Letting God Be God

Know that the Lord, He is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people and the sheep of His pasture

(Psalm 100:3).

If our seeking of God is not reverent, it will be to no avail. We must acknowledge God’s sovereignty over us, seeing God not only as our Creator, but also as our Sustainer and Ruler. It is our attempt at self‑rule that has gotten us into trouble, and before God’s kingdom can “come,” ours must “go.” We must humbly, confidently, and contentedly let God be God.

Humility. In a world obsessed with self, the worship of God often becomes little more than the worship of our own desires. We demand God to be whatever we wish God to be and to solve our problems in the manner we prescribe. But God does not exist for our pragmatic purposes, and Oswald Chambers’ warning is wise: “Beware of the inclination to dictate to God what consequences you would allow as a condition of your obedience to Him.”

Confidence. Those who seat themselves upon God’s throne and try to control what happens in the world soon realize that the task is for a human being as stressful as it is impossible. How liberating it is to “relax” and let God take care of running the universe! The reverent seeker rests in the confidence that God can be counted on to supervise the world without our advice and to bring to pass God’s purposes without our assistance.

Contentment. God must be our center, the complete source of our adequacy, the One Thing we truly have to have. When we come to understand God’s sufficiency, and when we unreservedly trust God to fill our needs for security and significance, we can live with a peace that is otherwise unattainable. Dag Hammarskjold caught the essence of this peace in these words: “Before thee in humility, with thee in faith, in thee in peace.”

To seek God, in truth rather than in pride and self‑sufficiency, is to seek God in reverence. It is God’s prerogative, not ours, to set the terms of our relationship with God, and that relationship will not be what we long for it to be until we let God be God. “It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; we are His people and the sheep of His pasture.”

 

The great act of faith is when a man decides that he is not God.

. . .Oliver Wendell Holmes