The God we want and the God who is…

This post in some ways, follows on from the last. It was inspired by more thinking about the last post, some further discussions and reading, and, as some of you may have picked up a song by Casting Crowns.

The song is ‘Somewhere in the Middle’ and I think it is pretty effective in describing my Christian life & walk. The especially powerful and poignant lyrics for me though is the intro line to the chorus and then two lines in the chorus: “Just how close can I get, Lord, to my surrender without losing all control … With eyes wide open to the differences, the God we want and the God who is, But will we trade our dreams for His or are we caught in the middle” I don’t want to make this generalization for everybody, but for me I think the first part is exactly what we want. We want to surrender to God, as Christian’s it’s a desire we have. Having said that, we don’t want losing control to be a part of that. It doesn’t work, yet we try to make it work – I can mostly surrender, but in case something goes wrong I’ll keep just enough control to fix it. As the songs says, we end up somewhere in the middle.

The next line, the title of this post I think is obvious to most Christians. We know God, we know who he is, we also have preconceived ideas of who he is and how he should do things, but we know in practice this isn’t how he works. I think the next line is the real test but – knowing who he is, are we willing to give up our dreams and desire in favour of his. I think this is one of the hardest things we have to do – but it comes back to Trusting God! Our society doesn’t help in this scenario, when we are as young as 4 we are encouraged to dream and to turn our dreams into reality. I’m sure God cares about out dreams, but if our dreams aren’t in line with His will do we really [after deep consideration] want them to be reality?

Edit: I’ve been meaning to do this edit for some time, because I think the above paragraph could well be misconstrued. I’m not trying to belittle our dreams or say they’re not important, indeed in many cases those dreams may have been planted by God. I am saying that our dreams need to be tested against God’s will & word and sometimes God will act to make impossible things possible and block normal possibilities. (Hopefully this clarifies and is not more confusing!)

Lord, help me to willingly surrender and give you complete control of my life. I pray that your Holy Spirit will work to align my will to yours – that I will be willing to trade my dreams for yours, that the way I live my life will be a worthy response to you, the God who is, not the God I want – yet ultimately you are all I could ever want, and more than I will ever need!