Limiting God

By Carole McDonnell

Psalm 78:41 "They limited the holy one of Israel."

Lying in bed recently, allowing thoughts to float through my mind, I was suddenly stopped in my mental tracks. I'd been doing a bit of math. According to statistics, the average Black American Woman dies around age 70. At my age of 46, I was considering myself well past middle-aged which would be 35 years old. But then the thought occurred to me: What if I lived to 100 or 115?

Certainly, if God wants me to finish the great works He has appointed to me, I should do my part and stop looking at the world's statistics and treat my body better in order to live as rich and as full a life as I can. I must do my part by opening my mind to the possibilities of God's power and care and love. And I must obey his dietary laws.

Thoughts like these have been occurring more and more since I asked God to help me to stop limiting him.

One of my recent insights occurred after my husband received a spate of blessings. We've been tithing and speaking God's promises of blessings over our lives. Suddenly, out of the blue and without asking anyone for them, my artist husband received freelance assignments from a university, a television website, and a publishing company. These financial blessings were in addition to his regular nine-to-five job at the graphic studio in which he worked. And they came at a time when we had sudden medical bills in addition to some other debt we had been battling with.

I was overjoyed and thanked God for helping us carve away the debt. But then God showed me the thoughts of my heart. I was thinking that God had helped us a little ...to get us started, so to speak, and then well, He would leave us as on our own. Specifically, I thought God was like the parent who gave us a little shove and a little financial assistance as we headed out into life but then left us alone to fend for ourselves. That didn't seem like such a bad thing, after all we're taught that God helps those who helps themselves and he wants us to know how to take care of ourselves. But God was reminding me that He wants to take care of us in all things. He does ALL things WELL, COMPLETELY, and PERFECTLY. He FINISHES things.

It's hard for us in a world devoted to self-reliance to understand a God who wants to take care of us as a Shepherd takes care of sheep. On the one hand, some will believe God wants us to do all the work for themselves. On the other hand, there are those who believe God doesn't want us to work at all. It's an odd balance and we have to try to work out our salvation with fear and trembling at the same time we allow God's Word to be active, powerful, and quick in our lives. When it comes to work, I must therefore open my mind to God's power. I must understand the Biblical truth that God wants to be my agent, my guide, my provider. And that when he provides, I must work in those things He has blessed me with.

We have been taught to be serious and cynical and to limit God. But God wants us to trust Him for wonders. We must go wherever He leads, do whatever He commands, believe whatever He has said in His Word, and trust in His power and love. If He provides us with a small job, He will open our hearts to make that job great. He has promised us blessings, but it is up to us to walk in those blessings, whether we can see them or not.

Jesus asked His disciples, "When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith in the earth?" (Luke 18:8) He also told His disciples that in the last days there will be rumors of war. Rumors of War was the old Elizabethan phrase for "propaganda." (Matt 24:6) One of the ways Christians must renew their minds is to change their minds from a mind that dwells on negative, lack, sickness, and bad luck. We must think on whatever is lovely, pure, true, of good report, honest, virtuous. (Phil 4:8) We live in a world of bad report, a world that trains us to believe that to trust a good report is to be naive and childish. When bad news comes, we listen and we take bad news to heart even more than we take good news. We strengthen ourselves in the things of Egypt, we know too much about the giants in the land. (Num 13:33 ) Instead of trusting the Word of God that we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us, (Rom 8:37 )we see ourselves as grasshoppers. We train ourselves to trust in horses, and in chariots but not in the Word of God. (Ps 20:7)

It seems strange to us that the first thing the believers in the apostles' day did when someone died was to raise them from the dead. It seems strange to us to believe that Jesus declared that the man born blind was appointed to a miracle. What a different world it would be if modern-day Christians did such things? What if we had such faith to do exploits?

The word faith appears only twice in all of the Old Testament, yet the books are full of people who chose to believe God. In the New Testament books, Jesus tells us about faith. And it is such wonderful news that we call it the Gospel: The wonderful Good News.

The world tells us that Life is not a fairy tale. It isn't. But a Christian's life is supposed to be greatly blessed, so much so that this difference will be seen by the world and they will glorify our Father in Heaven. Christians don't have fairy-godmothers, but we have a heavenly and spiritual father. We don't trust in spells to dispel the troubles we face, but we trust in the powerful Word of God. It is not the goodness of our hearts that win us the treasure, but the goodness of God's heart and our own heart's reliance on God that brings us the pearl of great price which we value above all else.


Prayer:   Father in Heaven, help me to believe your word and to trust it as a sure foundation.  In Jesus name, Amen.
 

Carole McDonnell's fiction, devotionals, poetry and essays have appeared in many publishing venues, in print and online. She is the author of The Easy Way to Write and Teach Bible Studies which can be downloaded at ebooks-and-authors.com She lives with her husband, their two sons, and their ferocious tabby Ralphina in upstate New York.  You may contact her about this article at writers@blessedlady.com.

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