Episode #146 God is Better Than We Think – Cultivate Wonder

Hey friends, it's Jen, and today I'm inviting you to come and wonder at God with me.

This episode is releasing the same day that my new poetry collection is releasing into the world. And it's called A Beckoning to Wonder: Christian Poetry Exploring God's Story.

The theme of wonder is something that God has been talking with me about for years now. I have found that wonder is often missing from our conversations about God.

We talk about faith. We talk about knowing him and drawing close and learning how to read the Bible and how to hear God's voice, and part of all of those things is wonder. And I think a lot of our conversations and longings for God are just missing that awareness.

God is entirely other. He is not like us. And yet even with that awareness, we can come wanting to fully understand, wanting to have safety and security in the concreteness of our answers, to feel like we have faith figured out, like we know what to expect.

And there is safety that we have in God, but the safety that we have in Him is because He is not like us. Because He is true and He is good, His character is trustworthy, and He does not change. Because He is so much greater, we can take refuge in Him.

And the Bible is full of things we won't understand, at least this side of heaven. It's full of things that we can marvel at about God, that we can approach him with reverence and awe because of who he is, because he is great, and he is worthy of being praised.

But sometimes we can skip over those things that produce wonder in us to find the things that give us practical answers and understanding. When in reality, faith needs wonder. Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. And so in the very nature of faith, it requires that we trust our God who we don't fully understand. Being sure of what we hope for, certain of what we do not see, we can trust God and we can marvel at the greatness and the goodness of who he is.

The beginning of a beckoning to wonder begins with saying that:

“Every page of the Bible
and every moment of life
invites us to experience God.
Beckoning us to wonder
Who is God really?
What is God up to?
and to marvel at what we find. (Jen Weaver, Introduction to A Beckoning to Wonder)

I think a lot of us relate to having those questions about God. Who is God really and truly and fully? And what is he up to? What is God doing in the world right now with all of the heartache and the hardship that we see? What is God doing in my life right now in the circumstances where I need him to show up?

Who is God? What is he doing? And sometimes we can hesitate to ask those questions because we're afraid of the answers that we'll find. Or we're concerned that the answers we'll discover aren't as good as we hoped God would be.

But the encouragement that I have for you today—it's the same encouragement that I hold on to—is that God is better than we think. God Better than we think. God is truer than we can even understand.

As we continue to uncover the answers to these questions, who is God really? And what is God up to? We are prompted to marvel at what we find. I'll share a few examples of this for us in scripture.

One comes from the life of Jesus and it's the story of Jesus healing the paralytic as recorded for us in Luke chapter five. The paralytic's friends can't find a way to get the man to Jesus and so they lower him down through the ceiling and when Jesus saw their faith, the faith of the man's friends, he said, man, your sins are forgiven you.

And I'll pick it up in verse 21, it says

“And the scribes and the Pharisees began to question, saying, ‘Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?’ When Jesus perceived their thoughts, he answered them, ‘Why do you question in your hearts? Which is easier, to say, Your sins are forgiven you, or to say, Rise and walk? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins’—he said to the man who was paralyzed—'I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home.’ And immediately he rose up before them and picked up what he had been lying on and went home, glorifying God. And amazement seized them all, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, ‘We have seen extraordinary things today.’” (Luke 5:21-26)

In Jesus's life and ministry on earth, he not only forgave sins, he healed. He perceived the thoughts of the people who were gathering around them and answered their internal questions. And amazement seized them all and they proclaimed. We have seen extraordinary things today.

We see this also recorded in Exodus 15 in the Song of Moses, when God rescued the Israelite people from slavery in Egypt. And in verse 11, it says,

“Who among the gods
is like you, Lord?
Who is like you—
majestic in holiness,
awesome in glory,
working wonders?” (Exodus 15:11)

And then in Psalm 145, which is a Psalm of praise from David in verse three, reading from the NIV, it says,

“Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise;
his greatness no one can fathom.” (Psalm 145:3)

God's greatness, no one can fathom, but that doesn't need to stop us from wondering at him. We can come to him with our questions about who he is and what he is like, not nervously, not fearfully concerned that he might not be as good as we hope he is but anticipating that he's even better than we might think of him. Delighting in the fact that he is beyond our understanding. And so here's our question for God today:

God, what's something about you that's even better than I thought it was? I want to grow in my wonder of you.

Have a good talk.

And if you've been encouraged by this content, please share it with a friend and help them grow in their conversational relationship with God too!

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