As we are going through the attributes of God, Pastor Fred talked about the transcendence and the immanence of God. As a reminder, transcendence is where God sits outside of creation and how He is above and greater than creation. Immanence is where God dwells among His creation and is among us. This reminds me of John 1:14 where the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. If we were to take a deep dive into the Greek, this verse has a meaning of God came and He set up a tent so He could live among is and be known to His creation. It kind of has a camping feel to it where we pitch a tent out in nature so we can get away and connect with God through what He has created. This leads me to a couple of thoughts.
The first one is that are there times when God shows up and we don’t recognize Him. For whatever reason we don’t realize that He is in our midst. Could it be because we are not mature enough to recognize it, or that we are so distracted with our own things that we don’t realize when He speaks. Or do we pull a Jonah and we run the other direction. It’s because He has either asked or could ask us to do something we don’t want to do. In my experience, when this happens, there is some tension in the relationship and something that is causing the relationship to go haywire. It could be because we aren’t on the same page or that I have an attitude and sin problem and I don’t want to properly deal with it.
My second observation is when God healed the blind man with the mud and when he went to the temple to tell the priest and they ask who done the miracle the guy didn’t know. We could be like
that guy, realizing something happened, but, who, why or how is pretty unexplainable. Do we go out to find Jesus to thank Him or are we grateful the miracle happened and then go about our life. When God shows up, it’s more than just so He can do cool party tricks, but for Him to have a relationship with His creation.
My final observation is that as God dwells among us, it does that mean we or the rest of creation is equal to Him. In college there were a few times where my professors “let down there hair” and became a little more vulnerable and I learned a lot during these conversations, but when they put the professor hat back on, our relationship changed and I needed to be reminded of that. Pastor Haven often tells us youth leaders that we aren’t the kids friends, but we are there mentors and there is a difference and it often comes with boundaries. As cool as it is that we are created in Gods image and that the Creator wants a relationship with His creation and dwells among us, He is still Holy, sinless and God. As much as God can be our friend, He is still God and has authority over all. For those parents who acted more as friends to their kids growing up than parents, how well did the kids turn out and did they ever struggle with boundaries or authority.
To close out, in Jeremiah 29, God states that we are to be His people and He our God. Also God can and wants to be found, we have to be committed to searching Him out and not sticking our heads in the sand
No comments:
Post a Comment