The God I Know

God is so big. He is bigger than your problems.  He is bigger than your disbelief.  I go through cycles where I question if Jesus is who he said he was.  And if the Christian hope (the hope of resurrection, first for Jesus, then for us, and finally for the world) is just the invention of a group of downtrodden people living in the back woods of the known world.  

But there is something I never question.  I never question if God is real.  I never question that he has a personality.  I never question that he is involved intimately in my life and cares for me.  (What is man, that you are mindful of him, O God?).  I never question this, because I know Him.  I know him as well as I know my own father… possibly better.  And he is not my invention, because he is so much bigger than I am, so much more unexpected and imminent and wise than any figment of my imagination.  He is not my invention because other people tell me they know him, and I discover he is the same God I know. And I know all of this because I talk to him. And he talks to me, through a voice that I recognize.  A voice that others, in the pages of scripture, know as well.  A still, small voice, that comes in the silence, a midst the beauty of the world around me.  

It comes to me when I am lying on the couch, listening to music. (He loves to speak to me through my music).  It comes to me when I am out on the back deck in silence watching the sun set with my dog at my feet. It comes to me when I am writing.  It comes to me when I am reading scripture.  And I speak back to him in prayer - prayers that I believe he hears, because he answers me. He answers me through other people and circumstance, and through the beauty and wonder in the world around me. He answers me through the stirring of my heart.  He answers me through the strong purposeful prompting that helps me make a decision, and then when I follow through, it turns out to be the best decision I could have made. 

He did this with my decision to buy a house recently.  We looked at several and they kept getting sold from under us.  Then we looked at one we had previously passed over.  It was perfect.  I prayed if it was the right choice: it was $200 a month over what we are paying now.  And I don’t have $200 more a month.  But God spoke to me clearly.  He said that was the one.  He said that he would provide. I found out how good of an investment it would be.  Then the inspector came.  It was a fix and flip, and according to the inspector they did everything to the highest quality and the house was without a fault.  It seems like confirmation of God’s nudging.  I guess I could say, I heard a “this is the right choice” feeling come into my heart… there were words that solidified in my mind at the same time, but I have forgotten exactly what they were, but the gist was “yes.”  And then a peace settled over me.  A peace that I know because I have felt it before after talking to God. 

I can’t say I am a mystic.  I don’t live in the middle of the desert eating locusts and honey and communing with God all my waking hours.  But I listen to God and I stop and take the time to breathe in the world around me, and when I do, I hear him talking to me.  And so I know him.  And the result of this is that I know he is real.  And I know that he is capable of coming to live among us as a man, and that he could build such a scandalous plan to save mankind from the evil it had brought upon itself (by choosing the knowledge of good and evil over the love of God).  A plan that would put himself in our place and take on all our sin so that he could pay the price that would make us right again with him.  That’s just like him.  That is the God I know.