An Ex-Expert on God

In the beginning I believed that my study of God would make me an expert on God. That my submission to His refining fire and discipline would get me access to the inner workings of His Rule and Authority. That I might even be summoned at times to give spiritual insight and explanation of the Lord's Ways. God, of course, needs another Daniel, right?

But it's now 35 years later.  And the outcomes I anticipated are different from His outcomes. In retrospect my original desired outcomes were purely self-serving.  They put me at the center of it all rather than the Lord. I was quietly, even somewhat unknowingly, hoping that I would increase and He would decrease - the very opposite of what is supposed to happen.

Apart from the gift of Salvation, one of the greatest expressions of grace and mercy from our Lord is His patience in allowing our secret motives to change. He steadfastly grants us space and time to fully and truly move Him to the center of our lives - even though we spend years proclaiming He is already there. In the spirit of confession, I even struggle as I write this, to wonder if I'm writing it for personal affirmation or to purely affirm His Lordship in my life.  Maybe you can relate to that tension?

So where does this leave me/you? First, my pursuit and desire to know God has not lessened in the least bit.  If anything, it is intensifying with time.  But my understanding of all this is coming more into alignment with His desires not mine. Specifically, His Process in me is becoming more important than an obsession with His Purposes for me. Process-First faith seems to always keep Jesus at the center while Purpose-First or Performance-First faith seems to always keep me/you at the center. Process, Purpose, and Performance are all important and good as long as Process leads to Purpose and Performance - not the reverse. Otherwise, we have hearts that will continually drift towards self-promotion.

Secondly, God is not asking us to become an expert on Him. He is telling us that He is an expert on us. That He created us; loves us; knows us; and receives us because He paid a Ransom for us.  He is telling us that we can enjoy spiritual intimacy with Him that will then give birth to all we need as well as keep us away from all that we do not need. Father, may that be enough. May we resist the temptation to blend temporal and worldly additives to the purity of Your Presence.

Thirdly, there is a kind of powerful clarity and comfort in the mystery of God. While most of the time mystery leads to confusion, it need not do so with the Lord. His mysterious ways are not for the purposes of cruelty, as are the powers of this world. Rather, they are due to His Greatness and Love for us which invite us to be enveloped by that which is magnificently bigger and better for us - even when it doesn't feel that way. Thank you, Father, for your Glorious Mystique.

And finally, God does not want another Daniel.  He wants another you - the one He created and designed while you were in the womb.  The one He loves and desires to walk with as He once did with Adam and Eve. The one who is not here by accident but by His Grace.  The one who will continually experience uprootedness apart from Him.  The one He is, right now, patiently in Process with for your benefit.

From one Ex-Expert on God to another.

Ex nihilo,

R.J. Rhoden