One More Word

You have multiplied, O Lord my God,
    your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us;
    none can compare with you!
I will proclaim and tell of them,
    yet they are more than can be told.

Psalm 40:5

I started this year with a suggestion to put a word before you.  Just one word.  Simple.  Then focus on that one word.  Also, simple.  Only simple things don't always turn out to be so simple.  Take my word for the year:  aware.  As time has progressed I find myself aware of the need to change my word.  Let me explain.

Soon after the start of the year I began to explore the notion that there is more of God I need to discover, that He is the More that my heart (and every heart!!) longs for.  I wrote eight total blog posts on that very topic.  After eight posts it seemed as though I had, at least for a time, exhausted what I felt I needed to say on the topic.  However, for the last two months God keeps showing me more.  The word has turned up everywhere!  And I can't get the idea that I can never exhaust More where God is concerned out of my mind.  God is inexhaustible.  So I've become aware that my "one word" needs to be more.  More time with God.  More prayer.  More grace extended to myself and others.  More life.  More truth.  More...

This is really quite a daunting proposition.  But I have come to believe that I need to proclaim that there is more.  There is more to life than food and drink and comfort.  There is more to faith than just reading and studying my Bible, or just praying my requests, or just spewing knowledge of my beliefs.    I am still in the process of discovery...and I expect I will be as long as God exists (which if you don't know me all that well is...well, forever)!  I will say it again...God is inexhaustible.

The Hebrew poet, King David, understood that God is completely limitless and incomprehensible, unable to be exhausted, both in knowledge and experience.  In Psalm 40:5 David expresses this very idea:

You have multiplied, O Lord my God,
    your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us;
    none can compare with you!
I will proclaim and tell of them,
    yet they are more than can be told.

Interestingly, this particular psalm is quoted by the author of Hebrews as being attributed to Jesus (Hebrews 10:5-7).  Even Jesus, who is God Himself was unable to convey all that God is when He lived and breathed among us, though He gave us as good a summary picture as possible.  Why wouldn't we then, not want to pursue God with all of our hearts and minds and strength?  No matter how hard we search, no matter how wide and deep our experience we can never reach the tipping point of exhaustion.  Overwhelming?  Yes.  But dramatically exciting?  Absolutely!!

The apostle Paul also understood that what we can know of God is boundless.  Paul prays for the church at Ephesus:

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom

 every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according 

to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened 

with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ

 may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted 

and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with 

all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 

and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that 

you may be filled with all the fullness of God.  Ephesians 3:14-19

Did you catch that?  That we "may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth." (Ephesians 3:18)  Why would we need strength if this wasn't a long haul quest?  I also believe that this is another reason we need to be in community with other believers.  By ourselves the limitations we experience in knowing God are astronomical.  With other believers by our side those limitations are lessened.  We can experience more of God through community than we can by ourselves.

Now look at Ephesians again.  Paul's conclusion to his prayer for the Ephesians is stunning.

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all 

that we ask or think, according to the power at work within 

us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout 

all generations, forever and ever. Amen.  Ephesians 3:20-21

Did you notice the word more?  We can't even begin to imagine all that God would like to do in us and through us.  Our vision of God is too small and therefore our desires for His kingdom and every other aspect of our lives are too small as well. C.S. Lewis puts it well, an oft quoted statement from his book The Weight of Glory is this:  

It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, 

but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with 

drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like 

an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a 

slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of 

a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.  

Why won't you join me in this quest for More of the One in whom are limitless pleasures and joys?  But don't keep your discoveries to yourself.  They are meant for the body of Christ, the church.  

I have also begun to believe God desires revival in your life and the life of your community wherever you are.  That takes a boundless, immeasurable God, One who cannot be contained. Let's not continue to hold to some half-baked notion that God is tame and understandable for we will never see His glory in its fullness.  I leave you with another C.S. Lewis quote from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe:  “Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”