Heart Tracks - The Box And The Book

     Mid 20th century British preacher and writer T. Austin-Sparks wrote, "Nobody wants God in a box, just a book.  Especially one bound in leather and gilt."  I've been thinking how really true that is of us.  We pray for "revival" but its generally, consciously or not, a revival that we can manage and direct.  One where an agreeable God listens to our desires and ideas and acts accordingly.  We say we want the God of the Bible, but we want Him to operate more in the confines of that Bible and our understanding of it, than we do in total surrender to His sovereignty and will, even when that will challenges and even destroys many or all of our cherished ideas and notions.  Yes, all things have to be tested according to the authority of scripture, but are we willing to allow Him to take us deeper into His word and our understanding of it than we may be presently walking?

    This may sound radical, but I don't think so.  Our biblical examples are many.  Peter encountered God on a rooftop and it was there that all his ideas and understanding about what was pure and what was not, who could know Him, and who could not, were shattered.  Saul, thinking he was doing the Lord's work, encountered Christ on the Damascus road, and there discovered that all he had  based his life on in the end, was contrary to who the Father and the Messiah were.  The transformation was so radical that he was no longer Saul, but Paul, a truly new creation in Christ.  He was willing to follow Christ anywhere, even when the following clashed with ideas and beliefs long held sacred in his life.  Many of us cling to that place in our lives where the Father, in Christ, first revealed Himself to us.  We want to stay in that place of understanding, because it is comfortable and familiar, yet His call to us is always to come further and deeper into His life and the depth of His word.  As Eugene Peterson writes, "There is mystery in the gospel, but it is the mystery of light, not darkness."  The Father always has more to reveal to us about Himself.  What is mystery to us today, He means to be revelation to us tomorrow.  In Matthew 11, Jesus thanked His Father for His having "Hidden these things to the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants."  Could it be that so many of us have become very wise and intelligent in our own eyes as to how we see and understand Him, when we need to once more be 'infants" in His arms, going deeper and deeper into His heart and ways?

    Too many of us are like the woman with the issue of blood, willing to touch the hem of His garment, when His calling to us is to lay hold not just of the garment, but of Himself, all of Himself.  We love stories like this and so many others in His word, but somehow, the reality of it all so rarely makes into our day to day experiences.  His word and life stay confined to the Bible we heard preached from on Sunday, or heard shared in the mid-week Bible-study.  We would never say we keep Him in a box, but we're content to leave Him on the shelf with our Bible when we step out into the world we are called to overcome and show forth the power of His life in the midst of.  All the while praying for a tame revival, sent by a tame God through a tame Holy Spirit, in the person of a tame Jesus.  Revival that is orderly, not messy, and follows a pattern established by us, and best of all, changes everything around us, without disturbing too much, anything within us.
    Doctrine, correct understanding of His word is very important, but they, and all else, must be surrendered to the sovereign God who gives us both.  There is always, "So much more for us than this."  Oswald Chambers said, "When we become advocates of a creed, something dies, we do not believe God, we only believe our belief about Him."  He makes "all things new," all the time.  When our deepest desire is to go ever deeper in Him, our understanding and fruitfulness will flourish, and the only limit will be our ability to receive all that He gives.  That ability will only increase as we yield all understanding to Him.  We know He can't be kept in a box, we say it all the time.  May we also come to know He can't be kept in a book, even His book.  He is always exploding outward.

Blessings,

Pastor O