The Grandeur of God
Do you know how deep God’s love is? Do you know how high his glory reaches? Do you know how broad his power is? Do you know the length of how far his graciousness stretches? I’m guessing the answer is no. To some of you, it might seem like a silly question. Of course, we don’t know how grand God is. God is so great that he is hard to comprehend, sometimes even perceive. Yet, simply recognizing that God is this grand is an important first step, because that should inspire us to want to know him more, to seek a greater understanding, and to be in his presence even more. Who doesn’t want to know a greater love? Who doesn’t want to see greater beauty and glory? Who doesn’t want to be protected by greater power? Who here doesn’t need more graciousness from someone to help us when we aren’t enough? God is all of these things and more. God wants us all to plum the depths, to reach the heights, to cross the length, and to stretch the breadth of his grandeur. We should want it too.
Our first and greatest difficulty in perceiving God’s grandeur is that we often don’t believe it is there. We go around our days and we reach for that coffee in the morning. We long for the rest at the end of the day. We want that massage. We believe and want those things that are easy and tangible right in front of us. Yet, we don’t believe enough in the far greater things of God, because we aren’t reaching for them like that coffee, we aren’t longing for them like the rest at the end of work. We aren’t seeking God’s grandeur like that massage. It’s not that we don’t believe at all, but we don’t allow or practice bringing that belief into every moment of our day, and every encounter. If we did bring God into every moment, we wouldn’t need to long for that rest, because we would have it in him. We wouldn’t need that coffee, because we would have his life. Yet, we would have even more, because God is far greater than all of this. Do we believe it enough to have this change our lives that next step of faith?
The second big problem in perceiving and knowing God’s grandeur is that it is so big. It is giant. It is bigger than anything we can imagine because it is bigger than creation, bigger than heaven, and bigger than our wildest dreams. Have you ever stood at the bottom of a skyscraper or the CN tower and tried to look up? The sheer size of that building and the perspective makes it monstrous and dizzying in size. Yet, what do we do if we want to get to the top of that tower? We take it one step at a time. We get something to help lift us up, like an elevator. Or if we want a better view we stand in a different spot, we explore, we try to perceive it from different angles. Why don’t we do the same with God?
I remember as a kid I used to love to climb tall trees. I can barely imagine what my parents would have thought of this, but here was this fun puzzle and challenge to see if I was strong, skilled, smart, and brave enough to face something giant and reach its height. The same challenge faces us with God, except God doesn’t leave us to ourselves. He gives us his Holy Spirit to give us that strength, skill, intelligence, and courage to perceive what is far beyond us. We might be able to take steps on our own, but trying to understand the fullness of God without the Holy Spirit would be like trying to get to Mars without a rocket. Today, Paul is praying for us and trying to remind us that the Holy Spirit and Jesus were sent to us so that we might have power, and comprehension, and so that God’s love would dwell in our hearts. God’s already doing a lot of the work, but we must take those steps.
Our psalm today tells us something spectacular about God’s grandeur. Everything that God made praises him. You might not realize what this means. Everything in this world, every human, every creature, every plant, every mountain, everything created by the intelligence given to humans, everything portrays, speaks of, and praises a truth or many truths about the glory and grandeur of God. That means that if you want to understand something about God’s richness, all you have to do is stop and look around. Look at the things that are right beside you and pray over them - discover how every single thing, whether intentional or not, speak to the greatness of God. So I have a question that comes with this. How is your practice of praise? Sunday worship is great. You might even listen to some Christian music, but do you spend time praising God for the wonder and grandeur you see of him in everyday life? Do you praise him when you see the strength of a tree or feel the warmth of a hug, or feel the joy of a child’s laughter or see the beauty of a sunset? We should because these things we enjoy so much are all just lesser things trying to praise God in their limited ways - shouldn’t we want to perceive that greater thing in God too?
So I have challenged you in three ways, 1) Will you believe enough in God to seek him out more than the physical things and trust in him more that morning cup of coffee? 2) Will you courageously take that next step to dig deeper into faith and faith practice - like climbing that tree one branch at a time? And 3) Will you take on a greater practice of praise in your daily life, by giving him praise through the things you see and experience? All three of these things don’t take a lot, but the more we practice this recognition of God’s grandeur, the more we will see and experience something far more. AMEN
