Crestwood Church Blog

"Why do you ask my name?" the angel of the Lord replied. "It is too wonderful for you to understand." - Judges 13:18

As we leave behind the Christmas season and more forward into 2008, what lessons have we learnt?

There is so much that we just don't get or know about the Virgin Birth, about God becoming man and so forth, they remain mysteries, even to the greatest bible scholars and teachers that have walked this planet.

There is so much we just don't get about the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and as was revealed to Manoah and his wife through the angel of the Lord, who very likely was God Himself, even his name we don’t get and fully grasp.

Last night I sat and watched with the kids, "The Polar Express", a magical journey to the North Pole and a look at the night of Christmas Eve through a child's perspective. At the end of the film the children who climbed aboard the express train to the North Pole are left with a quandary, was any of what we saw real. Was it all fantasy and make belief. One of the concluding remarks made was "just believe".

I think that is a great message for us as a church and as individuals. Could Manoah's wife, really believe God had visited them, could Manoah accept what his wife had seen. Everything defies logic and rationale, but by believing one of the greatest judges arose in Israel who saved the people from constant defeat by the Philistines.

We may never know everything about the Almighty transcendent God. We may not come close, but does that make God less real.

If God was easy to fathom and left us with no unanswered questions, wouldn't we ourselves because as big as God?

The comforting point is that God is beyond our understanding, His ways and thoughts are much mightier than ours. He just asks us to believe, it might seem ridiculous, it might seem crazy, it might even seem to good to be true.

Just because we can't understand the stars and the sheer size and magnitude of them and how exactly they are formed, does that mean we don't believe in them? Of course not, because we can still see them.

If we keep our spiritual eyes open and in faith believe, not only will God become more real in our lives, but we will realise how much more of Him that we don't understand.

God is a mystery, but He has made Himself known, to man. In the same way as He made Himself known to Samson's mother, we can know the reality of God today through Christ, through His Word and the indwelling Spirit of God… just believe and let God show you, who he really is.

Labels: magnitude, unanswered, understanding