Designer God – Some Assembly Required | Lori Stanley Roeleveld . . . Disturber of Hobbits, Writer, Speaker, Disturber of Hobbits applying biblical truth to life, culture, and today's headlines

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Designer God – Some Assembly Required

Sunday, March 24th, 2013 by Lori Roeleveld 2 Comments

If someone asked our children

“If you could design your mom or dad to be any way you’d like,

what would they be?”

I wager we’d get some interesting and rather predictable responses.

Like children,

we can be tempted to design God

after our own idea

of what we would like in a god.

And I’m sure He finds our notions similarly predictable and childish.

There are many things about Jesus that baffle and befuddle me.

I’d like Him to be clearer sometimes

and at other times, a little less clear.

Sometimes He is patient when I’d have thought He’d be angry

and angry when I’d have thought He’d be pleased.

I want Him to be soft on me and hard on others.

I want Him to understand why making everything easy for me is a much better idea than the one He apparently has in mind.

I’d like Him to spend much more time talking about how everything is going to be okay

and less time on ideas like dying to self, sacrifice, and long-suffering.

Children are prone to have fantasies in which they suddenly learn

their true parents are a wealthy king and queen

who want to rescue them and give them everything they want forever and ever.

But as they grow, children usually come to appreciate the flesh and blood parents

who raised them with a mixture of love and imperfection.

It is time we grew up to the truth about God as revealed in Jesus Christ.

The Jews hailed a king when Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.

They cried out to Him, “Hosanna! Save us now! Save us now!”

And Jesus wept because they had no idea

the road He would take to procure their salvation.

And some of them would desert Him

and wait, instead, for another Messiah

who will never come.

He was not the God they imagined

so they chose their imaginations over God.

He is a personal Savior

but we cannot personalize Him

the way we would bedazzle a purse

or customize a car

or renovate a house.

We cannot accept Him

and then decide to upgrade

to a more palatable deity who doesn’t make our friends uncomfortable

or require us to change.

I am.

That says it all.

He is.

This is truth.

To follow Him is to allow Him to reveal Himself

and then renovate our own spiritual houses

to come in line with His design

not the other way around.

Control freaks need not apply.

You thought it was tough for a rich man to inherit the kingdom,

imagine the odds of the selfish, entitled, independent, controlling, arrogant, demanding humans

we’re breeding en masse in these modern times

bowing at the feet of a God who does things His own way in His own time for His own purpose.

When we pray for miracles,

let this be at the top of our request,

that God will reach us

even though we’ve become like spoiled children

and that we will not miss Him when He comes

because we were looking for the god of our imagination

rather than the God who is.

Hosanna! Hosanna in the Highest. Come, Lord Jesus, come.

2 Comments

The Conversation

Ginny Jaques says:

March 24, 2013 at 8:01 pm

Amen. You have described us so well, and you have described Him so well too.

Reply
Cathy Richmond says:

March 25, 2013 at 2:59 pm

Lori, Tosca Lee’s Iscariot shows this so well. The disciples struggled to understand Jesus’s mission – as we continue to struggle.

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