Ultimate Experience: The Unmanageable God

Text art "Ultimate experience

Knowing God is the ultimate experience because he is beyond control.

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Relationships

Relationships are interesting because people are interesting, and one reason people are interesting is they are not puppets. People are a wonder to explore and a challenge to know because we each have our own mind and will.

And because of that, relationships are dynamic, fluid, ever changing, like Chicago weather. Being a weatherman in Chicago is interesting; in San Diego, boring.

God has his own mind and will, and so he is anything but boring to relate to.

If you want a God you can control, master, limit to formulas, put in a box, and have all figured out, you’ll need to make yourself an idol. People make idols so they have some measure of control. We come to idols because we want some higher power who will do what we want. Idols are manageable deities.

The true God is not manageable.

People have written books about How to Manage Your Boss. That’s an interesting turnaround, and it’s something every employee would like to do. How sweet it would be to control the supervisor who controls you.

But you can’t do that with God. Forget about writing the book How to Manage God. It can’t be done.

Few would dare put that into words, but that is what we all try to do. We want to control our lives, and therefore we need to control God. We know he is superior to us, but we need to manage him if we are to have the life we want. So we set the agenda and schedule for how he works in our lives and see if we can persuade him to go along.

But the true God is way beyond us.

He is “the blessed and only Sovereign” (1 Tim. 6:15). He “works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Eph. 1:11). “Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth” (Psalm 135:6).

The world is his kingdom, not mine.

If that were the end of the story, we might not be happy.

God’s open-door policy

But there is more. For God invites us into a relationship where our desires matter immensely to him.

Though he is sovereign, he invites us to present our requests to him. He is a good Father who loves to give his children what they ask if it is in their welfare.

God is sovereign and holy, which is wonderful; he is also loving, fully open to our entreaties, good, kind, generous, gracious, relational, and completely approachable through faith in our perfect mediator Jesus Christ.

Put that all together, and you know he is both almighty and trustworthy.

Knowing him is never boring. Never shallow.

What it is to mountain climbers to scale Mount Everest is just a hint of the majestic experience that awaits us as we walk with God.