Don't limit God.

"How much Greater is the God we have than the one we think we have."  --Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart

Do you limit God? 

I never thought much about it until a Bible study lesson a few years ago with a group of high school students.  We were talking about God as our Abba Father, where we seek an intimate relationship with Him instead of just regarding Him as one in a position of authority over us.  Those students in the room that had good relationships with their parents had no trouble with this view of God.  But those that had experienced a degree of familial strain could not make the connection between the God of authority and the God of love.  I had never considered how much impact the role of a father figure might have on someone's relationship with God, the Ultimate Father Figure.  I wondered, what else do we do to limit who God is, either in our own perspectives or for others because of our actions?     

I suppose it's hard for us as the very human beings that we are.  We approach the Gospel with a black and white outline of who God is and what He does and use our life experiences to fill it in with color, add detail subject to our own perspective.  But surely God is not confined to the outline on the page. 

Our church's confirmation class a few years back attended mass at a nearby Catholic church.  During a meeting with the priest ahead of time, one student asked about who would go to heaven and who would go to hell.  Father Lockey's reply.....To judge a person in any capacity is to presume that we can understand the depth of God's mercy and we simply can not. 

Yes, I think God's outline is far, far beyond the page indeed.

It's easy to try to limit God.  We do it without even thinking we're doing it.  But, oh how much greater, deeper and wider is His love for us.  We can get there.  We can serve instead of judge, worship instead of complain.  We can forget the lines all together and instead be open to what He reveals to us, when we're not so busy trying to figure out what it's going to look like. 

"I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your innermost being, so that Christ may dwell in your heart through faith.  And I pray that you, being rooted in faith and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure with the fullness of God."  Ephesians 3:16-19

May God be limitless to you today, friends.  Limitless.

XOXO....Kelly