Let God Be God

November 26, 2018

“So, my very dear friends, when you see people reducing God to something they can use or control, get out of their company as fast as you can.”

1 Corinthians 10:14 MSG

We don’t reduce Christ to what we are; he raises us to what he is.

1 Corinthians 10:15-18 MSG

I don’t want you to become part of something that reduces you to less than yourself.

1 Corinthians 10:19-22 MSG

Peterson takes some liberty with his paraphrase of Paul’s words, but in doing so reveals the power within it. We are constantly tempted to reduce God to something we can control, expecting him to jump like a servant whenever we give the orders in our prayers, and we become angry when he acts like the God he is instead of as the slave we wish him to be. It’s not easy being a believer when life comes crashing in against us, beating us to our knees. A diagnosis of cancer, being served divorce papers, losing a job, or watching a loved one slip further and further into addiction, we pray fervently with heart and soul, often to seeming no effect. We want—no, we need—God to act, but he remains silent. In times like this, we want to give God orders, command him to do something, not realizing we’ve reversed the roles of Master and Servant. In our humanness, we become discouraged or even angry because God isn’t doing what we want him to do. It is here where many simply give up on God and quit praying. “It doesn’t work,” they explain. Of course, it doesn’t. Prayer isn’t designed to work. Prayer isn’t like putting a coin in the vending machine, choosing our result, and pulling the correct knob.

God desires to fill us with himself, but before he can do that, he must empty us of ourselves. It’s that emptying we don’t like. 

We prefer (as Peterson puts it) to reduce God to our level instead of letting him lift us to his. In doing so, God may become manageable, but he also becomes less than God. And we ourselves are reduced to less than he created us to be. Letting God be God is not easy, but it is necessary. This is why Jesus says we must pick up a cross if we are to follow him. We ourselves are on that cross, dying daily, as Paul puts it, that Christ might live in us. 

Thankfully, I’m still learning what it means to let God be God, to let Christ’s glory shine, revealing who he really is, and to become all he has called me to become. I am grateful for today’s Scripture and it’s challenge to become all he created me to be.