Devotional Articles

My God Is So Big

by Sarah Stirman

It's Vacation Bible School season. A magical time of Kool-Aid and cookies, sheep made from juice boxes and cotton balls, and lots of marching and singing about being in the Lord's army. Plump little fists will raise the scrawny arms they are attached to as little souls sing, with gusto, "My God is so BIG, so STRONG and so MIGHTY!! There's NOTHING my God cannot do!"** We will all smile and sing with them. But do we really believe it?

As my children's faith began to emerge, I would answer very typical questions as they tried to comprehend the incomprehensible: the bigness of God. "Mom, is God bigger than our house? Bigger than that big coliseum? NO WAY!!" Of course, we impress on our children that God is bigger than the biggest mountain and all of the oceans of the world. In fact, He's bigger than the whole world, bigger than the universe.

One of John's statements has, for me, the ultimate trump card in the bigness of God: "For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything" (1 John 3:20).

I pray that is as encouraging to you as it is to me. I struggle and wrestle with this earthly vessel and all of the nature of the flesh that comes with it. I have realized I simply can't do it, I simply can't win that battle. Then the good news: God is greater than my heart.

The list goes on and you may have your own list. That God is greater than my heart is gloriously good news to me. However, the difficult part is that God gave me the option of allowing Him to be big in my life or not.

At spiritual peaks in my life, when I am resting in the shadow of His wing, I can see that I only know and see the hem of His holy garments. I am reminded that to simply abide in Him and His love will allow Him to do far greater things with me than I would ever do on my own. But because my feet are still on this earth, I allow the "daily-ness" of life to burden and overwhelm me so much that eventually I confine the Lord to a shoe box in my mind, tucked away in a corner where I know He will be if I ever need Him (as if there is ever a moment on this earth that I DON'T need Him!!).

Oswald Chambers put it beautifully: "It is the dull, dreary, commonplace day, with commonplace duties and people, that kills the burning heart unless we have learned the secret of abiding in Jesus."*

Abiding in Jesus! That is the secret! Jesus told us over and over that was the key to bearing fruit (John 15:1-17) and he responds to whatever it is I think I am doing on my own with this important reminder: "... apart from me you can do nothing" (John 15:5). Not "not very much," not "only a little," but "nothing" is exactly what I'm accomplishing when I'm not abiding in Him!

I will pray for my "daily-ness" to become abiding in Him. Then I will raise my fists and sing, "My God is so BIG, so STRONG and so MIGHTY!! There's NOTHING my God cannot do!"

And in my heart I will know it to be true.

(Author's note: I wrote this about 6 weeks ago. I really needed to be reminded of this -- is it okay for me to say that? Still praying for that "daily-ness" of abiding in Him!)

Sarah Stirman is a wife and mother who is available for providing articles for magazines or other print material and speaking engagements at ladies' classes or retreats. She is part of The Coffee Group Ministry: www.thecoffeegroup.net. She may be contacted at sarahstir79605@yahoo.com.

Religion Can Drive You Crazy

by Don Glover

Religion can drive you crazy.

I speak not as an atheist or a wholesale debunker of religion, but as a minister of the gospel with well over forty years in the Christian pulpit.

Still, I say it: Religion can drive you crazy.

To be sure, so can alcohol and drugs. So can your job. So can your wife, husband, or children. So can your parents. So can your house or automobile. So can almost anything.

Jean Paul Sartre has a character in his play No Exit to blurt out, “Hell is other people.” So it sometimes seems. Yet not just people, but hundreds of things, including religion, can create a hell in your head. With other people of monolithic mind, you can create a wacky world far bigger than your individual cranium.

Look at the multitudinous religious expressions, say, at Athens in Paul's day (Acts 17), or, more to the point, in our world today. Humans are irresistibly religious. The inclination to transcendence is natural. It is so much a part of human nature that insane asylums contain people who talk wildly of religion, some of whom claim they are God or Jesus or Buddha. That doesn't mean that religion is for crazy people; it means merely that religion is so deep and pervasive that it will find expression even in mentally ill patients.

In his book The Essence of Christianity, published in 1881, Ludwig Feurerbach argued that Christianity (and, indeed, every religion) is merely a projection of human needs and desires. Sigmund Freud swallowed Feuerbach’s thesis and, through his psychiatric interpretations, popularized this atheism throughout the world. Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Nicolai Lenin scooped it up and applied it to their Communist worldview (dialectical materialism), which is, in fact, an alternative religion. For Marx and his fanatics, “Religion is the opiate of the people.”

Sometimes it is. Yet what about the opiate of Fascism and Communism, the two most destructive embodiments of alternative faiths in the twentieth century? The perpetuators of these diabolic systems enslaved and slaughtered millions of people in the name of their political absolutisms.

Religion can be a powerful and passionate force for good or evil. Moreover, any religion, any faith, any way of life, can be misunderstood and falsely accused. Some of Jesus' contemporaries charged him with madness (Jn. 10:20) and eventually crucified him. Paul, summoned before King Agrippa to explain his mission as an apostle of Christ, was interrupted by Festus, the Roman governor, who said, “Paul, you are mad; your great learning is turning you mad” (Acts 26:25). Paul respectfully denied the charge and asserted that the gospel reality “was not done in a corner” (v. 26).

Though there is a sense in which we Christians “are fools for Christ’s sake” (I Cor. 4:10), Christianity, properly understood and practiced, does not drive people crazy; it drives them to truth, reality, love, and goodness—to what the Pastoral Epistles call “sound doctrine” (I Tim. 1:10, 13; 4:3; Tit. 1:9, 13; 2:1-2). “Sound” is the English translation of the Greek word hugiaino, which means healthy.

A healthy religion is not murderous; it does not threaten prospects with physical violence if they do not accept it or if they practice another faith. Radical Islam believes it can conquer the world through terrorism and violence. The Prince of Peace, however, tells us that the way into the kingdom is not through the sword.

A healthy religion is not driven by the cult mentality. Devotion to Christ is one thing; blind obedience is another. “If the Bible tells you to run through that wall,” I once heard a preacher say when I was a boy, “you must run into it and depend on the Lord to make a hole for you.” God also gave me a brain. Cult dictators like Jim Jones, whose followers at his command swallowed poisoned-laced Kool-Aid, represent a neurotic and dangerous faith.

A healthy religion is not superstitious. My youngest brother, who lives in Houston, is about to have his cancer treated at the city's world-renowned M. D. Anderson Hospital. A couple of his friends are striving to get him to avoid the hospital and instead apply “Bible Oils” to the outside of the internal area. These people promise total healing. They cite “testimonies.” My brother, who is Christian, rejects this unscientific and superstitious approach to medical health. In a few days, he’ll check into the hospital even as we offer up prayers for him.

Healthy religion is not mindless. Biblical religion says to love God also with the mind (Mt. 22:37 cf. Dt. 6:5). “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm,” said Emerson, and he’s right. Yet consider how many horrors have been done in enthusiasm’s name.

Edward Gibbon, the famed world historian, writing about a certain delirious sect, said, “They mistook the giddiness of the head for the illumination of the Spirit.” People forever extolling their inner light should consider J. S. Whale's observation: “The step from the Inner Light to the outer darkness is a small one.”

A healthy religion is not self-centered. People altogether consumed with their own feelings, a phenomenon Tom Wolfe ridicules in his famous essay “The Me Decade” (analyzing a cultural development whose strains, Wolfe shows, are “religious”), miss the meaning of New Testament faith. To love your neighbor as yourself, which the Old Testament and Jesus himself said was the second greatest commandment, is much more important than constantly holding your pulse or jumping up and down. Get busy. Do what you can for others (Jas. 1:26-27; 2:14-24). Christianity is more than how good you feel on Sunday. It’s about how you treat others on Monday.

Finally, a healthy religion is redemptive. Christians sometimes say that Christianity is less a religion and more of a relationship. True. A relationship with God in Christ is personal. We are sinners saved by grace. God accepts us not because we are perfect, but because we need him. Sound teaching promotes salvation from sin and guilt and restores us to God’s favor, where we walk in peace, goodness, and hope.

“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick,” said the Savior (Mt. 9:12). A healthy religious person confesses—to use the words of my dad’s favorite hymn—“I need Thee every hour.”

Don Glover is a husband and father of six grown children. He is the former minister at Forsythe Avenue Church of Christ, having served our congregation for 29 years. He presently substitute preaches in the area and writes numerous newpaper articles.

Prayer Request

The members of Forsythe Avenue Church of Christ believe in the power of prayer. We invite you to use the form below to communicate your prayer request to us and we will join you in prayer.

Name:
Request:

Those responding to this portion of the Web site will not be personally contacted. However, if you need to speak with someone directly about a prayer need, please call our church office at (318)387-4467.