him. Indeed, he is the air we breathe, the bread we eat, the life we live. Until we find ourselves desperate for him as for our next breath, hungry for him as for our next meal and thirsty for him as for our next drink we will never discover the intimacy with God our heart hungers for. He is our everything.
Conversely, we are his nothings. That is, we can do nothing to promote or encourage his intimacy with us. The Christian disciplines will not bring God to us as in creating the proper environment for him. The proper environment for intimacy with God is a recognition of our profound nothingness apart from God and a recognition of our desperate need for him. Yes, we are his nothings – but, in our nothingness, inexplicably, he loves us with his all. Indeed, in our nothingness, we are his everything.
Everything begins and ends in and with God. That includes our spiritual life. We substitute doing with being, believing for faith, reading for meditating, talking for listening, etc. We need to live in God – breathing him, consuming him – being him. He already lives in us, We need to live in (by means of) him. That is what the disciplines are all about: to bring us to the point where we live in and by means of God’s enlivening Spirit.
As this week’s lesson points out, the disciplines puts us on the path to where God can bring about his recreative work in us making us a new creature: living because of him, breathing him in, consuming him until we are like him, like Christ.
I have this vision of heaven: I am walking down a street of gold and God calls to me, “Jesus?” I turn around and God says, “Oh, you looked just like Jesus!” Perhaps, God wouldn’t make such a mistake, but, maybe, an angel would. The point is that the end of God’s work in me and the endpoint of my existence in God is a spiritual maturity that matches the spiritual maturity of Christ. That will finally happen when we are taken home to heaven. What a day that will be. I just need to “breathe” until then.
Here is the link to “Breathe” by Michael W. Smith
http://www.youtube.com/embed/Oad8ov10AjY
3 Responses to “GOD IS ALL THERE IS”
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Awesome! We are here to glorify our Father.
Janice - March 24, 2011 at 6:19 am
Nice. I like the thought of us being mistaken for Jesus. We talked about a similar idea during prayer breakfast this morning, about how we can do nothing to earn more or less of God’s love. I find it easier to think about this when I think about how I love my own children. As trying as they are, I still love them with all of my heart and there is nothing they can do to change that. It seems unimaginable to me that God has the same sort of “agape” love for a wretch like me. Good stuff.
Lora Winchester - March 26, 2011 at 9:25 pm
Richard …. loved the GOD IS ALL THERE IS I need to be reminded how big He is and how small I am. Thank you
Kevin Daniels - March 27, 2011 at 6:43 pm