They had rested quietly, patiently hidden in my kitchen junk drawer for at least four years. Every spring that came and went I was sure I’d use them. Never mind that stamped simply across one end were the words – USE BY 2009. Oh, dear…here is it 2011! Oh, well, finally last week I did the “difficult thing.” I tore open the end of the small cheery envelope and casually, albeit hopefully in spite of the warning of failure, scattered that one envelope of sunny, yellow marigold seeds into a lonely pot on the corner of my deck. Just for good measure I watered them once. Lo and behold, today I spied the tiniest little green shoots filling the pot. It’s a miracle!
I’m thinking that it may be obvious to you that I DO NOT have a green thumb for the beautification of the great out-of-doors. If you know me personally you know that God gave the family allotment of green thumbs to my mom and sister! (In addition they also both get amazing tans as they use those nifty green thumbs, as opposed to my tendency toward freckling and burning. I will not be bitter. I will not be bitter. I will NOT be bitter!)
But honestly, a few years ago God seemed to ask me to work on another garden, one just as beautiful in His eyes. Yes, it takes planning. Yes, it takes work with my spade. Yes, it takes weeding and makes my back ache at times. Yes, it takes thorough watering, but the results are no less rewarding for me. This garden gives me the sweetest of joys and the neat thing about it is that it is truly worth passing on.
So what’s in my garden soil? Well, let me tell you. I would very much enjoy being able to share some seeds and maybe even some surprising little green sprouts with you, seeing myself as a community seed-sower and a happy gardener – regularly (about 3 times a month) giving you a simple beginning of a description of WHO GOD IS that you can then personally fertilize, water, and prune by your own thoughts, reading, and talks with HIM – your own plot right along beside mine.
Some of you may still be wondering, Why focus on God’s descriptions? I read my Bible, don’t I? Isn’t that enough? I have asked myself that same question as I’ve prayed for a long time about sharing this with you. Though the reasons are many, I have sensed God reminding me that digging into the long list of names and descriptions that He has revealed about Himself much through His word and through other godly resources will help me (and others!) follow through on one of the most important jobs He has given. And what is that? It is to REALLY KNOW HIM BETTER WITH MY WHOLE BEING and, in my daily life, REFLECT THE BEAUTY AND THE WONDER OF HIS NAME – in essence, all that He stands for. I want to be able to speak knowledgeably of who He really is!
In three instances in the Psalms (5:1, 19:14, 49:3) words of the mouth and meditation of the heart are mentioned as dual parts of our lives. At its root in Hebrew, the word “meditation” in these three verses means muttering, uttering, musing, a sense of mumbling over and over. At the same time there can be a sense of music playing over and over, possibly vibrations of strings being pulled as on a harp.
One goal in stopping to look at God’s names and descriptions is to not only have them before my eyes on a page or just be on my lips but be ruminating in my heart. IT SEEMS TO ME THAT BEFORE MY LIPS START SPEAKING I WANT THE MEDITATIONS OF MY HEART, THE MUTTERINGS, THE RESOUNDING, CONTINUING VIBRATIONS TO BE TRUTHFUL AND CONSTANTLY REPEATING IN MY INNER, CORE BEING. Jesus says in Luke 6:45b: For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.
My family openly laughs at the way I like to program my favorite worship songs on REPEAT, doing it until they are all ready to scream. Sorry, fam! When I do this I don’t usually stop what I’m doing. I continue to dart in and out of the room in which the music is playing, but when I come back I can jump right back into the song barely skipping a beat. Sometimes we all must stop everything and silently meditate, but I hope and pray that you and I can also put HIS wonderful names and descriptions on REPEAT in our hearts wherever we are, starting with one of the most amazing of them all!
So here we go, tear open the seed packet with me. Yes, I know some of you may feel like you have EXPIRED stamped across your forehead having hidden yourself away from Him for just too long. Hey, don’t worry, He promises to refresh and restore even if the birds have gotten into your garden. He promises to water your garden. In fact, Scripture calls HIM the Gardener, the one in charge, but, oops, I’m getting ahead of myself. That is for another day…
The first very important “seed” I’d like to plant is this statement: GOD IS INCOMPREHENSIBLE!
How’s that for starting out BIG? It IS big and yet it forces us right from the start to begin in humility to recognize that this God communique’ can barely begin to scratch the surface of ALL HE IS!!!
TAKE A MOMENT AND ponder God as incomprehensible as you think of Him creating the world, flooding the earth, speaking from the burning bush, parting the Red Sea, sending fire to the thoroughly soaked altar for Elisha, planning His Son’s virgin birth, raising Jesus from the dead, and sending the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. (Is any supernatural thing really comprehensible?)
Today as you start meditating on HIM…come boldly with great expectation, yet come humbly in total awe of an INCOMPREHENSIBLE GOD! I encourage you with this particular mind-boggling SEED description to read to the very bottom, slowly letting it all sink in.
~~~
EVERYWHERE, EVERY MOMENT GOD IS INCOMPREHENSIBLE!
~~~
Webster’s Dictionary EVERYWHERE, EVERY MOMENT GOD IS INCOMPREHENSIBLE!
~~~
INCOMPREHENSIBLE
1. Incapable of being explained or accounted for
2. Difficult to understand
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Synonyms impenetrable, unfathomable, unintelligible
Antonyms fathomable, intelligible, understandable
~~~
THE BIBLE SAYS:Psalm 147:5 - Great is the Lord, and abundant in power. His understanding is beyond measure.
Psalm 144:3 - Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and His greatness is unsearchable.
Job 11:7 - Can you fathom the mysteries of God? Can you probe the limits of the Almighty?
Job 37: 5 - God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways; He does great things beyond our understanding. (Check out all of Job 37-41)
Isaiah 40:18 - To whom, then, will you compare God? What image will you compare Him to? (See Isaiah 40:12-31 too)
Isaiah 55:9 - As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are God’s ways higher than our ways and His thoughts than our thoughts.
Jeremiah 9:23-24 - Thus says the Lord, “Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches; but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord who exercises lovingkindness, justice, and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things,” declares the Lord.
1 Corinthians 2:16 - For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, THAT HE WILL INSTRUCT HIM? But we have the mind of Christ.
~~~
Words of the Wise:A.W. Tozer - God is not like anything, that is, HE is not exactly like anything or anybody.
Candy Troutman - God knows no boundaries. He is without measure.
Blaise Pascal - Incomprehensible? But because you cannot understand a thing, it does not cease to exist....It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that He should not exist.
Finding you is just like
trying to
smell the color nine.
Chris Ricesmell the color nine.
Jerry Bridges - God’s plan and His ways of working out His plan are frequently beyond our ability to fathom and understand. We must learn to trust when we don’t understand.
A.W. Pink - From this contemplation of His attributes, it should be evident to us all that God is, first, an incomprehensible Being; and, lost in wonder at His infinite greatness, we adopt the words of Zophar, "Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know? The measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea" (Job 11:7-9 <http://www.pbministries.org/books/pink/Gleanings_Godhead/godhead_18.htm> ). When we turn our thoughts to God’s eternity, His immateriality, His omnipresence, His almightiness, our minds are overwhelmed.
St. John Chrysostom - For you are the ineffable God, inconceivable, invisible, incomprehensible, existing forever and yet ever the same.
C.H. Spurgeon - As well might a gnat seek to drink in the ocean, as a finite creature to comprehend the Eternal God. A God whom we could understand would be no God. If we could grasp Him, He could not be infinite. If we could understand Him, He could not be divine.
Because God is God,
He is beyond the understanding of man.
His ways, character, and acts are higher than ours.
Kay Arthur
He is beyond the understanding of man.
His ways, character, and acts are higher than ours.
Kay Arthur
Christian Research Institute - God is incomprehensible, not in the sense that the concept of God is unintelligible, but in the sense that God cannot be fully and directly known by finite creatures, because of His uniqueness and His infinitude.
Justin Huffman - How, then, can we describe the greatness of the God of the Bible? We might begin with words like massive, huge, gargantuan, humongous, enormous, gigantic, or immense. But we might use these words to describe a jumbo jet, or a football player, or even a submarine sandwich. Perhaps it is better to start with words like indescribable, incomprehensible, unfathomable.
~~~
In an early morning apologetics class a few years ago as we discussed this particular aspect of God, a woman raised her hand and basically asked, “Does God even want us to put Him in these ‘boxes’ of our descriptions? After all HE is incomprehensible!” You might be asking the same thing at this point if you’ve made it this far through the definitions, verses, and quotes.IF GOD IS INCOMPREHENSIBLE, UNSEARCHABLE, UNFATHOMABLE WHY MEDITATE ON HIM AT ALL? IN FACT, HOW CAN WE?
But Tozer also encourages us to get to know God through these descriptions AND experiencing HIM when he says, “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which only God can fill through his Son, Jesus Christ.”
THIS JOURNEY IS WORTHWHILE! GOD HAS SET IN ME A LONGING TO KNOW HIM. HE FILLS A LONGING WITHIN ME LIKE NOTHING OR NO ONE ELSE EVER COULD!
I’m also emboldened by the words of C.H. Spurgeon, “Scripture teaches the absolute incomprehensibility of God (Job 38-41) It also presents a doctrine of God that fully maintains His knowability. And He has revealed, at least in part, His purpose for doing so-that we may worship Him as God and have eternal life. Our great God can be known, but He cannot be fully comprehended.”
Read again that underlined statement. Yes, He is so big, SO GOD, so NOT LIKE US, that HE is incomprehensible. My mind will always be too small, too human, to fully take all that HE is into it. BUT…He wants us to know HIM. He does not run from us. I believe, in fact, that HE chases us!
St. Augustine says, “God thirsts to be thirsted after!”
Tozer says: “The child, the philosopher, and the religionist have all one question, ‘What is God like?’
Son Joel’s penetrating God-questions at age 10 proved to be a timely catalyst for my own deepening search for definitions of God. I have a strong sense that God has been cheering Joel and me on in asking questions about HIM, even when answers seem illusive at times. As mother and son, we both proclaim, “I believe you, Lord, help our unbelief!”
Meditating on the mysteries with you, one and all,
Sue
PONDERINGS ALONE OR WITH OTHERS:
1. Does the term INCOMPREHENSIBLE tend to stop you in your search to know God or make the search endless?
2. How old were you when God seemed first unexplainable to you? Do you still wrestle with that concept?
3. What does Justin Huffman’s quote about football players, jumbo jets, and God say about our understanding of bigness? Has that changed from Bible days? How?
4. Which of the Bible verses best explains an INCOMPREHENSIBLE God to you? What is a memorable Bible story for you that illustrates this description of God?
5. Which words of wisdom most touch you in understanding this concept?
