When we as daughters of God know how much we are accepted by Him because we have accepted our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, we are women who are one step up from those who don’t know . The Bible is full of the evidence of God’s love for us and in Ephesians 3, there is a prayer that He included in His word for us…that we may understand the width, and depth, and length and height of His love for us. Our heavenly Father wants us to know. He wants us to walk as daughters who are confident in His unconditional love, even when we blow it. Even when we have a split second when we don’t act holy, or godly, or sometimes even like decent human beings, God loves us and Jesus has already born our punishment for those times, those sins, and we can forgive ourselves.
Recently though, I have come to consider that maybe we don’t walk in the completeness of all He has for us because of some “natural” or carnal thinking. Although all sin is “carnality”, all carnality isn’t sin. Sometimes it’s just us thinking “in our flesh” instead of walking “in the Spirit”. We are on this planet, and we will sometimes fall prey to small thinking. Natural thinking, based on past experiences, will visit us all.
We may have grown up or lived in an environment where the rewards are based on our performance. In our workplaces, results are performance based. If we want a pay raise, we will have to perform well. Our employers make decisions about our pay and benefit based on how well we act, show up, prove our worth. We understand that and we would do the same thing if we were employers. As children, our performance often determined our parents’ willingness to give us more freedom, or more money, or more fun opportunities. We are used to receiving based on others’ degree of willingness to give.
In that light, I think the door is open to our wondering sometimes, “God, are you willing to do this/meet this need/take care of this problem?” based on what we think His standards for doing/meeting/taking care of are. Are we worthy? Did we earn it? Should we expect it? As parents, we ourselves know there are times, even in the greatness of our love for our children, that for their own good, we base our yes or no on their behavior. So we have the potential to see our Father the same way.
Another question we might ask in our carnal thinking is, “Are You able?” Now, off the top of our heads, we would never ask, as God’s daughters, if He is able, because we have the pat answer, “God can do anything”. We would see it as sacrilege to suggest otherwise! But in the secret place of our heart, in our subconsciousness even, do we really believe God can do all things? This is an area where our past experiences, or lack of experience, can bring us to degrees of belief. For example, we may be confident that God will heal a headache because we’ve had that happen. It’s another thing to believe God will replace a missing arm or leg because we’ve never seen that happen. Going back to our own upbringing, even if we knew our parents loved us, even if we knew they were willing, we knew they had limited capabilities. Most of us knew they were able to get us a bicycle, but we also had the knowledge that them buying us a Ferrari was outside their capabilities! We didn’t ask…because we weren’t confident they could.
All that is to say that we limit God, even sometimes when we know how much He loves us, because sometimes we still wonder if He is willing or if He is able. How do we move beyond those limits? We honestly, openly, in our time with Him who knows our every thought and loves us unconditionally anyway, ask Him to help us to know Him better than we do. To know Him so well that we know He is willing. That we are confident that He is able. We ask Him to purify our faith to such an extent that we are unable to think small ever again. We ask Him to fill us with such knowledge of Him that we aren’t afraid to expect anything from Him, because to Him, nothing is too large. The earth is His footstool. This vast planet is only His footstool.
We move beyond limiting God by being converted to a child in our thinking. Our children don’t approach us when they need fed by saying, “I know I misbehaved and didn’t pick up my toys, but may I still have supper?” No, they simply walk up to us, knowing that we love them, knowing we have provided food, knowing we are willing to feed them and they say, “I’m hungry”, with the confident expectation that they will eat.
May we come to that place, being converted to a little child, in our thinking of God. May we walk as little girls in Him, no matter our age or maturity. Ask Him to take you there. I dare you.
For His Glory 