All my life I've been hearing that the most important relationship I can have is one with Jesus Christ. It's true, it's through Christ that I am saved, that I have been redeemed, that sin no longer has power over me; that I am in Christ, and he is in me. For years I've known this in my mind, but I've been wondering, what does a relationship with Christ look like? What fruits are born of this joyous unity?
For so long (I know I'm only 20, but it seems like so long) I've been reading scripture trying to understand what it means, trying to understand what all these letters that make up words, that make up sentences, that make up verses and statements from the mouth of our God, what do they mean? I've reasoned and logicised, and have come to the conclusion that I don't understand. At least now I understand that I don't understand. What does one do when they don't understand? Well, if you're like me, proud, you don't ask for help. you go round and round stubbornly fixed on figuring it out. There has to be an answer and I have to find it! And then we do! Or so we think.
But that's not the answer at all.
I think, I don't know, but I think, that when we think that we have the answer we can be no farther away from truly knowing it. I think that when we think we finally understand God, then that is when we are most greatly mistaken. I think that the one thing we can be completely sure of in understanding God, is that we, as sinful human beings, will never be able to grasp the mind, or see into the heart of our God on our own. We have assuredness in the Holy Spirit and in God's Holy Word that every word in it is true. I believe that. I believe that through scholarly studies of scripture we can come to understand God better, and better understand what he is saying to us, but you can be a scholar of the Bible and remain unsaved and have no relationship with Christ.
It is not until we come to Christ, lay down our lives and previously formed conceptions, and say that we don't understand the great Creator of the Universe, that we acknowledge his mysetery and grandieur, and that we don't understand his love, or what it means to love him, or see into his heart; it is when we acknowledge that we were afraid to stand in the presence and the glory of the Holy King who is above all because we don't deserve to be able to, but claiming the grace that God has lavished on us in his Son, Jesus Christ.
It is because of God's great love, and Christ's mediating and loving sacrifice that we can even think of entering the throne in which God the Father, and his Son sit. This is a great love that we cannot understand. While we were sinners, while we hated him, Christ died for us. To forgive us, to save us, to restore us to a loving personal, intimate relationship with our awesome Creator God - a relationship that he originally designed for us with him.
Our God is bind boggling.
Our God is mysterious.
Our God cannot be understood by the minds of men.
Our God cannot sin.
Our God will never stop loving.
Our God adores you.
He delights in you.
Our God may seem too good to be true - but nothing has ever been truer or greater.
Our God invites us into him, and he comes into us; to surrender our lives to him, and be changed in a frightening and glorious way; to be blown away by all of who he is, yet to come to understand him better than we ever have each day; to be loved, adored, shaped, prodded, disciplined, and through all this, restored. It's easy to lose sight of in the busyness of the day, in the sorrow and the pain, in the confusion; but he remains in the midst of it all, and in his patient love, he waits for us to come to him once more, after searching for every other way - we finally turn back and realized again that he is what we have needed, what our hearts have been longing for, and it is he, in HIS love, who has turned our hearts back to him.
If you are looking for a mystery, then look no further. The more we come to understand our Great God, the more we realize that we have never really understood him well at all. The more we come to know, the more we realize how little we really knew. The more he shows us our sin and blindness to him, and the more he shows us his grace - the more boggled our minds become.
It's a wonderful confusion.
Praise the Lord almighty for his wondrous and sovereign reign and love over all.
Every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
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We are not to understand God. Only when our hearts are completely open to Him do we come close.
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