echoes of redemption

Most people who follow God admit that he is big.

Really big.

Yet for some reason, followers of God tend to have little tolerance for ideas about him that differ from their own.

And you don’t even have to cross the boundaries of differing religions to find frustrations. In my faith, we’ve divided into denominations. Each holds their own view point and each is traditionally not open to seeing things in ways other people see them. (Fortunately this is changing with a new generation of leaders.)

If God truly is big – really big – wouldn’t it follow that none of us would be able to fully define or explain him? Wouldn’t he be beyond the explanation of a person, or even a group of people, locked in a limited time in history with limited view?

There’s nothing dangerous about listening to someone whose ideas are different than yours. But there is something dangerous about not listening.

Theology can quickly become inbred. Limited by where I live, what I’ve experienced or the priorities of my church.

Christ commissioned his followers as a body.

A group of people with different roles, doing different things and looking radically different. We do well when we embrace these differences, grow from our different understandings and show support for one another as we all try and understand more of our huge God.

Embrace the bigness of God. Understand him through another person’s viewpoint. You don’t have to change your viewpoint (that degrades the beauty of the body too) – but you do well to see a side you might not have seen before.

And typically when you experience more of God, you grow.

The only thing harder than taking a step of faith is taking the next step of faith – especially if you didn’t see the response you wanted with the first one.

But taking multiple steps of faith is the definition of walking by faith.

One day a man came to Jesus and asked him to heal his son. Jesus responded, Go, your son will live. Easy for us to read, but this man was going to need to take a step of faith. He was going to have to leave the comfort of where he was and walk – all the while trusting Jesus had healed his son.

The challenge was that home was 25 miles away.

Two days by foot.

Step after step, after step of faith. Never knowing for sure his son was healed until he arrived home.

The only thing the man knew for sure was that he had left the comfort and security of where he was for the unknown of everything he dreamed.

How small would our victories be if it only took one step to get there?

How many things do we miss out on life because we’re not willing to take the second step of faith?

The third?

The sixteenth?

Sometimes when we feel the most stuck, God is doing the most work in our lives.

The book of Hosea is an unbelievably deep metaphor for how God responds to his people and moves with them, redeeming them and growing them to be like him. So when it’s time for Gomer – the character that represents God’s people – to be brought back to God, we watch how he works.

It’s not a long monologue answering every question she has.

It’s not the answer to every pray she’s prayed.

It’s not every door opening up in her life so she could move forward without struggle.

God’s plan was completely backwards.

I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. And there I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.

- Hosea 2:14-15

So to move deeply in Gomer’s life, God takes her to the wilderness – where most people assume God does nothing. The one place that stands as a universal symbol in Scripture for being apart from God. Being lost. Hopeless.

God’s plan was to take her somewhere she would have nothing but him.

God’s plan was to give her places full of life and hope.

God’s plan was to turn her place of pain into an opportunity of hope.

So maybe the times we think we’re stuck in our faith, God is really doing the most. Moving the most. The closest to us.

Maybe the times we want to give up because we feel stuck are really opportunities to rely on something outside of ourselves and learn that through him we can live a life beyond what we ever imagined.

Maybe the only thing stuck in our lives is our insistence that we can do it on our own.