Saints With Addison BevereSample

Restore the Wonder 

A big God is a scary thing. In many ways, religion has spent more time reducing God to systems and formulas than connecting people to the One who is life beyond measure. In our attempts to be systematic, we’ve systematically removed the wonder and power of what it means to be the people of God. In our efforts to make God “accessible,” we’ve turned him into a subject of our creation—governed by our rules and expectations.

God created us in His image, and now we return the favor. 

You see, we don’t want to deal with a God who is other than us. We want a God who is like us. A God who can be controlled by us. In our efforts to define God—for utility’s sake—we have confined His expression to the extent of our current being. 

But we cannot attempt to neuter God and still expect to find life. It just won’t happen. And as we’ve lost sight of who God is, we’ve lost sight of who He’s created us to be and what He’s called us to do. If we’re going to find the good life of the Saint, we’ll have to first rediscover its Maker in all His otherness.

As we spend time with God, exploring His depths, we find ourselves overcome by the One who is truly other. In God, we find the something that’s been missing—the thing we’ve felt but failed to put words to. We were created to know and be known by God, so we will never find satisfaction apart from intimacy with Him. In God, we find what our hearts long for. And in the light of who He is, the cares of this world grow strangely dim.

God has made a way for us to know him deeply and intimately. But this cannot happen until we first stand in awe of His holiness, love, and beauty—our False Self overcome by His otherness. That’s why we, the Saints, must worship God with astonishment. The fear of the Lord is not be scared of God; rather, it’s an invitation to intimacy and life beyond anything we have ever known. 

The question is: Will we be intimate with this God, or will we run from the arms of Life?