God of the 3 O’s
There is a point in a child’s development when the child’s minds seems shaped like a question mark — every sentence begins with “why”. The answers seem only to raise more questions. Most parents understand that although it is important to attempt an answer, often the answer is irrelevant. For little children, what is most important is the act of questioning itself because children’s questions are more than a request for information. Their questions are an act of affection, of communion, and of trusting.
In a healthy family, children’s questions are not about answers — their questions are about relationship. Children intuitively know their questions are welcome, appreciated. Safe. And not only are children’s questions welcome, but they are welcome. In a welcoming environment where questions are safe, children are infected with curiosity — a fascination with truth, an unrelenting hunger to know and be known, to capture and be captured, to touch and be touched. When these children finally fall asleep at night, they are secure in the knowledge that the one who loves them is bigger than all their questions, they can sleep deeply, knowing they are safe in the arms of the Keeper of their questions. ~ Michael Yaconnelli
This is how I see asking questions of our Father. For us, just like with children, what is most important is the act of questioning itself because our questions are more than a request for information. Our questions are an act of affection, of communion, and of trusting. Our questions are not about answers — our questions are about relationship.
I believe in the God of the 3 O’s:
* Omniscience – all-knowing
* Omnipresence – all-present
* Omnipotence - all-powerful
When I pray, it’s not as if I’m not giving God any news.
He Who made my heart, knows my heart. He knows my questions before I ask them. He knows them before I know them.
When I pray, I’m longing to know and be known, to capture and be captured, to touch and be touched.
When I ask questions of God, I’m not giving Him insight into my heart. He’s already there. I can’t tell Him anything that He doesn’t already know about me.
But if we talk much, He gives me insight into my heart, telling me things that I didn’t already know about me.
Like this:
Is God Always Good?
Often I have heard people say, ‘How good God is! We prayed that it would not rain for our church picnic, and look at the lovely weather!’ Yes, God is good when He sends good weather. But God was also good when He allowed my sister, Betsie, to starve to death before my eyes in a German concentration camp. ~ Corrie Ten Boom
Is God good? Look around. What do you think? Is God good all the time? Corrie Ten Boom looked around and said Yes, all the time.
I often hear people say When I get to heaven, I’m going to ask God why… My thought is, don’t wait until you get to heaven. Ask Him now. He can handle it. He’s certainly used to it.
I just wonder if why is the real question? Maybe instead we should be asking Who ARE You, anyway? I think who is at the root of the problem of pain, not why.
As the struggles of this life pile up and become the omphaolos (the hub) we look for peace in the whys. Why doesn’t God always send sun for the picnic, spare the one being abused, heal an illness or remove a thorn in the flesh? We ask but He doesn’t justify Himself. I’m guessing that if He did, out of our pain or arrogance, we’d still try to bargain or argue.
I’m not much on asking God why. But when I’m hurting and God seems distant, if I’m not finding comfort in Him, in the not knowing, I try asking myself who do I think He is?
Is God LOVE? He says so and if there was ever doubt, Jesus clarified that on the cross.
Is God GOOD? Is He good all the time or do I worship a moody, unpredictable God?
Is God ALWAYS RIGHT or is he just another god, not the God–but one given to messing up from time to time.
Questions are important. Questions help us establish security and trust in a relationship. It’s equally important to look at the questions and see if we’re asking the right ones. For me, once the Who is settled, the why becomes relevant only to the extent that I learn to lean.
Like this:
Missing the Message
This is our reason for living. Here, on this side of the grave, in full view of Satan and his forces and of God and His angels, we are clothed in our eternal mandate. It is here and now, while the darkness grows stronger and faith is still necessary, that we must embrace our fundamental function: We were brought into being to engage God’s heart, not just to meet man’s need. ~ Victoria Brooks
Designed to engage God’s heart, not just to meet man’s need. What a radical and terrifying concept. I’d always thought that was how I engaged God’s heart, by meeting people’s needs.
When I first read these words I was lost. I knew how to meet needs. I had no idea how to minister to the heart of One Who has no need.
It was as if I’d spent my life speed-reading through the Gospels where Jesus said: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.
And, instead, I’d been skipping right to the next verse. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.
Somehow, somewhere, I’d decided to love God by loving my neighbor instead of loving my neighbor because I loved God with all my heart and soul and mind.
I’d missed the Message. It is here and now, while the darkness grows stronger and faith is still necessary, that we must embrace our fundamental function: We were brought into being to engage God’s heart, not just to meet man’s need.
Like this:
Constructive Criticism
God never gives us discernment in order that we may criticize, but that we may intercede. – Oswald Chambers
Discernment: The act or process of exhibiting keen insight and good judgement; Understanding of the nature, meaning, quality or magnitude of something
Criticize: To find fault with: To judge with disapproval
I think constructive criticism is an oxymoron. There are many productive ways to share an observation or a differing opinion without criticizing. The value of the message is almost always weakened, if not lost altogether, in the automatic defense mechanisms of the one being criticized.
It’s very much like if I were to begin a sentence to you by saying: No offense, but… Of course you’re already offended. I’ve just told you that I’m about to say something that I know will offend you.
If I’m inclined to say No offense, but… or a critical statement, I try to stop and think:
1. Does this really need to be said at all?
2. If so, is there a way to say it that won’t hurt or offend?
I think there usually is. Most offending and critical comments are simply lazy language, coming from a place where I put my opinion or my need to be right, over your well-being.
This naturally leads me to think of two other words:
Speck: That tiny bit floating in your eye
Log: That giant piece of dead wood lodged in my eye
It’s God’s place to supersede. It’s my place to intercede. It gets to be a bit of a mucky mess when I try to switch places with Him.
Like this:
Cheap Grace
Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: ‘Ye were bought at a price’, and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer
That’s what makes it amazing!
Like this:
Forgive and Forget
There is no use in talking as if forgiveness were easy. We all know the old joke, “You’ve given up smoking once; I’ve given it up a dozen times.” In the same way I could say of a certain man, “Have I forgiven him for what he did that day? I’ve forgiven him more times than I can count.” For we find that the work of forgiveness has to be done over and over again. ~ C.S. Lewis
Forgive and forget.
How often have we been told that, taught that - heard it said, heard it sung? It seems that everyone says it, except God.
We’re told to forgive: Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. (Ephesians 4:32) He doesn’t add, and forget it ever happened. There are so many things we have forgiven and forgotten. But there are some scars that remind us of things forgiven.
Remembering doesn’t mean not forgiving. Continuing to hold it against another does.
So often we struggle with forgiveness; either refusing to offer it or fearing we haven’t, because we can’t forget. We all know what it means to forget something. We do it all the time. Maybe the problem lies in knowing what it means to forgive something. Lewis Smedes says:
You will know that forgiveness has begun when you recall those who hurt you and feel the power to wish them well.
God holds only Himself to the high standard of forgetfulness. For I will be merciful regarding their wrong deeds, and I will never again remember their sins. (Hebrews 8:12). He doesn’t tell us to forgive and forget. We added that ourselves. For we find that the work of forgiveness has to be done over and over again.
God doesn’t tell us to forgive and forget. He tells us to forgive and forgive.
Like this:
Fitting In
Because salvation is by grace through faith, I believe that among the countless number of people standing in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palms in their hands (see Revelation 7:9), I shall see the prostitute from the Kit-Kat Ranch in Carson City, Nevada, who tearfully told me that she could find no other employment to support her two-year-old son. I shall see the woman who had an abortion and is haunted by guilt and remorse but did the best she could faced with grueling alternatives; the businessman besieged with debt who sold his integrity in a series of desperate transactions; the insecure clergyman addicted to being liked, who never challenged his people from the pulpit and longed for unconditional love; the sexually abused teen molested by his father and now selling his body on the street, who, as he falls asleep each night after his last ‘trick’, whispers the name of the unknown God he learned about in Sunday school.
‘But how?’ we ask.
Then the voice says, ‘They have washed their robes and have made them white in the blood of the Lamb.’
There they are. There we are – the multitude who so wanted to be faithful, who at times got defeated, soiled by life, and bested by trials, wearing the bloodied garments of life’s tribulations, but through it all clung to faith.
My friends, if this is not good news to you, you have never understood the gospel of grace. ~ Brennan Manning
There I’ll be, a part of the multitude who so wanted to be faithful, who at times got defeated, soiled by life, and bested by trials, wearing the bloodied garments of life’s tribulations, but through it all clung to faith.
Here I am, clinging to the Good News, the gospel of grace, longing for the day when I trade in these tattered, bloodied bits of cloth for ones that never can again be stained. With the desperate, the guilt ridden, the remorseful, the compromising, the weak, the weary…with these brothers and sisters I’ll fit right in!
Like this:
If God Had a Refrigerator
If God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it. If He had a wallet, your photo would be in it. He sends you flowers every spring and a sunrise every morning… Face it, friend. He is crazy about you! ~ Max Lucado
Isn’t that a wonderful thought? The One from whom nothing is hidden, Who sees the parts of me I even hide from myself, is crazy about me! He’s crazy about you, too! Such amazing grace!
I’ve been thinking about this quite a lot.
Maybe we should all write a note in bright bold letters and tape it to the frig or the bathroom mirror:
I’m crazy about you! Love, God
What if we were reminded of this over and over each day? I wonder, would it make a difference?
Want to give it a try with me?
Like this:
Reader Appreciation Award
If instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give. ~ George MacDonald
I started this blog 10 months ago today.
You, my friends, have cast the gift of a loving thought into my heart time and again.
Over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to try to intermingle some thank you notes with my regular TMG posts. I’ve been remiss in not thanking you sooner or paying your kind encouragement forward by passing it on to other bloggers.
Now, because I’ve waited so long, I’m at a bit of a loss as to where to start. I’ve decided to begin at the end and try to work my way backwards.
The Reader Appreciation Award.
Rules to this award:
1. Link the Award image back to the one who presented it to you.
First, a long overdue thanks to Pastor Wrinkles @ Reinventing the We’ll who was kind enough to nominate me for this award back in February. I’m including his description of himself to entice you to check out his blog. 
As I walk through my changes good and bad, the good God I serve is always using those changes to reinvent me…to reinvent us. For you see, my change touches others; So my transformation causes there to be a “Reinvention of the We’ll”.
And most recently, my thanks to Jen @ Step on a Crack. If I’d been more timely and responded sooner to Pastor J, I could have nominated you first!
2. List six nominations.
Like this:
Gift Wrapped in Grace
I couldn’t have asked for more than God in deliberate grace has surprised me with! ~ Jim Elliot
We live in a world of unanticipated moments. When I think of the word surprise, I think of laughter and joy and unexpected gifts. But not all surprises are so pleasant. Some come wrapped in ribbons of defeat and pain and betrayal.
I expect that’s why most children love surprises so much more than adults. The ribbons are always right. As the world expands to include more and more experiences, we become more cautious about what lies beneath the wrappings. We learn that pretty packaging tells nothing about the present.
It’s different with God. He’s the giver of all good gifts. His intentional, deliberate grace is the most remarkable surprise of all!
Grace – re-gift it!
Like this:
RSS
Creative Commons Copyrighted
