So we have just started this new teaching series called Google It. People submitting regular questions that they have about faith, life and God. [Click on www.reedleyfbc.com and check out the opening message in the series.]
But as I shared as we started to preach - after we suggested doing this series and everything was rolling we began to get a little freaked out. Here is this series inviting questions - with everyone therefore assuming that we will answer them. And that's the freaky thing. At one level the freaky thing is how much my brain is going to hurt trying to research the questions - but the even freakier thing is even hinting that we would have all the answers.
For the past many years this is the kind of thing we've really tried to steer people away from. There is something so off-putting in a Christianity that claims to have all the answers. Have you ever been around 'know it all' Christians - their Christianity is so formulaic, so simplistic (it also often is so exclusive ...they have the secret codes all figured out and know the answers)- and it is also so reductionist. The minute you encounter a Christian that suggests they have all the answers - you've encountered a Christian who has shrunk God. And that's the freakiest thing of all. I need God to be bigger than me - so much bigger. I want God to hold mystery and the unknowable. I want to be awed by this God. I want to fall down and worship this God. I even want to be scared by this God. The reality is, that if I claim to know all about God - I'm God! Yikes. So ....back to our Google It series. How do we genuinely engage with the questions people are struggling with about God while not shrinking God down to our answers?
To every question the only answer we can suggest is - GOD. Truly. God responds to seekers. But how he does that is seen in how Jesus did it while here. To questions asked him - either trick or genuine - he so often never gave an answer - he simply was. God very seldom gives explanations (that's sometimes so frustrating about Him). But I'm more and more coming to see that an explanation may satisfy my head but it doesn't satisfy my soul. What satisfies my soul and breathes life into me is is not an explanation but a big, awesome, even scary God. One takes faith one doesn't. And I'm learning that faith satisfies while being able to always give an explanation leaves me proud, slightly puffed up - but cold. Here's what to do - in daily situations, daily decisions and when questions arise in your head, key in these words "freakily BIG God" and see what happens. Hey, let me know ... could be a bunch of stories that make us even more see how dissatisfying our answers are and how much bigger God is.
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I think this is exactly what it means to abide. We seem to always lean toward putting ourselves up and trying to look down on God and figure Him out. When we have an accurate view of mankind and let His life flow down through us, we can look at things in a real way.
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