We all have one you know. Boxes; we all live in boxes. Boxes are self defined areas of life where we are comfortable. Some of us live in very small boxes. We are very content to keep everything just the same, not wanting to stir anything up or cause any problems in our lives. We don’t realize that we are living in them, but we are. Others of us have bigger boxes. Something or someone persuaded us to kick out the walls of our existing box. Then we explored new areas until we got to a point where we felt uncomfortable. Slowly but surely this boundary became a wall and before you knew it a new box was formed. Sure it was a bigger box, but it was a box just the same.
I don’t know about you, but I hate living in boxes. They are so confining and they all have rules. Because without the rules, you might accidently knock one of the walls down. I don’t consider myself to be a rebellious person, but I really like to tear down walls when I run against them. I always have. Sure, I was a good kid and I didn’t go around breaking a lot of rules, but I wanted to. Later as I grew up I realized that certain rules were made to be broken, and it was much easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission. So I began breaking boxes. I can break boxes for other people. I have in the past. In many ways that is what I do in Sozo. I break the boxes that have people trapped. But my most favorite thing is to break a box that I am living in.
Sure, I live in a box too. Like I said, we all do. It’s just tat my box has gotten bigger over the years. I hate finding walls in my life; especially if they are keeping me from enjoying the presence of God in new levels. My goal in life is to tear down every wall that boxes me in. I know that this will be a full time job. People say that I am a pioneer. I guess that I am. I think that part of the pioneering spirit is kicking down walls that say you can’t just to prove to yourself that you can.
But there is something that is much worse than living in a box. The worse thing you can do, and once again we all do it, is to keep God in a box. How do you know if you have God in a box? Well, is there anything that you don’t believe God will do? Notice that I didn’t say can do. We all know he can do everything. But is there anything that you don’t believe He will do? If there is, that is a wall in your box. For example, some people don’t think God will heal them. That is a wall in the box. Sure, they know He can heal, but that[s not the same as not believing He will heal.
Once again the same thing applies. I have a pretty big box for God. I would like to think that I don’t have Him in a box, but that would be naïve. Right now I don’t really know the walls I have in my box for God. But if He does something that offends my mind, then I will know the wall, and I will gladly break it down. It’s ok to have walls if you want to break them down when you discover them.
What’s not ok is to know you have walls, but want to leave them because they make you feel safe. God is a God of Love, but He is not safe. He is like Aslan in C. S. Lewis’s works. He is to be loved, but also to be feared. He is love, but He is holy. It’s a constant tension that we live in. When we use walls to protect ourselves, then we limit God’s power in our life. I don’t want to limit anything about Him. He is beyond my understanding. After all, if I could understand Him, He wouldn’t be much of a God.
So here is the deal. We must as believers always try to tear down any wall that keeps our God from working His perfect work in our life; no matter what the price we have to pay. We have a big God that doesn’t live in a box. It’s our job to keep Him free to work with us. That’s His heart.
No comments:
Post a Comment