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Thinking More Magnificently

             Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them?” declares the Lord. “Do not I fill heaven and earth?” declares the Lord. (Jeremiah 23:24)

You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely. (Psalm 139:2-4)

          The remaining challenge to my homework for the week is to think more magnificently – and therefore more truthfully – about God. The goal is to become a person who believes and therefore experiences God. In other words, the goal is to grow closer to Him, to be in a relationship with Him. A lot of this goes back to the question of trust, and of course, I don’t trust my trusting.

          The first passage above was the verse of the day at Biblegateway.com. The second includes my favorite part of one of my favorite passages in Scripture because it specifically addresses God’s response to me as an individual person and not a faceless, nameless member of a herd. He perceives my thoughts from afar. He interrupts his “God-thing” activities to notice my thoughts. It doesn’t matter that He can “interrupt” His activities to notice the thoughts of billions without interfering with His activities. This point is that I matter. My thoughts are of interest and concern.

          Because this is an issue for me, if I am to begin to think more truthfully about God, this is a good place to start. I’m not alone in this. The homework sheet points out that “Most of us think mediocre thoughts about God.” We think of Him a lethargic…almost apathetic. We see Him as inattentive, not doing what we’ve asked Him to do, as being tied up with faraway concerns, and/or as annoyed at having to address our needs…again.

          But God notices, even if we don’t want Him to, and for me, at least, that reaches where so much else that Scripture says doesn’t at the moment.

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