God is a God of the More…He does everything with a flare!
God is truly an out of the box God!! He never does anything ordinary and He does everything with flare!! It is never enough for Him to grant just want you ask for…He loves to grant THE MORE!!
When I read the bible…all I see is this amazing out of the box God who does amazing out of the box miracles. He saved mankind by choosing one man to build a boat for him, his family and two of every kind of animal. (Genesis 6) I don’t know about you, but If God asked me to build a boat when there is no sign of a flood and then He asked me to house every animal on earth (dangerous, scary, etc.) I would probably want to question whether I was hearing from God, or was it the devil or maybe I ate too much before going to bed. What about the parting of the Red Sea? In Exodus 13:17, it says that God did not lead the Israelites through the Philistine country even though the way was shorter. God didn’t choose the most obvious path (at least to us humans), He chose to part a sea and have His people walk through. Of course…that is what I call doing a miracle with flare.(Exodus 13:17-20)
One of my favorite stories in the bible is 1 Kings 18:23-40 where Elijah is challenging the prophets of Baal to prove that their so-called gods have power and are greater than God. He tells them to make an altar and put pieces of a bull on it. Then he ask them to cry out to their gods to rain down fire and burn up the pieces. Of course they spend the whole day trying to get a response out of their no gods and eventually they gave up when nothing happens. Now it is Elijah’s turn and he goes to the extreme…he is sooo confident that his God will do the More. So he has his altar with his bull, but has them dig a trench around it and has people wet the wood and the bull three times so much so that the water gathers in a trench around the altar. He prays and God answers by raining down fire and burning everything up including the water in the trenches. It is not that God couldn’t just burn up the sacrifice…no, that would have been too small for the God of the More…He had to do it with flare and burn up everything. I love it!! No one doubted who was the true and living God after that.
How many of us when we pray and ask God for something do we give Him free reign to do it when He deems necessary, however He chooses to do it and if He chooses to do it at all based on if it would be beneficial to us or not. Why would we try to confine an omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent God to human ability? I would have to say that that is dethroning Him. Here is an example of what I am talking about:
I have needed new bedroom furniture for years but I haven’t been able to afford getting any. I would look at commercials on television, go into stores and and even look online. Then I would go back to God and say “Daddy, I know you know that I need new bedroom furniture. But I am willing to wait until you provide for it AND…I would like you to choose the furniture for me. After all, since you created me, you created my taste, therefore you know exactly what to choose”. This has gone on for years. All of a sudden last week, out of nowhere, my sister and I had a discussion about what I needed to do to replace the furniture. I figured I only needed a new headboard, side table and chest of drawers…nothing fancy and nothing expensive. I would make do with what we could afford presently. After talking about it for awhile, we realized that God was in the midst of the discussion and the time was right. So, I went on a store’s website and found a headboard and matching nightstand that I liked at a very low price. It was nice, but not necessarily something I would have chosen if I had more money. The next day, I contacted the store only to discover they only sold the headboard in one size and not the size I needed; they also did not carry the night stand from the site. I began telling the sales lady what I needed was a king size headboard but nothing else since I had the rails etc…she informed me that she had just received a plain, brown, king headboard and she could give it to me for $65 out the door. I went back to God and was thanking Him for the price and praying that it would be something I like.
On Saturday, we went to the store to see the headboard and to determine whether it would be something I wanted or not. The sales lady retrieved the headboard and was about to take the packaging from around it when she looked to the side and discovered the headboard wasn’t $65 but actually was on sale for $39. We were all in shock and my sister and I were trying not to laugh because we could see God in operation. When she removed the wrapping, inside was this beautiful, cherrywood headboard that normally would have cost $200 or more. We all stood gaping at the headboard and how beautiful it was. Then the sales lady launched into this story about when the furniture came in on their delivery truck, they had only sent her this king headboard with no rails, footboard or hardware to go with it. She thought it was a mistake and the rest of the bed would arrive on the next shipment, but it never came. She called corporate and asked them how was she supposed to sell a headboard by itself. She also asked them why did they send her a king headboard when the store doesn’t even sell that size. Needless to say, after we paid for the headboard and she helped us load it up, she couldn’t help talking about the price of the headboard and beautiful it was. My sister and I were floored. Can we say More than we could ask for or imagine.
That wasn’t the end…God then led us to another store where we began looking for a night stand and lo and behold, there was a cherrywood night stand on sale for $59 that matched the headboard. Wow!! Remember, the sales lady told me the headboard was a plain, brown headboard and only discovered upon opening the box that it was not plain and it wasn’t brown. We never intended to get both the headboard and the nightstand right away. We were only going to purchase the headboard, and that was if it was something I liked. Trust God to give me a headboard that was much better than what I was thinking and then turn around and lower the price by half, so that we could use the rest of the money to get a matching nightstand at another store.
This is only one incident. I have many that I can write about but that would not be a blog…it would be a rather large novel or several. I believe the key is to acknowledge who God really is and not scale Him down to who we think He is. He doesn’t just want to give you what you desire…He wants to give you More than you can ask for or imagine. God lives in the More…He believes in the More….why don’t you try it sometime and allow Him to be the God of the More in every area of your life…let Him be the God that He really is….the God of the More.
