Thursday, September 4, 2008

Next     Previous     Today

A Little Bit of God

I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please.
Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep,
but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk
or a snooze in the sunshine.
I don’t want enough of God to make me love a black man
or pick beets with a migrant.
I want ecstasy, not transformation.
I want warmth of the womb, not a new birth.
I want a pound of the Eternal in a paper sack.
I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please.

— Wilbur Rees

When you read this poem by Wilbur Rees, do you wonder like me why most people around us are so willing to settle for so little of God.  Do you marvel at the reality that most people prefer boring and predictable to the adventure of faith?  I trust that you like me, want more than just three dollars worth of God.  But how easily do we put restrictions on God?  In a way, so what if we were to ask for $10,000.00 worth of God, would that be only as much as he has, or more than he wants to give us?  Would that not also be restricting him, even though it seems as though we are opening ourselves to more of him?

What does the fullness of God look like.  It looks like Jesus in whom "God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell" (Colossians 1:19).  And it is what we are to look like, "filled to the measure of the fullness of God" (Ephesians 3:19), for, "From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another" (John 1:16).  Paul says,

"For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name.  I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in you inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.  And I pray that you, being rooted 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 of the fullness of God" (Ephesians 3:14-19).

To come to the God who is not only able but willing, even eager, "to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine" (Ephesians 3:20), and ask only for a little bit might seem safe to us but what an affront to a God who has given all for us!  He wants to glorify himself in and through us — what glory is there for him if we only have a little bit?  He is the God who says in Malachi 3:10, "Test me in this and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out on you so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it."

Can we get rid of our three dollars worth of God faith?  It's not about deserving it anyway.  It is all about grace or as someone has said, g.r.a.c.e. — God's riches at Christ's expense.  Pray bigger.  Believe for more.  He will not be insulted that you ask.  He will be pleased to give us what we ask for and more, immeasurably more.  So ask big!  And then ask bigger!  Three dollars worth of God will never get the job done.  All you need is what is available — and what is available is all of Him!

Next     Previous     Today