How Much Do You Think You Know About God?

I couldn’t resist sharing this thought above. I love it and it’s a great reminder every day that we live.  There is far more about God that we don’t know, than what we think we know. That’s especially true when we add in the conundrum of how much of God we think we know about him that isn’t even true. We just think it is.

It’s from a book I recommended a couple of months ago, called Paradox Lost.  The whole book is designed to help us settle into the reality that our Father in heaven could never be cataloged in a book and just about the time we think we’ve figure him out. It’s a book I know many of you will enjoy.

That’s why we will find more joy in following him as he reveals himself, rather than following concepts of him that often disappoint us.  I had a friend who often referred to God as Jehovah Tsdnikki. You’d have to be an old King James reader to fully appreciate that moniker. The way he shows up unexpectedly and the things he does to touch our lives defy our imaginations. That’s why trying to follow a God that meets your expectations will be horribly frustrating. I know, I did it for decades and spent a lot of time wallowing in the anger of disappointment. And there I missed so much of what he was still doing around me.

Realizing God is so much more than we can sort out at any stage in this life can set us at rest from trying to do so. Fortunately we have a God who wants to reveal himself to us in the smallest bits every day. I find greater joy walking in what he has revealed about himself than frustrating over what I don’t yet understand. When I pray, “Father I want to know you as you really are,” I find he answers that in the things I most need to see in the circumstances I’m facing. That often comes in conversations with others who are seeing things about him I haven’t discovered yet.

Figuring him out is an adventure we’ll never complete in this lifetime and our awareness of that can create a humility that doesn’t try to force our view on others. And we’ll not sort it out here. I’m hoping eternity will last long enough to maybe get to the end of him there, if getting to an end is even possible in eternity.

- Wayne Jacobsen