Let God be God

Unless we are aware that we are outside the kingdom of God, that we need to knock at a door to be allowed in, we may spend a great deal of our lives in imagining that we are inside, behaving as though we were, and never reaching that depth where the kingdom of God unfolds itself in all its beauty, its truth and its glory.
—Anthony Bloom, Metropolitan of Sourozh

As Christians we often adopt God as the provider of our needs and concerns. But God's purpose is not ours and his ways are not our ways. Jesus' way is that we free ourselves from our pride and follow his footprints to complete abandonment in the hands of God. Jesus' truth is that we stop searching for ways to capture God, and accept his gift to transform our lives. Jesus' life is that we stop worrying whether we live or die, but rather whether we are prepared to die for him who has the power to give life.

God became like us so that we might become like him. God did not descend as an unapproachable light, but as a weak and humble child. "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich" (2 Corinthians 8:9, NIV). Jesus exposed his omnipotence, and so magnified his power. He emptied himself of his omnipresence, and so fulfilled all things. He abandoned his omniscience, and so revealed the truth for us to see.

John of Kronstadt wrote "the Lord has become everything for you, and you must become everything for the Lord." Christ was born into our life, so that we might be born into the divine life of God. Jesus is the truth, the only truth, and everything about the Christian Church is about accepting that Jesus is God and to share this message with the world: "Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice," says Jesus (John 18:36, NASB).

Jesus was our witness to the absoluteness of God, and Christians are Jesus' witnesses to the eternal life that Christ was born into the world to offer to all humanity. In the Book of Acts 26:16-18 (NKJV) we read, "I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness...to whom I now send you, to open their eyes, in order to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in me."

A Christianity not reaching out to
others is like the gospel without Christ.

We need to stop holding on to our stuff and depending on the substitutes of this life, because God can't offer his riches to hands that are already clutching onto mental or material possessions. We shut out Jesus, borne into weakness, exile and poverty and instead accept the illusion of our self-sufficiency as our new personal 'Jesus.' Maximus the Confessor's exhortation is to "cleanse your mind of anger, grudges and shameful thoughts. Then you will be able to know the indwelling of Christ." In order to see Christ in others you must first see him in yourself.

We all need to become meaningful followers of the Way: "Let your light shine in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 5:16, NASB). Let us open our hearts and homes to those for whom God chose to live amongst. Let us reach out with our riches to those whom Jesus came as a pauper. Let us expose our poverty to the Christ who came to give us the kingdom of God.

— John Kapsalis