Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Do I believe that God is bigger than me?

We are starting a new series next week at Grace Community based on the book Love Wins by Rob Bell. I have read this book a couple times. Read and listened to numerous of other point of views online and am currently reading Francis Chan's new work Chasing Hell which contradicts Bell's work.

What I am finding online in most of other people's opinions is a fear of the unknown and a fear of their own personal "Biblical World View". I think what Love Wins does well at is raising the question. To get people thinking and looking into scripture and what it really says. Too often we just take for granted what we have been told to believe, but we fail to grasp and to own our own beliefs, convictions and understandings of God and His ways.

I admit that God is way too much God for me to figure Him out. That every time I pick of the sacred texts (Bible) or any other work I read my own beliefs, assumptions and preconceptions into it. We need to take a step back and read with new eyes, unbiased eyes and hearts for God.

See I am writing the entry now so I can distance myself from the work before me. Not that I don't want to do it. But I sense I am in the middle of it and don't want Scott to be the center. This is the place for God to be. I want God to be the center of this study. As the book it titled "Love Wins". That God in the end will get the last word, He in the end will signal the end; He is the one who calls the shots. Not me and not you.

What I am finding in my reading and studying is that often we have made our beliefs, our theology and our dogma about Us and really not about God. Even though through our beliefs and theology we are trying to describe God, we are actually just falling way short of describing or explaining God. It is almost as if we are telling God, "...this is what your are to me...this is who you are..."

So maybe through this study of Love Wins we will be able to see who God truly is? Maybe we will wrestle with our thoughts and beliefs and come to new and better conclusions. Maybe after this all is set and done we will realize that God is much bigger than you and I and that we need Him more than ever.

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