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Tag: #authenticjoy

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The Fire Series: Social Media Christian

 

Greetings my joy-filled readers. First, I must apologize for being MIA for a couple of weeks. My unplanned hiatus is in fact the subject of today’s blog. The story begins with me heading to work one day feeling distracted, disconnected from God and just a little bit anxious. I had stumbled into a vicious cycle of experimenting with social media ads as a way to market my new book –Authentic Joy – (how’s that for a shameless plug lol) and then constantly checking to see how my posts were performing and how my sales were going (or not going). Add to that ongoing WhatsApp messaging (aka my WhatsAddiction) which more and more I have begun to use to for business purposes as well. And add to that a slew of deadlines and crises at work and you begin to get the picture.

My dilemma is a common one I assume. I would like nothing better than to just write blogs and books and leave the nitty gritty like marketing to somebody else but unfortunately there is no ‘somebody else’. That’s just par for the self-publishing course. Every article and book that I’ve read on the topic says the same thing, “Books don’t sell themselves.” However, this is not a full-time job for me, so I have to do this on my personal time which has resulted lately in me being ‘that guy’; the guy who always has his head in his phone.

In the end I just had to take a break. I just stopped everything. I stopped blogging. I stopped checking my book sales and book ranking. I stopped checking Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. I stopped checking how many people were viewing, liking or commenting. I stopped it all. What I really needed to check was myself. Reassess things. Ask myself some probing questions…. “Was this what I really wanted for my life when I started all this?” “What was God saying to me?” “How could I walk in faith in this situation, as opposed to trying to make everything happen myself without God or, doing nothing in vain hope?”

The first thing that was loud and clear was that I needed to stop the obsessive checking. Emails, messages, likes and whatever else do not need to be checked every 5 minutes Matik! The more I obsessed the more I could literally feel myself drifting from the peace of God. It was like a growing jittery unease in my soul. You cannot walk with God and be incessantly distracted. You just can’t. If you are satisfied with being with God on a Sunday and a few minutes each day during your bedtime prayers and daily scripture reading, then you can tweet and post and forward memes to your heart’s content. But if like me you are striving to walk in the Presence 24/7 then you have to cultivate a habit of being present to what God is saying and doing in you and around you.

Secondly, God spoke through my girlfriend. I’m blessed to have a partner who has the gift of keen spiritual ears. She said that I need to give thanks. I had not stopped to acknowledge what an accomplishment being published really was, especially in the light of the obstacles I faced to get here. Most importantly, I had not tangibly acknowledged that I owed this achievement all to my Heavenly Father. He had seen me through a tortuous road and brought me out with a testimony of His goodness!

Next, my mother relayed some advice that two people had given her for me; feed the poor. This is something I have been trying to cultivate as a habit for years, but I could never find a way as every food provision programme I checked operated during the week when I was at work or on the way to work. But, I recently heard about a place where I can reach the homeless on a Saturday. So, no more excuses! I don’t think you can really claim an authentic faith unless you take care of the most vulnerable in society.

Finally, God told me to take my focus off this book and get cracking on my next book. I smiled at this one. I believe that God sometimes releases our blessings slowly because we need a little discomfort to get off our butt and do what He has called us to do. Imagine if my first book became a bestseller overnight… How many creative works might remain unfulfilled while I bask in the spoils of past labours… God’s plans for us are always bigger than our plans for ourselves!

Funny how while I was focused on marketing my book, God was focused on other things. So, I’m back from my hiatus but my priorities have been shifted. I’m excited to see what happens next!

Joyfully,

Copyright Matik Nicholls, 2018. All rights reserved.

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The Power Of A Story – How Authentic Joy Was Made

 

First of all, more good news! The kindle version of my new book – Authentic Joy – is now available on Amazon in addition to the paperback version! Click here to find out more about the book and to get yourself a copy!

I love a good story. When I first started toying with the idea of writing a book I immediately knew that I wanted to tell a story. I wanted to take my readers along on a journey that made them laugh and cry and sit at the edge of their seats; the kind of story where you can’t put the book down. Because these were the kind of books that deeply impacted me, especially in my younger years. My favourite genre of book is fantasy. Books like The Lord of The Rings trilogy were my standard fare. I would be consumed in the unfolding plot for hours. The characters came alive and I saw myself in the midst of the pages. I will never forget those books.

These days my reading is much less exciting. Seems with adulthood comes the age of ‘self-help’. (Insert boring sigh here). The books that seem to be popular in the inspirational/religious category are mostly designed to overtly teach you something. There is nothing wrong with that of course but it just wasn’t what I wanted to do. It was not authentic to my heart. I wanted to share my knowledge in allegory.

Allegory: a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one. Jesus taught in allegory or in parables. He would tell a story about a man who found a treasure or a farmer who sowed seeds but that was not the point of the story. The meaning had to be discovered or inferred. Often the listener was left to draw their own conclusions.

Much of my book, Authentic Joy, leaves the reader to draw his/her own conclusions. I could have written a book about Effective Church Leadership or 10 Sure Ways To Fail In Marriage or Where You Won’t Find God or…. but instead you will find that all of these themes are wrapped inside the story of an ordinary guy called Govinda.

What I believe makes this kind of book powerful is the story. I’m not telling you what to do or how to think, I’m simply sharing as I would with a close friend. The lessons have not been sterilised by stripping them of the context of the technicolour emotions or convoluted scenarios or imperfect relationships; the humanity and unpredictability of real life.

As the back cover of my book says… In my deepest destitution and despair, I found the joy that I was looking for in the presence of God Himself, or I should say, He brought me to the end of myself so that I could experience Him as He really is; my greatest treasure and highest joy! I wrote this novel simply to share with you the obstacles that kept me from this deeply satisfying intimacy with Christ and the nature of the Life that I found on the other side of those obstacles. My hope is that you too will see Him more clearly, treasure Him more deeply and experience authentic joy in Christ more fully than ever before!

So, I invite you to immerse yourself in the epic saga that is Authentic Joy!

Joyfully,

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

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The Fire Series: Obey Your Thirst

 

I remember a soft drink ad from many years ago that stuck in my head. The tagline was, “Image is nothing. Thirst is everything. Obey your thirst.” The underlying message was that our drink choices should not be based on what made us look cool or what the famous athletes/movie stars were drinking, but simply on what quenched our thirst.

It is a message that I feel is relevant to Christians today. So many of us stop short of a fully satisfied life in Christ because we are just too image conscious. We are so busy maintaining the veneer of a perfect Christian life that we are completely missing the opportunity to have a real vibrant relationship with the Almighty.

Sometimes when I look around during worship I’m saddened because it seems like there is more self-consciousness than God-consciousness. I’m excited to reach to worship most Sundays because I never know when God is going to show up! I rather reach to church in jeans and a T-shirt than miss worship because I’m dressing up in my Sunday best. I mean…. the presence of God! What could beat that?! When He does show up and we’re in tears or shouting or singing at the top of our lungs or dancing with all our might and I open my eyes to see some people just there, looking cool, it’s always a shock.

I wanna plead with them and say, “It’s OK.” It’s OK to lose yourself in God. It’s Ok to sing a wrong note, to shed a tear, to jump like a fool or dance out of time. It’s OK to look a fool for God. It’s more than OK, it’s the appropriate thing to do!

It’s not only about our image during worship but also our image in the community. Many couples hide the issues in their marriage or family because they are ‘somebody’ in the community. If they would only admit that things are less than perfect and seek help… I weep for them. For the missed opportunity at really joy-filled relationships where real issues are being worked out within compassionate communities infused by the transformational power of the Holy Ghost!

The church has been such a place of shame and stigma that many have become professional Christian actors. We prefer a good reputation to an authentic life. Unfortunately, a fake image does not quench the very real thirst in our souls for real righteousness, real holiness, real intimacy, real love, real peace and real joy. Image is nothing. Thirst is everything. Pursue God with reckless abandon! Worship Him like there’s nobody else in the room! Live like only His opinion of us matters! Obey your thirst!

Joyfully,

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

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Altitude Sickness

 

Altitude sickness is an illness that is pervasive in the upper hierarchy of many organizations. It is the tendency of managers to become more and more disconnected from the people and the reality on the ground, the higher they rise within the organization. When this illness has run its full course, the victim lives in an alternate reality of which they are convinced is real.

This may sound exaggerated, but it is not I’m afraid. And it is easy to see why this happens. In many organizations, especially very hierarchical ones, as one ascends the hierarchy the contact with customers and the staff that produce the products or deliver the services, becomes less and less. At the highest levels it can be practically non-existent. So how does a CEO, for example, get intelligence about what’s happening in his company or the environment in which it operates? From reports and media publications; two sources that are filled with bias and absent of the nitty gritty details that are often quite important.

Let’s look at reports. The typical report covers such a large span of time and range of company activities that it has to be pared down to the most pertinent data and it is up to the people preparing the reports to decide what is pertinent. Consider that this information has to flow upward through several layers with each person deciding what should be included and often incentivized to only show information that the boss wants to hear. One can quickly see why the higher the information flows, the less accurate it is (similar to a game of pass the message).

Consider a hypothetical example… Joe produces widgets for a company called D. Luded Inc. He has a quota of 10 a day. On Monday he makes 13 but 3 are defective because his tools aren’t the most modern. He tells his shift supervisor who makes up a shift report. The supervisor, Jim, simply records 10 units made as per target but there is higher than budget overtime (due to all the rework). He has mentioned the need for better tools to his manager several times. However, the manager; Jane, is not getting the tools because she is under pressure from the regional manager to reduce costs. So, she reports production on target and expenses below budget.  The regional manager, Bob, has some companies performing badly within the region and that is why he is pressuring Jane to reduce costs further so that the region as a whole looks good. Bob’s quarterly report to head office looks awesome. No doubt next month the region will be asked to increase production and reduce costs further.

You see where I am going with this? The head of D. Luded completely lacks the information to run the company properly (far less the board of directors). The only way to arrest this altitude sickness is to start at ground zero – literally. Managers must intentionally inculcate habits that keep them connected with their ground staff and customers.

Here are 3 essential habits to accomplish this:

  1. You CANNOT punish bad news. This is an absolute necessity. None of the other habits will work unless people feel safe to tell you the truth. When bad news is punished, all you will get is good news until it is absolutely too late to do anything about it. People must feel empowered to push back on your demands based on the on-the-ground reality.
  2. You CANNOT be the expert on everything. If you believe you know more about making widgets than Joe because you started in the company 20 years ago as a widget maker then you are truly deluded. No matter how successful you are, nothing can replace the intel that the people who are actually working the machines and interacting with the customers bring to the conversation.
  3. You CANNOT run any organization from an office. Get out and go talk to people. Meet customers. Create informal settings where you can chat with the Joes of your company.

The first step to curing altitude sickness is to be aware of the disease. Stop altitude sickness in your workplace today!

Joyfully,

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

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Book Launch!

My new book is out!

This novel sprung forth from the dark earth of my failure and despair. I gave my life to Christ at age twenty but only found a truly joy-filled life in Christ twenty years later. The difficulties that I faced in those two decades in between – the tireless grappling with my hedonistic tendencies, the vanity of religion, my failures in one marriage after another, the sin that beset me, the deep desire for fulfilment that remained unmet, the people that God used to shape my character and reveal my mission – all provided the resource material that inspired Authentic Joy.

However, that is not the subject of this book. The subject is God. It is a fictional tale that reveals the non-fictional character of an incomprehensibly wise, astoundingly merciful and absolutely sovereign God who transforms darkness and rancour into light and joy!

In my deepest destitution and despair, I found the joy that I was looking for in the presence of God Himself, or I should say, He brought me to the end of myself so that I could experience Him as He really is; my greatest treasure and highest joy! I wrote this novel simply to share with you the obstacles that kept me from this deeply satisfying intimacy with Christ and the nature of the Life that I found on the other side of those obstacles. My hope is that you too will see Him more clearly, treasure Him more deeply and experience authentic joy in Christ more fully than ever before!

Get your paperback copy now:

https://xulonpress.com/bookstore/bookdetail.php?PB_ISBN=9781545638477&HC_ISBN=

https://www.amazon.com/Authentic-Joy-Matik-Nicholls/dp/1545638470/

Kindle version coming next month!

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

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Live counterintuitive!

 

Confession: I am a bit of a rebel. Just a bit (grin). What’s my cause? I’m against the status quo; the norm; the standard; the rule; the cookie cutter life. My objective is to shake up and break up the paradigm that ‘things must be done only this way’ or ‘certain kinds of people must look a certain way or dress a certain way’. When preachers started wearing jeans and t-shirts, I rejoiced. When anointed and passionate worship leaders started appearing covered in tattoos, I was ecstatic. When a government minister abandoned his jacket and tie in parliament for a Nehru-styled shirt, I celebrated emancipation from our colonial masters.

There is something deceptively malevolent about a culture that seeks to define your identity and limit your contribution based on external appearances.

I recently re-discovered a poem from J.R.R. Tolkien. The first two lines:

“All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;”

I love those two lines! It speaks to the folly of inferring intrinsic value and motives based solely on external attributes and behavior. Why is the jacket and tie business attire and preaching attire (especially in a hot Caribbean island)? Does wearing a tie make you smarter… or holier? One of my favourite business travel habits is wearing jeans, a sweater and a beanie when I fly business class. It’s my little way of saying, “The suit does not make the man.”

I believe that variety is a necessity for life. We are in fact depriving ourselves when we force others to fit into our societal molds. Our lives are made better, richer when we are able to experience a wide variety of viewpoints and expressions of life. That’s why I am one of those parents who let my children wear almost anything they want. I’ve been to the mall with a cow, a fairy (complete with wings), a ballerina and a power ranger at various points in my life and I had almost as much fun as the children did.

Sometimes the path of progress is counterintuitive. The gawky college dropout sometimes becomes the industry titan. The drug dealer with the gold teeth could be the one to save your life in a dark alley one night. The tattooed school teacher with the unorthodox teaching style might be the one to bring out the potential in your child that no one else saw. The carpenter who hangs out with prostitutes and drinks wine everyday could be the Son of God.

Look for gold in unlikely people and go where others don’t dare to tread!

Joyfully,

Copyright Matik Nicholls, 2018. All rights reserved.

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When Children Are Our Idols

 

I think that we can love our children too much. Well, actually that’s not true; we can never love too much but we can have a counterfeit love for our children that is more akin to worship. Our whole life is for them. We say things like, “Mommy will do anything for you baby.” Will we really? I hope not. “You are my sun, my heart, the centre of my world.” I really wonder if we understand the ramifications of statements like that? It sounds great; like something a dedicated, loving parent would say but is it really?

According to a Time article by Jennifer Moses, “The problem with all this, aside from how silly it is, is that children who are the center of their parents’ lives become brats. Children whose parents put their kids’ entertainment, social lives, futures, and schedules ahead of their own well-being soon learn that there is only one important person in the room, and that person is the person whose short life has already been captured on endless video clips. This is not good. This is not good at all. Not for the kid. Not for the grownup. Not for the family dog.”

Children who are worshipped, grow up believing they are gods and believe that everyone will bend to their will as their parents have for their entire short lives. These ‘helicopter parents’ swoop in to clean up every mess and comfort every discomfort, robbing their charges of the necessary coping skills and character development that can only come from unmet expectations, disappointments, failures and the sometimes unfair hard-knocks of life. These poor children often suffer from depression and maladjustment as they encounter the real world outside their little personal kingdom.

Many of these parents may actually have co-dependent relationships with their kids; dependent on them for affirmation and love. According to Psychology Today, here are 5 signs that you are in a co-dependent relationship (To look at this from a parental point of view I substituted ‘partner’ with ‘child’):

  1. Does your sense of purpose involve making extreme sacrifices to satisfy your child’s needs?
  2. Is it difficult to say no when your child makes demands on your time and energy?
  3. Do you cover your child’s problems with drugs, alcohol, or the law?
  4. Do you constantly worry about their opinion of you?
  5. Do you keep quiet to avoid arguments?

I find this list a bit scary because it is so close to our accepted paradigm of good parenting today. The thing about co-dependency is that (i) it prevents you from taking actions in the best interest of the child, and (ii) it is often a behaviour that the child repeats in his/her relationships. It is a very unhealthy behaviour that is not easily changed.

However, there is hope. The first step is awareness. Here are some habits that will keep us from co-dependent tendencies:

  1. Set clear boundaries on our time. For example, Sunday is my rest/fun day. I will not be taking you to any regular activity on a Sunday.
  2. Set clear boundaries on what we will and will not do for our children. I will not do your school project for you. I may guide and assist but you are responsible for it, not me. I will not write an excuse for you for not completing your homework unless there was a serious emergency that prevented you from completing your assignment.
  3. Intentionally give them more and more responsibility and autonomy as they get older. For example, as my daughter graduates to secondary school she will be ironing her own school uniform from now on. She is also allowed to be on social media now.
  4. Intentionally nurture interests and hobbies other than our children. For example, no matter how much my children may believe that I am not entitled to go out or play football or take trips (or do anything really) without them, I go anyway.

Our children deserve every opportunity to grow and mature into strong, balanced and healthy adults. Let’s not fail them by loving them to pieces but instead let’s love them to wholeness.

Joyfully.

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

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The Fire Series: Culture and Conviction

Christians don’t dance. Christians don’t drink alcohol. Christians don’t curse. Christians don’t get tattoos. Christians don’t wear short skirts. Christians go to church. Christians read the bible. Christians pray. Christians pay tithes. Christianity has a culture. It has evolved over the years. It’s ok to dance now (but only to Christian music of course lol).

In 1980 an American management professor Edgar Schein developed a model for organizational culture. It looked like this:

Using this model, all the examples of what Christians do and don’t do, that I listed above, fall squarely into the category; Artefacts and Behaviour. These, and other things, are what people on the outside observe about us. Then there are the values that Christians espouse; values such as kindness, love, generosity and patience. Finally, at the deepest level are the basic assumptions of Christianity that I prefer to call our convictions. These are the underlying beliefs that are so fundamental that they are assumed. For example, a basic taken-for-granted belief of Christianity is that God is real.

I imagine that things were not always this way. Before Christ, there was no Christian religion (obviously) or ‘Christian culture’. The early church must have spent a lot of time preaching about basic beliefs and values and new believers were converted when they were convicted of the reality of the truths that the apostles and disciples of Christ were preaching. Their behavior flowed from deeply held convictions. Unfortunately, I see a different dynamic at play in the church today.

Today, I see thousands of people who have adopted some of the behavior, maybe a few values but rarely the convictions of Christianity. To illustrate my point let me give some hypothetical examples. Let’s define three Christians:

  • Person A only knows the most visible part of the Christian culture; the behaviour.
  • Person B knows the behaviour and the values.
  • Person C knows the behavior, values and convictions.

So, suppose all three persons lose their jobs and are struggling to gain employment. Here is a hypothetical reaction of each person:

  • Person A falls into a depression. He cannot understand how come this happened to him when he attends church regularly, says the ‘Our Father’ daily and pays his tithes faithfully. Soon he leaves the faith.
  • Person B struggles with depression as well but maintains a brave facade. When asked about her situation she says, “I’m too blessed to be stressed!” She fasts and sticks up scriptures about God providing for her on her mirror. She asks her pastor to pray for her but struggles to understand why this is happening to her.
  • Person C is not worried. She knows that God is faithful. She prays, and God tells her that she needs to forgive her old boss and open the business she has always been dreaming about.

Rare are the person Cs in this world. The sad reality is that many who have grown up in church have no deep convictions of anything; they have just mirrored the behaviours and adopted the catch phrases that they saw/heard around them. We have become adept at emphasizing what Christians should and shouldn’t do. There have been whole sermons dedicated to how women should dress for church. (Can you see my eyes rolling?) Most of us know what we should believe and are oh so quick to tell others what they should believe too. But too few of us actually believe and live the reality that God exists, loves all men unconditionally and wants to be in intimate relationship with us. We are working at the shallowest levels, failing miserably to reach the depths of conviction that can truly transform the church and the world.

We are wasting our time with whether abortion is legal or illegal, whether gay marriage is legal or illegal, why divorced sister so-and-so is receiving communion or leading worship, forcing our disinterested children to attend church and the list goes on. These are all symptoms of a much deeper problem but 90% of our effort is aimed at the symptoms. We are living the delusion that behavior modification is what Christianity is about. Christianity is about a real relationship with the living Christ!  Nothing less will do!

We need to get back to the core of our faith; the deep convictions of our faith. Let’s talk about those! Let’s live those and turn the hearts of men back to God. Then and only then will we see a cultural shift that will overtake the planet and shake the universe!

Joyfully,

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

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I Have No Empathy

 

I have always had a love-hate relationship with empathy. Empathy is commonly defined as the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. I love the idea of seeing things from someone else’s perspective. Fyodor Dostoyevsky said, “Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.” I agree! In fact, you could say that I’m obsessed with ‘the other point of view’.

I am frequently the advocate for understanding the ‘enemy’. As a manager, I often put myself in the shoes of non-management. As a heterosexual male who does not believe in gender fluidity, I can still understand the LGBT fight for acceptance. As an advocate for the life of the foetus, I also understand the pro-choice viewpoint. You can see why I am frequently in no man’s land; fully accepted in neither camp, which suits me fine because I rather think that’s a major quality of Jesus. He did not sign up with the religious elite or the evildoers. He hung out with sinners and went to the synagogue. He was on everyone’s side and no-one’s side.

But I digress… You see I am fine up to the understanding someone else’s emotions part; it’s the sharing those emotions part that eludes me. To illustrate my point, there’s a video on empathy by Brene Brown (which you can watch here). In the video Brene identifies 4 qualities of empathy:

  1. Taking another’s perspective.
  2. Staying out of judgment.
  3. Recognizing and understanding someone else’s emotions.
  4. Communicating your understanding of that emotion.

I think I’m good until that dastardly #4. I’m like the deer in the video who responds to someone saying, “My marriage is falling apart”, with, “At least you have a marriage.” I’m the silver lining, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, get off your keister, ok enough with this pity party kinda guy.

So, I’ve been going around for most of my life thinking that I have this major character flaw – a severe lack of empathy until…. I came across Paul Bloom; a psychologist who argues that empathy is not a helpful trait. Paul says that when we act based on our emotions we are not contributing positively to the other person or society in general. According to Paul, making decisions based on emotion clouds our judgment. For example, if we were choosing which charities to give some money to and if we gave to the one that pulled most on our heart-strings (like the baby dying from malnutrition) then our philanthropy would not necessarily be aimed where it could make the biggest difference for the most number of people which is a much better decision-making criteria. In summary, to quote Bloom, “…empathy is prone to biases that render moral judgment potentially harmful.”

So, I was feeling a lot better about myself until I did a little more digging (i.e. web-research) and found that there were many other experts that disagreed with Bloom. There were many good arguments but, in the end, I distilled a way of reasoning that made the most sense to me. I went back to the dictionary (and Brown’s) definition. Neither definition actually speaks to taking action. As Brene says, empathy is not about responding, it is about connecting.

Of course, this takes me back to square one…almost. I believe that empathy should be a first step. Our first step should always be just to understand; to connect. However, I also believe that there is a place for a rational response; a step two. Maybe a night out with the boys or a counselling appointment or just a pep talk to prod from pity party to problem solving. Experts say that positive action rightfully comes from cognitive empathy (understanding another viewpoint) whereas emotional empathy (sharing feelings) is useful to build relationships is not useful for decision-making.

I think my shortfall, however, is that I leap over step one straight to problem-solving. What about you? If you were in a deep funk, what would be the words that you’d want to hear from your best friend?

Joyfully,

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

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The Fire Series: Ineffable God

“God is ineffable!” ~ A. W. Tozer.

Ineffable: too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words.

Lately, I have been obsessed with a fresh revelation that God is beyond my human comprehension. I know a little of Him. I see glimpses and shadows, but the entirety of God is utterly beyond me. This revelation has not, in any way, had the effect of dampening my zeal to seek the Living God. No, quite the opposite. It has filled my heart with such a largeness of God; such a beyond-ness, that I hope to spend an eternity in endless discovery of His heavenly riches! I am filled with excitement akin to going on vacation to some new place where every day I wonder what new vistas of Eternity lie around the corner!

God is more breath-taking every day! He is more awe-inspiring the more you know Him!

So, when I hear preachers talk like they have God pinned down, my spidy-senses start to tingle. Phrases like, ‘God is the same yesterday, today and forever’ and ‘God doesn’t change’ or ‘God doesn’t do anything that is not in the bible’ make me very wary depending on the context in which they are used.

The bible chronicles a supremely multi-faceted God. If you picked out one particular era, you would be hard pressed to predict that that God was the same God of another era. In fact, I often say that unless you have read the entire bible, you probably have a very very limited understanding of God’s character. To think that we know all there is to know about God is just a tad arrogant. The same kind of arrogance that caused the religious leaders to dismiss Jesus Christ. This unassuming carpenter could not be the God of the bible (up to that time only the Old Testament). I mean, he didn’t speak like thunder and no angels blew trumpets when he entered the synagogue. Worse yet, he ate with sinners and drank wine!!

I do not know where the notion came that God limited Himself to our puny understanding of a few written texts, but I rather suspect that it did not come from God. That’s why the bible never gets boring (if you are reading it with God); because the Holy Spirit continues to pour out fresh revelations of the unsearchable depths of God as we seek Him in scripture. The fact is that our human language just does not have the bandwidth to describe God! The most we can get to is ‘God is like’. He is something like majestic, something like strong, something like merciful, something like a father, something like a king…. words all fall short. They fall short in English, Greek and Hebrew. They best they can do is act as a conduit for the Holy Spirit to pour understanding straight into our spirit.

Blake Healy says that God is so multi-faceted that His nature can only begin to be expressed through the thousands of years of history of billions of diverse human lives. That is a blow-mind thought! The unfolding of history is really a progressive revelation of who God is! How else could an eternal God be expressed in time? That’s why no one person could be the Body of Christ; His nature could only be represented by the myriad variety of millions of unique disciples!

God will always be part mystery on this side of heaven. It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out (Proverbs 25:2). Never let your study of scripture lead you to a puffed-up overconfidence in your knowledge of God. Instead, let it lead you to humble awe of the unknowable God, a healthy scepticism of what you think you already know, a child-like willingness to see God in things you do not yet understand and an insatiable appetite for more of God!

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.