• Putting God In A Box

    By: Kristen L. McNulty

    Reprint rights available on request. Email the author at kristenmcnulty@hotmail.com.

    Have you ever found yourself putting God in a box? By putting God in a box I mean that we try to determine when God should move and where and tend to ignore or shut out anything else. This is wrong. Our God is bigger than big, so who are we to determine where and when He's welcome to move?

    Imagine how this looks to Him. It's like we say "OK God, you can move at church, or during Praise at youth group, but don't even think about moving when I'm hanging with my friends or when we are having our game time at youth." Who are we to be so bold and demanding? God is willing to confine Himself to time and space in order to move with and through us and we say no. When God is willing to lower Himself to us, who are we to refuse and say wait until I'm in Sunday service, but even at Sunday service, you can only move if I'm out of church in an hour. When we act like this, we are reversing the roles and trying to become a god ourselves instead of focusing on the one who is God.

    Ephesians 3:20 tells us:

    "Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. "

    That said, we as believers should always be prepared for God to move in ways we could have never thought of, imagined, or asked for! When God decides to move, we should be ready and willing. Our hearts should always be prepared for God to come down and move in amazing ways and when He comes we should be grateful instead of frustrated. God moves on His time and at His will and we know that He loves us, so wouldn't He move when He knows it's best? Think about how many times we reject God because it's not a good time for us, yet when we need Him to be there, He better be? We are the ones who should be waiting on Him. What a scary world it would be if we controlled when God moves rather than God deciding when we should move.

    It's time for us to surrender all to the all powerful and all knowing God and it's time to tear down the dividing walls that try to stop God from moving. If you really want God to move in your life, all you have to do is allow Him to. Be prepared whether it is during church, at school, at youth, or even in the middle of a social outing. Have the attitude of the heart that doesn't care where God moves or when, as long as He moves.

    Closing off with Romans 12:1-2 in the Message:

    "So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you."


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