Let Go of the Box

July 2011
by John Paul Jackson
http://www.streamsministries.com

Isaiah 46:10 says that God declares “the end from the beginning” and “from ancient times things that are not yet done.” For God to do this, time must exist within Him, rather than He existing within time. If He were confined to time, time would be greater, or larger, than He, and therefore He would be limited and controlled by the time surrounding Him.

However, if time exists within Him, then He sees all of time at the same moment. Thus He is all knowledgeable. In addition, He can be everywhere at the same time, in all of time, so there is nothing He does not know and no place where He is not. With this understanding, we can be fully confident that we serve a God who is able to act on our behalf at levels of power and perfection that we cannot possibly comprehend.

For more information on the eternality of God, download Fireside Chat #53 by CLICKING HERE.

Matthew 17 gives us a glimpse of God’s true eternality. Jesus, Peter, James and John are on the Mount of Transfiguration. Clearly, the Father is there as well because He speaks audibly to His Son, and Peter, James and John hear His voice. God has brought two other men to speak with Jesus: Moses and Elijah. In that moment, there are elements of three separate eras of time in the same time, at the same place.

In an effort to understand Him, many people have come to believe that God is progressively eternal, meaning that He has limited Himself to our sense of timing and walks into each day just as we do — He doesn’t know what the future holds any more than we do. According to this opinion, God knows some things that haven’t happened yet, but He has chosen to limit His complete understanding.

That type of thinking immediately presents an issue: If God were progressively eternal and bound by time, in Matthew 17 He wouldn’t have been able to be in three separate times at the same time. He would have had to leave Jesus on the mountain to go get Moses and then leave again to go get Elijah. But clearly, He didn’t do that.

God existed before time ever began. Putting limits on Him doesn’t encourage us to see Him as He is. No, that type of thinking simply enables us to place Him in a nice, tidy little box that keeps Him safe and explainable. It cuts away the vastness, the amazement, the awe, the divine nature and the grace that surpass all understanding. God is not progressively eternal; He is eternal — period — because He is God.

Think big thoughts

Every morning, we are given our first opportunity to decide how we are going to think that day. Put very simply, we can choose to think big thoughts about God or small thoughts about God. We can continue as we have always continued with Him, taking the steps we have taken before, or we can choose to take new steps — steps that are different, ones that may draw us out of our comfort zones. But in the process, our day will conform to those thoughts, and those thoughts will further align our individual worldviews with His truth.

What does His eternality mean for us?

If God has all knowledge and is omniscient, which He does and which He is, that means there has never been a time when He didn’t know about you.

Long before time existed, God knew about you. He knew about me. He knew about our families and what we would do, and He planned us. That is why Acts 17:26–27 says:

He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us.

If He were suddenly to have a new thought about us, He would have gained knowledge. But He already has “all knowledge,” and “all knowledge” doesn’t change. If God were progressively eternal, He would not be God.

When we believe that God limits Himself, we are mentally putting away part of His deity, and anytime we “remove” any part of God’s deity, we make Him smaller and weaker in our own minds — which affects our decisions and our impact on the people around us. It affects our faith levels and our ability to trust Him. Many of us are all too close to removing God’s deity and making Him simply a “Higher Life Form.”

Someday when we stand before Him, He will never say to us, “You made Me too big. I wish I could do everything you thought I could do. Bless your heart.”

No, when we stand in front of God’s throne, we will be terrified because of His great strength, yet at the same time, we will know He loves us because we are not destroyed. We will realize, “In my grandest, wildest thoughts, I still made You too small!”

So today, take some time to reflect on these questions: Why do you love your heavenly Father? Why did you choose to commit your life to Him? What is it about Him that draws you?

Meditate on Him. Let Him boggle your mind, and let go of any thought process that would suggest God is small.

© 2011 Streams Ministries International
http://www.streamsministries.com