Sometimes we opt for a version of God that is more respectable than radical. It is easier to hold to a tamed and predictable version of God than a wild and mysterious one. So we dumb down God. We put him in a box. We make him boring. We see him smaller than He is. It is easy for us to drift toward believing in a God who leaves us unaffected emotionally, unimpressed intellectually, and unchanged spiritually. However, when we read the pages of scripture we are presented with a version of God that is anything but domesticated.
1. Why is it easier at times to believe in a more domesticated version of God that isn't all that awe inspiring, miraculous, or big?
2. In what ways can we tend to read the scriptures with tunnel vision, where we fixate on parts but miss how the parts inform the whole?
3. Creation as it is presented in Genesis and in science leaves us with a picture of God that is all powerful and all knowing. How have we become numb to the created order around us which as Psalm 19 says, "declares the glory of God?"
4. In John 1, John the disciple connects the God we meet in the Old Testament with the God who became flesh that we know as Jesus. Why do we often think of the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament in such drastic different terms? How is it helpful to see the God of great glory in the Old Testament as Jesus in the New Testament?
5. What are some things we miss about the New Testament if we don't filter it through the Old Testament? What are some things we miss about the Old Testament without the New Testament?
6. From Genesis to Revelation we see a God who is great, glorious, majestic, and powerful. Do you feel as though this idea of God informs our worship and lifestyle in the way it should?
7. What would change if we had a more inspired view of God's glory as it relates to how we deal with difficult times? What about how we deal with sharing our faith? How we worship? How we respond to politics?
8. Did this message give you a better perspective of the power of our God? Did it inspire you to dream bigger dreams and pray bigger prayers?
Begin to write down bigger prayers and pray them. Seek to grow big faith, and raise your expectation about what God can do.
John 1:14 (NIV) The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
