When People Are Big and God is Small

Every time I hear someone talk about John 4, the story of the woman at the well, I chuckle. There was a week in my life a few years back when God was really trying to get my attention through the story of the woman at the well. It just kept coming up in a variety of ways, (my pal JB can attest to this), and it was hard to ignore.

If I were to look back over the last year of ministry, I can see a couple prevalent themes that stick out like a sore thumb (thumbs, I guess). Especially as of late, one of these themes is strong - And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith (Hebrews 12:1-2ish).

I have a natural tendency is to think about the ways I can be improving myself, and growing emotionally, mentally, spiritually, etc. It's a good thing, and something we should strive for as believers who want to continue to grow to be like Christ. But, there's something to be said about taking our eyes off ourselves and setting them on Jesus. When my eyes are constantly fixed on my flaws instead of the One who is the perfecter of my faith, my relationship with God becomes all about me.

This very topic is continually set before me this semester. My staff team is reading a book called "When People Are Big and God Is Small." I highly recommend it, even if you don't wrestle with people being bigger than God in your life. The author of this book points out that we can tend to make people bigger than they ought to be in our lives - for example, by fearing what they think of us, instead of what God thinks of us.

This has been an incredibly eye-opening book for me to read. It's my natural tendency when reading this book to make a list of all the ways I make people bigger than God in my life. But the author points out many times throughout the book that the way to alleviate this is to grow our view of God, and that will in turn diminish our inappropriately big view of people.

I love analogies, so let me explain with one relating this back to the woman at the well. My tendency when I hear that story is to make a list of my wells - all the places I go to satisfy my thirst that I shouldn't. There's the well of performance, knowledge, approval from others, etc. The point is not to focus on getting rid of these wells - the point is to continually draw from the well that offers living water. I will probably always be tempted by these other wells, but when I'm focused on the water Jesus offers, I will naturally continue to go to him instead of the other wells.

Hopefully that makes some sense! Seriously, check out that book if it sounds even a little appealing to you at all. You won't regret it!

Beginning Again.

I'm a runner.. sort-of. I'm working on accepting that statement. Once in awhile I check out the discussion boards on the website of Runner's World. They cover so many different topics in these boards, it's ridiculous. People ask questions and have discussions about things I would NEVER think about. Running is an interesting subculture, one that seems a little intimidating at first. Or continually, for us "sort-of" runners.

Tonight I found myself reading a discussion thread about knowing when you're no longer a beginning runner. There were a variety of answers, but one stood out to me. "It seems as though we can be forever beginners. Just when we think we have this running thing down, something happens and it's like we are starting all over again."

And so it is in the Christian life, wouldn't you agree? Just when we think we've overcome, or understood, or arrived at everything we needed to, we get knocked on our feet.

Hopefully we get knocked on our feet. After I ran my first 5k I got a terrible heel spur. After a few weeks of trying to suck it up and run through the pain, I finally went to the doctor. He noticed that I am a supinator. Which meant there was a problem with my running form.

The pain came from bad form that I needed to correct. By starting at the beginning again. (And just when I thought I had arrived, finishing my first 5k!)

When we get knocked down, perhaps it's because our form needs a bit of correction. And correcting it will hopefully result in less pain and more success. And success in the Christian life is being able to glorify God more and more with our lives. When the stakes are that high, a little bit of pain is worth it.