The Greatness of God

There is something that is totally crazy about our God, something that is so incomprehensible and mind boggling, and yet it's something that we often overlook regularly. That thing is God's love. Why is it so hard for us to recognize or realize the fact that God loves us? For myself, it's because He is God! God, our creator, the one who made us out of dust. The one who can build up and tear down nations, the one who can flood the entire world and destroy everything in a moment. God, the one who is mighty and omniscient, who has no beginning and no end, the one who we can't even begin to comprehend because he is so GREAT. How can it be that we have this awesome God who loves us...the puniest of people?

God's greatness is so vast, so beyond compare and so beautiful. Every time I think about it I am amazed and blown away. 

One of my favorite passages is Isaiah 40. I love it because it shows us a beautiful and terrifying picture of how truly great our God is! It talks about how he can "mark off the heavens with a span", (which is the entire span, or length, of his hand) and "he can measure the waters in the hollow of his hand." (The little cup of his palm) (Isaiah 40:12)   

The passage goes on to ask, "To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare with him? An idol! A craftsman casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and casts for it silver chains. He who is too impoverished for an offering chooses wood that will not rot; he seeks out a skillful craftsman to set up an idol that will not move. Do you not know? Do you not hear? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle o the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in; who brings princes to nothing, and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness." (Isaiah 40:18-23) 

You simply cannot compare God to anything. You would be stupid to even try to do something like that. 

As humans, we want the pleasure or self satisfaction of knowing everything. But our brains are so small that it's impossible. We are finite. God is infinite! So most often, when we try to comprehend something as as amazing, awesome, and incomprehensible as God it frustrates and sometime infuriates us. 

Francis Chan says; "Not being able to fully understand God is frustrating, but it is ridiculous for us to think we have the right to limit God to something we are capable of comprehending. What a stunted, insignificant god that would be! If my mind is the size of a soda can and God is the size of all the oceans, it would be stupid for me to say He is only the small amount of water I can scoop into my little can. God is so much bigger, so far beyond our time-encased, air/food/sleep-dependent lives." This is all so true, and it proves that God is absolutely like no other.

And yet, knowing these things, and acknowledging how great God is, brings me so much joy, and again it boggles my mind. God is so great and so mighty, and yet he still loves us with a crazy kind of love. I know I have talked about God's love before, but it is something that is so important and so amazing that I can't get over it! I can't get past it or move away from it!

This is a God that surpasses all understanding, yet he desires to have a personal and intimate relationship with every single one of his children - US - despite all of our baggage, failures, and flaws. What makes this so crazy is that this is a God who doesn't need us at all... but he wants us. What's even crazier is that we need God, but most of the time we don't want him!

And yet, still, even through all of that he still loves us relentlessly. And rather than judge us in his righteous anger and pour out his wrath on us for our sin and rebellion, God has chosen to offer us an amazing free grace... because even though he is righteous and holy and cannot leave sin unpunished he is also a merciful God...a God who took our sin onto himself and died in our place. That leaves me speechless. How GREAT is our God?!