What makes the heart great? Sharing heart-to-heart experiences. How much more with God?
The peek – a – boo problem
When is the last time you played peek – a – boo? Can I guess? Was it yesterday? When God was looking for you, could you be found, or were you too busy forgetting enjoying your hiding spot?
Has it been so long that you are afraid you could finally decide to pop out and He would be no where to be found? Are you afraid that He has forgotten your name because you no longer here it being called by the voice you’ll recognize? Is it easier to believe that He has forgotten you and run off to do something more interesting because you can’t admit that you forgot, even for a moment about Him, being so busy running away?
Why do we play peek – a – boo anyway? It’s a game that has its nitch in toddler tantrums and frightened faces of hurt children. Isn’t it time that we lay down this way of relating to God and let Him show us how an adult act with Him?
I think it would be worth it. Even if we felt discomfort so strongly we got knots in our stomachs and were so self-conscious that our hands shook to shield our faces from the surprises we might find in the unexplored aspects of relationship with God.
But, what if we felt all that, acknowledged it, but went ahead to meet God on a mysterious and higher plane anyway? What would we find? Perhaps some watching us go after Him would hear our scream when the foliage around the bend eclipsed us from their view. But, what a pity to them that not having gone with us, they could not here the sigh that followed and the peace that settled on our soul.
There is too much ahead to miss. Too many unseen wonders to pretend we haven’t heard that they exist. Too strong a desire within us to know and explore more for us to safely turn His offer down.
The Work He Wants to Do
We cannot force God to do what we want Him to do in our lives, but we do have more power than we think. We can choose to receive from God whatever He wants to do for us in whatever form He chooses.
This is a gift that I think we too often over-look. We should be asking ourselves deeper questions: What could we be and do and have if we let God take first place in our lives? What could it be like to forfeit our earth-bound agendas in favor of abiding by His heaven-releasing promises?
I think it would mean that we were choosing to know God for the first time — not because we knew just how our faith was fully insured, but because we wanted to put no conditions on God so that we could experience for ourselves who He truly is.
You Want More?
This is why I, Paul, am in jail for Christ, having taken up for you outsiders, so-called. I take it that you are familiar with the part I was given in God’s plan for including everybody. I got the inside story on this from God himself, as I just wrote to you in brief.
As you read over what I have written to you, you’ll be able to see for yourself into the mystery of Christ. None of our ancestors understood this. Only in our time has it been made clear by God’s Spirit to his holy apostles and prophets of this new order. The mystery is that people who never heard of God and those who have heard of him all their lives (what I’ve been calling outsiders and insiders) stand on the same ground before God. They get the same offer, same help, same promises in Christ Jesus. The Message is welcoming and accessible to everyone, across the board.
This is my life work: helping people understand and respond to this Message. It came as a sheer gift to me, a real surprise, God handling all the details. When it came to presenting the Message to people who had no background in God’s way, I was the least qualified of any of the available Christians. God saw to it that I was equipped, but you can be sure that it had nothing to do with my natural abilities.
And so here I am, preaching and writing about things that are way over my head, the inexhaustible riches and generosity of Christ. My task is to bring out into the open and make plain what God, who created all this in the first place, has been doing in secret and behind the scenes all along. Through followers of Jesus like yourselves gathered in churches, this extraordinary plan of God’s is becoming known and talked about even among the angels!
All this is proceeding along lines planned all along by God and then executed in Christ Jesus. When we trust in him we’re free to say whatever needs to be said, bold to go wherever we need to go. So don’t let my present trouble on your behalf get you down. Be proud!
My response is to get on my knees before the Father, this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth. I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit — not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength — that Christ will live in you as you open the door and let him in. And I ask him that with both feet firmly planted in love, you’ll be able to take in with all the followers of Jesus, the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full tin the fullness of God.
God can do anything, you know — far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.
Glory to God in the church! Glory to God in the Messiah, in Jesus! Glory down all the generations! Glory through all millennia! Oh, yes!
Ephesians 3
