Journaling has taught me that God is far more personal than many of us have dared to believe and that we can be fearlessly vulnerable with Him.
But He is still Lord, Creator and King. He is near, but He is high. There is a good and holy tension here.
Paul says we can approach God with freedom and confidence and Hebrews says, we can come boldly to the throne of grace. Yet Habakuk says, The Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth be silent before Him. God is intensely personal and He dwells in inapproachable light.
In the Bible, so many people fell face down when they saw the glory of God: Isaiah, Daniel, Ezekiel in their visions, Paul on the road to Damascus and the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration.
When John saw Jesus in his heavenly vision, he fell prostrate at his feet as though dead and that same John laid his head on Jesus’ chest at the Last Supper, and was called the disciple that Jesus loved. When God passed by Moses in the cleft of the mountain, He put a hand over his eyes so that he would not see His face and Moses spoke to God face to face as one speaks to friend. God is set apart as holy… and He is very close.
For you and me, God is eager to reveal more & more of Himself to us, and we will never see Him fully. Gregory of Nyssa (4th century theologian) compared knowing God to climbing a never-ending ladder. Another monk saw it as sailing toward an ever-moving horizon. We can know God and He will always be beyond our comprehension.
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There’s another layer of good and holy tension: God cherishes us more than we can imagine and we are sinners in desperate need of redemption. As the saying goes, God loves us the way we are, but He has no intention of letting us stay that way. While He calls us to be a beloved child, He also calls us to repentance.
The Psalmists write vulnerably to God with both confidence and contrition. The same David who wrote the love Psalms 63 and 139 wrote the gut-wrenchingly personal confessions of Psalms 32, 38 and 51:
“For my iniquities have gone over my head;
Like a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me.
My wounds stink and fester because of my foolishness,
I am utterly bowed down and prostrate;
There is no soundness in my flesh,
I groan because of the tumult in my heart…
Purge me with hyssop and I will be clean,
Wash me and I will be whiter than snow.
Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit,
A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”
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We are beloved children and sinners before a righteous God. He exalts over us with singing and dancing, like Zechariah says and we should confess, weep and mourn like James says. He loves us, honors us, and delights in us as Isaiah says and we should work out our salvation with fear and trembling as Paul says.
This is a mystery to embrace.
God is holy, so we should bow down before Himand He is personal, so we can to climb up into His lap like sons and daughters. God loves us as we are (no matter what we have done or haven’t done or what has been done to us) and He calls us to surrender and be transformed.
Reverent and vulnerable.
Contrite and Confident.