How Big Is Your God?
by Philip Asselin
How big is your God? On the face of it this is a strange question, as we know, in our minds, at least, that God fills the universe. He is everywhere all at once. But I made this a personal question by asking how big your God is. Does He feel far away at times, remote, detached from your daily life? Many people feel that way. For all my non-Christian life, God was all of that. It might sound strange, but it didn’t bother me that my God was distant - too busy with all the world’s problems to have time to focus on me, as who was I to be worth more than a microsecond of His time?
That changed significantly when I gave my life to Jesus, and I came to know Him on a personal level. Yet, there were many times I didn’t spend time in prayer and reading His word. As a result, He was still distant, but it a different way, because I was running my life my way and my God was still small. He was bigger than before, but still smaller than He wanted to be to me.
When I thought of God, my mind pictured Him as massive, but my heart saw Him as small. To make me change, God had to show me how much I needed Him. It was vitally necessary, but it wasn’t painless. I came to realise that I wanted God in my life, but that, by keeping Him at a distance, I had made Him seem small. I needed to draw closer to Him. I had to make that choice.
As I chose to read His word, pray, and invite Him into all parts of my life - even the parts I didn’t want to reveal to Him (although I knew He knew them anyway) - I found God became bigger and bigger in my heart and spirit. As the verse of today’s Seed says, ‘Come close to God and God will come close to you.’ It’s a choice, as God will never force Himself on us.
The final step for me was to want to know Him as more than ‘my God’. I wanted - no I needed - to know Him as Father, to fill the empty void in the deepest part of my being, (the reason why I’d been keeping Him at a distance for so many years), to invite Him into my arms and feel His loving embrace.
Now He isn’t at a distance. He isn’t just huge. He’s living within me and occupying my whole life. I wish it hadn’t taken me so long to get here. What about you? How big is your God?
Philip Asselin Philip is on the associate ministry and teaching teams with Glyndley Manor. He and his wife Gillian attended the second Healing Retreat at Glyndley Manor in 1992, and were greatly helped. They have two grown up children, one grandson, and a step-granddaughter in California, and a daughter and granddaughter in Eastbourne. His desire is to see people healed and set free to serve God.
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