Big God

Growing up, there was one thing I always knew, I wanted to serve God with every fiber of my being. The greatest way I knew to fulfill that desire was to be a missionary in a foreign country. I thought there was no better or higher calling. I barely graduated high school, but I didn’t care, because the only thing that mattered was believing in Jesus and going to heaven.

I went to Bible college after high school, because I knew no other way to accomplish my goal of becoming a missionary. During those years I breezed through school, and graduated among those at the top of my class. This was an eye opener for me because I did not think this was possible. The joy and sense of accomplishment I gained through it was other worldly. I was surrounded by professors who loved God and served him well in this capacity. That may seem like a small deal to most, but it was a game changer for me. I began to understand service to God as something that went beyond the roles found inside of a church. It began a journey of not only understanding my role in God’s Kingdom, but better grasping the vastness of our God and the reality we live in.

One of my favorite movies is, Interstellar, and not for obvious reasons. When I watched it for the first time in my living room, I felt the presence of God expressed through immense joy. My mind was blown to know this movie was based on real science. Based on the possibilities of other worlds, wormholes and different dimensions, that theoretically could be out there, but yet to be discovered. I thought, how can man deny the reality of a being that transcends our physical dimension? As explored in this movie there are mathematical and scientific pointers to possibilities that we have yet to encounter! I experienced the wonder of God through a “secular” medium and it was legitimate.

In the past, I would have been closed off even to the possibility of such an encounter. My understanding of God was so limited that I had condemned everything as vanity and of no concern if it did not expressly read Jesus and Heaven. I had relegated the Creator of the universe to the pages on my night stand and an experience to be had once or twice a week. I neglected the grander narrative by which God was sovereign over the whole thing. Was the point of my faith in Christ just an insurance policy for the life to come? Does life now, matter to life after?

One of my favorite books in the Bible is Genesis. It is the introduction to humanity of the source and purpose of life. It casts a shadow over the rest of the Bible, as the last book is a continuation of the first. We meet God here, and see that He is the creator of all reality and intended it for good. He then entrust us with the care of His good creation, but we know where that story goes, and it is because of this twist we tend to limit the larger than life being of God to our short list of what is or is not of God.

My view of God was more focused on fire insurance than the life that was given through Him and meant to be experienced now. Remember, God did create this reality in all its vastness, complexities and even simplicity and calls it good. He created the brains that the scientist use to make discoveries of the universe and takes pleasure in it. The joy we find in the most basic human interactions are all ingrained in the fabric of the reality that finds its source in God. It all matters to God, and he blesses and ordains it for good.

My eyes were opened to the God that was bigger than the world I created for Him. I realized there was much of life to experience in Him that I had denied myself at the expense of His pleasure and shared joy. I wanted to please Him with every fiber of my being but had told Him with my actions all of this was not worth the investment. I wanted to tell the world about Jesus, but had left the other part of the story unsung. God wants to show us how to live now and how to do it well so we can continue the narrative together in Him. We serve a BIG God! Amen.