Doing My Part

Sometimes I think of my Christian walk as a sort of partnership with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It's a hugely weighted-towards-God, one-sided partnership, for sure, but there are bits in there that depend upon me. I've been trying to think of a way to describe this one-sided "symbiosis" between God and those He is rescuing from destruction. I'm sure that "symbiosis" isn't quite the right word, but it's the best one that comes to mind right now.

The more people He gets to rescue, the more children He gets to love and share Himself with, and that's what He wants. He really wants to spend eternity with people who are totally unlike Him and then are so completely transformed that they conform to the image of His Son. 

He's not looking for ways to keep us out of eternity with Him. Quite the contrary, He's looking for ways to bring us into eternity with Him.

His existence doesn't depend on us the way ours depends on Him. In that sense, He doesn't need us, but He very much wants us. He can live quite well without us, but He doesn't want to. His desire to love us is so extraordinarily strong that He has gone to a great deal of trouble and anguish to bring us aboard His "Love Boat".

Our Reason for Being

We know that God is the Creator. When we say that, we are usually talking about "creating" as thought it's just something He does. But it is much more than that. Creating isn't just something He does; it's something He is. To put it in human terms (forgive me, Lord! Human terms are the best I can do!), He is wired to create. It's like He can't stop. He loves to create because He loves to be known, to share life and enjoy life with what He creates. When He shares life, He is sharing Himself because life isn't just something he gives, life is something He is (John 5:26).

Before making this creation in which we live, I think that He probably indulged in many creations. After all, eternity for Him extends backwards as well as forwards. For Him, time extends in all kinds of ways that we literally cannot imagine. He made angels long before He made us. He made the four living creatures around the throne (Revelation 4:6) long before He made us. Long before us, He made the wondrous beings that Ezekiel described. No one knows what else He made long before us.

Don't Feel Bad for Job

The Book of Job is easy to misunderstand and misuse. You just can't grab any verse out of the book and say that it's a clear statement of truth as God sees it. Many of the characters' statements are truth as they see it, but they happen to be seeing and saying it wrong. At first blush, many of their statements may look and sound like truth but are actually skewed versions of truth. At the end of the story, it's clear that God wasn't at all happy with those skewed versions of truth. After all, skewed truth is untruth and is even more dangerous because of its subtle resemblance to the real deal. 

So, here's my non-theological, high-level view of what REALLY happened in the Book of Job. The Holy Spirit took me through this book during a very tough time in my life, through things not of my choosing nor of my doing. I was deeply changed through that season, changed for the better.