Beyond

In the old Star Trek series, the concept is to discover, explore and invest people, starships and training into seeking out the unknown … to 'boldly go where no one has gone before.'  And just maybe, this 'concept' is a snippet of what Christmas is all about.

I started down this train of thought last week when I heard a contemporary song about how the singer needed a savior that met his/her list of specific requirements.  Some of the requirements were 'easy to love', 'easy to follow' and 'easy to praise.'  As I listened, I reflected that wouldn't we all love a god that met our self-defined needs.  Judas wanted a conqueror.  Martha wanted a focus of her worship.  Mary wanted someone she could serve.  Paul wanted a missional god.  Barnabas wanted support in encouragement.  Moses wanted a deliverer.  And I could go on for each of us.  But Jesus didn’t come to meet our self-defined needs and then walk off into the sunset.  Jesus came to teach us, lead us, show us and grow us in our idea about who God really is.  Because God is in all of those needs and many more!

Here is where I am going with this.  Our God is not the God if the expected.  God is not the God who follows us into our comfortable concept of who and what God should be.  Our God is worth investing people, stuff, training, time, service, prayers, patience and life.  When we enter life with God we are boldly going into the unexpected and the unknown.  God is beyond our expectations and beyond our wildest dreams.  In Michael Card’s song, The Promise he writes, “the promise showed that our wildest dreams, had simply not been wild enough.”  Jesus is that promise lived-out.

If we define god, our definition is not god at all.  Psalm 113:1-4 says it this way … “God is higher than anything and anyone, outshining everything you can see in the skies.  Who can compare with God, our God, so majestically enthroned, surveying his magnificent heavens and earth? He picks up the poor from out of the dirt, rescues the wretched who’ve been thrown out with the trash, seats them among the honored guests, a place of honor among the brightest and best.”  THAT is only one grain of sand in the universe of defining God!  This Christmas, let God be who God is.  Get out of the way.  Get into God’s Word.  Get out of the fray of franticness.  And look for God beyond your dreams, expectation and boundaries.  God is ‘beyond’ so boldly go where you have never gone before!  Randy