Reformed, Book Reading, Apple Loving, Beverage Snob, 23 Year-Old Husband, In Need of Grace.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Man is an enigma whose solution can be found only in God.
Herman Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith
How I Got Here…
So a few weeks back, we (a group of us at my church) started discussing how all of the seemingly insignificant events in our lives have really changed who we are and how we got to where we are. If we view God as sovereign over all things, then this really creates great implications in our lives. The small events aren’t really small and everything has significance if God is in control. His orchestrating hand is constantly involved in our lives. No matter how much control we think we have, God ultimately always has it all. He has brought us to where we are by his sovereign grace and pleasure.
This conversation caused me to think about my past and how I got to where I am. I didn’t really focus on my childhood, but mostly on the last 5 years and the drastic changes and events that have happened. None of them were by chance and none of them were insignificant. So I decided to map out what the last 5 years of my life and how I got to where I am. I put together this little “popplet” to give a visual demonstration of all the key events that happened and how I got to where I am. I went from one school to another, one city to a different state and back, one university to another, met my wife, learned about God and whole lot of other things. Check out this diagram to see just how crazy the past few years have been and how God has been orchestrating it all.
I encourage you to look back on the seemingly random events in your life and how God used them to bring you to the place you are at today.
If you have any questions about this diagram, my life or anything, feel free to ask on here or shoot me a message on twitter.
::UPDATE::
SO THE WEBSITE I DID MY DIAGRAM ON HAD ITS SERVERS EXPLODE…. THANKS. IT DOESN’T EXIST ANYMORE.
A Big View of God pt. 4: God and The Not So Ordinary
When was the last time you were truly amazed by something?
When you saw Inception? The last time you went to the beach? The first time you picked up an iPhone? (I’m slightly nerdy…)
Either way, these things grasp our attention because they are unique, mind-bending, fun and inescapably beautiful. We are drawn to wonder in the things that perplex us and bring us joy.
Now lets look at this a different way…. When was the last time you were amazed by the ordinary things in life? Eating, grass, breathing, going to work, hanging out with your best friend, etc…
Why have these things become so dull?
I believe that by having a big view of who God is we can actually view the mundane things in life as extraordinary and unique. In short, a big view of God impacts how you view the world around you and your day to day life.
Maybe if we had a big picture of God’s power to sustain everything, every morning when we awoke we would be amazed and thankful that we are still breathing and our hearts are still beating.
What if we viewed our jobs as a means of living out our abilities that God has given us, despite our actual enjoyment of the task at hand…. and just maybe what if our joy in our work came from knowing that we were actually gifted with that ability from a massively gracious God, despite if we actually enjoyed it?
What would our lives look like if we were constantly looking at the mundane things in life and viewing them as extraordinary in light of who God is and what He has done for us and around us?
What if the source of joy in our lives was not found in our own personal desires?
Scripture to meditate on…
A Big View of God Pt. 3: God and Our Identity
As humans, we constantly look for approval and hope in other people. It’s part of our humanity. As our hearts desire community and relationships we look for specific things from those whom we are in community with. But what happens when we have a big view of people and a small view of God? First, we can lose our true identity as God see us. Second, we put our hope in fallible people that will eventually let us down. Third, humans are finite, which ultimately sets us up for failure.
Here’s a quick example… Who was your childhood hero? Are they still your Hero? If not, why?
Presidents have affairs, movie stars have drug addictions, musicians commit suicide, and sadly Justin Timberlake is singing to 400 million other people, not just me. Our heros and idols (even our friends and family) let us down. We can’t allow them to determine our identity because if we do, our identity will ultimately be falsified. So we must invert our big view of people and transfer it into a big view of God. This is how we truly discover who we are and our place in this world. We need to see ourselves as God sees us and this can only be done by having a big view of who God is.
The first is to recognize that you are not a good person (p.s. neither am I).
“If we think we are usually good, then God becomes irrelevant.”
-Edward Welch, When People are Big and God is Small
Jonathan Edwards also had similar thoughts. In his resolutions he writes, “Resolved, to act…as if nobody had been so vile as I, and as if I had committed the same sins…as others; and to let the knowledge of their failings promote nothing but shame in myself, and prove only an occasion of my confessing my own sins to God.”
While Edwards might speak in lofty terms, he is speaking a great truth that really urges himself (and us) to 1) not think of ourselves as better than those around us and 2) to allow other peoples shortcomings to cause us to reflect on our own. Because if we view ourselves as good, we leave no room for God (quote above). We must constantly be finding our own faults for our own growth as well as a growth in a reliance that exists outside of ourselves.
Once we recognize that we aren’t good people, we can then look to God for our identity and our hope. In light of who he is, we can see that ultimately he is in control, not us; he sustains our lives, not us; he is the one who saves us, not us. By expanding our view of God and lessening our view of people, we can find our identity in a source that is infinite and true rather than a source that is fallible and finite.
How do you view yourself in light of what your view of God is? Post your thoughts!
Scripture to Meditate on:
A Big View of God Pt. 2: Why is it important?
Q: “What is the chief and highest end of man?”
A: “Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him for ever.”
You may be wondering to yourself what that actually means or why having a big view of God is even important. By the very definition of His nature, if God is to be God then he must be at the center of all things. He must be worshipped. Whether we like it or not, we are all worshippers. We may worship shoes, sex, money, cars, spouses, iPhones or even ourselves, but in the end we all worship something.
Now we must ask ourselves a couple of questions.
What do I worship and why do I worship it?
*Hint* think about where and what you spend your money on and what you spend the most time thinking about*
What is truly worthy of worship?
And while these are all good things that God has given us, can they truly be ULTIMATE things? Money gets spent, sex loses it’s excitement, shoes break, iPhones become outdated, and significant others are just as fallible as ourselves. In short, idols fail.
Despite our idolatry (giving other things the status that only belongs to God) and tendencies to forget who God is, He remains the only thing that is actually deserving of worship. How can worshipping and enjoying God be the chief purpose of our lives if our God is impotent and lackluster? We must have a HUGE view of God if He is truly worthy of worship. If we fail to have a big view of who God is, we can’t truly worship Him.
What about God makes Him worthy of worship in your mind? *post your thoughts*
Scriptures to meditate on:
The first post in this series can be found HERE.
God therefore bestows a gift of singular value, when, for the instruction of the Church, he employs not dumb teachers merely, but opens his own sacred mouth; when he not only proclaims that some God must be worshipped, but at the same time declares that He is the God to whom worship is due; when he not only teaches his elect to have respect to God, but manifests himself as the God to whom this respect should be paid.
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion
A Big View of God
When you hear the word “God,” what do you think of?
An old man?
A King?
Jesus?
A spirit being?
A warrior?
A father?
A cosmic sky fairy?
A creator?
Lately I’ve been thinking that far too often, our views of God are far too narrow or even non-existant. We thank Him for the gifts in life and damn Him for the trials. We thank him when we win Grammys and forget about him when we lose. More often than not, we only recognize Him when we accomplish something or need His help.
What would our lives look like if we had a big (maybe even massive) view of God? How would we view our blessings and our curses? Would we thank Him in both? Would we even be thankful for both? How would we view sin if our views of God were vastly expanded?
These are questions that we should be taking seriously. And if you are a skeptic that finds these thoughts to be silly, I’d like to challenge you to think about the possibility of God and what implications come along with the idea of a massively huge God.
Over the foreseeable future, this will be a topic I will heavily be exploring and writing about: having a BIG view of God. I’ll be writing about what a big view of God looks like, what it implies, give examples of people who had massive views of God, and practical ways to expand your view of God. This should be a challenging, yet exciting topic to explore and I believe it will big growth in the lives of those who join me on this journey.
For now, think about your view of who God is and post your thoughts… If you don’t know where to start, read Psalm 9.
