Describe God in 25 Words or Less. Be Thorough.

I hope you've been able to read my last blog (fool's cap), because I believe it sheds light on how God has been preparing me to accept His wonderful word of love and redemption, no matter how simple a package in which it arrives.

It's tough to describe, because human words and human intellect fall short of God.

You see, I'm an intelligent sort of guy, and I've always been that way. My SAT scores were sky high when I took them in high school. I scored in the top 1% on my math SAT. I'm so "smart", I qualify for membership in MENSA. I've been the leader (or a leader) in nearly every organization I've joined, since I was a lad.

But God was impossible for me to comprehend, no matter how hard I tried. Someone who loved me and who had a place prepared for me for eternity, if I would merely believe, trust, and love him today? My intellect blew a fuse every time I tried to wrap my brain around that. It just didn't add up, didn't make sense.

So I decided as an adult that I'd just "believe". Here's how you could look at me and tell I "believed". I'd attend church pretty frequently, identify myself as a Christian, wear a cross, put a fish on my bumper, smile a lot, and put (some) money in the plate on Sunday (not MUCH money of course, but enough so God wouldn't get mad and zap me for being too "cheap"). I even learned how to read and become somewhat familiar with the scriptures. Of course, the scriptures never "connected" with my intellect. There was always something missing. I'd look around and see the other Christians smiling, and thought that if I smiled enough, I'd be Christian too.

But something was missing. So I began to browse the shelves in Christian bookstores, looking for some book or study tool that would help me reach a higher state of consciousness, so I would at some point be able to imagine the length, the depth, the height of God.

Ephesians 3:17-19 (KJV) - That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.

But the bookstores were full of books from people that wanted to sell their books, not necessarily to save souls. I got lost in the intellectual drone of other "intellectuals", and my mind told my heart I was on the right path, because I was reading Christian books, and so I was learning more each day.

2 Timothy 3:7 (KJV) - Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

Finally, I just gave up. I wasn't able to comprehend or to intellectualize God, so I opened my "intellectual armor" just a crack, during a retreat weekend in May of 1993. And that was all God needed.

I just stopped trying to figure God out, and began to consider the possibility that God was bigger than my cranium. I allowed myself to slow my brain a little, and consider that there were things I couldn't comprehend, but just because they didn't make sense to me, that didn't make them any less valid. I had entertained the idea that God might just be able to outsmart even smart-old me.

And that's where faith began to move.

John 3:3-6 (New Living Translation) - Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God. ”What do you mean?” exclaimed Nicodemus. “How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?”Jesus replied, “I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life.

Intelligent people like me have such a difficult time realizing that our minds aren't complete, that there is something that is terribly important (indeed critical) to our everlasting souls, but can't be computed or analyzed. So that's why, when we as Christians witness to people in the world, we need to pray for those we're witnessing to. We need to pray that God will break up the stony ground of their intellect, and prepare their hearts for the seed which is God's Word.

And as soon as they let down their guard one teensy little bit, God will take it the rest of the way.

© 2008 Scotty Ward