Grab our RSS feedStoking Our Expectations for Inexhaustible Increase In Our Experience of God
I pass along this illustration from Ray Ortlund Jr's guidebook on modern revival, When God Comes to Church, with the ambition of provoking all who will read it to seek to apprehend more of Christ. Or, as the Apostle Paul said, "to continue to press on."
"For those of us who have been a Christian for a while, it becomes easy to think that we've pretty much exhausted the possibilities of the Christian life. We can settle into a routine of activities at church and in our small group and bible studies, with little expectation of anything new. The familiar becomes the predictable, and everything from here on out will be more of the same. We dip our teaspoon into the vast ocean of the Living God. Holding that teaspoon in our hand, we say, "This is God." We pour it out into our lives, and we say, "This is the Christian experience."
God calls us to dive into the ocean. He calls us into ever new regions of His fullness, His immensity, His all-sufficiency. There is more for us in Christ than we have yet apprehended. Let's never think that we have Him figured out or that we've seen all He can do. The bible is not a guidebook to a theological museum. Its a roadmap showing us the way into neglected and even forgotten glories of the Living God." (41)
No matter how long you've walked with Jesus, don't limit your soul to the lie that your previous experience of Christ's favor must be the determining factor for how you should expect Him to graciously manifest Himself in the days ahead.
"He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him." ~ Jesus, John 14:21
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