Knowing God – It’s Kinda Like The Ocean

Have you ever been to the ocean? Amazingly beautiful. Such power. Such force that continues to drive the waves onto the shore. Day in and day out the water moves just as it was directed to from the first day God spoke it into motion. The first time I saw the ocean, I was humbled by it’s greatness. It’s grandness. It’s methodical turbulence. Over and over, never growing tired of moving over the shore. I realized very quickly that I would never fully know the depths of the ocean because of it’s size but also it’s depth. I would not know the ocean really by standing on the shore in the surf. Yes, I could see the movement and watch the waves play on the shore but the ocean is soooo much more than that. Stepping out into the waves I feel the force. I feel the water pull back out into the water tugging at me to follow. I begin in a small way to understand the ocean more.

Taking this word picture a bit further, if I spend time looking beneath the depths of the water I see more than a mind can comprehend just looking the top of the water. A whole new world awaits below. My limited time snorkeling has blown my mind at how much there is to see below the water line. At each location, new amazing life, wonderful topography all around. Watching videos about the oceans’ vastness I understand that, man, will never know the depths and the vastness of the ocean. It is so big and wonderful, immense and limitless.

This is how the Bible explains God. We have a hard time understanding God and we feel like we are somehow slow or stupid because we can’t understand the greatness of God or His love or any other thing you want to know about God. Psalm 104: 25 puts it, There is the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number—living things both large and small. NIV . God’s own words about the ocean in Job 38 are so powerful to me. Job 38:8-11 “Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, ⁹ when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, ¹⁰ when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, ¹¹ when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt’?

Can you understand a God so powerful He creates the ocean and commands it how to behave? I can’t comprehend that! A God so big that He created the sea and all that is in it. The mountains, the animals; great and small. To understand just those attributes of the Creator is difficult. As you continue to read Job 38-39 you can see just how big God/ Creator is. It’s humbling. It’s crazy hard to understand someone that big. Someone that powerful. I have limited concept of those things – even when I try to stretch my mind to grasp it I fail.

Now add to that bigness – other qualities of God. A love that never ends. Faithfulness through ALL generations. Mercy that is new and fresh every morning. Grace upon grace. One who was is and is and is to come – never created and never dying – infinite. A God who is immutable or never changing. Self sufficient needing nothing from me, not now, not ever. Omnipotent – all powerful. Omniscient – all knowing God. Full of perfect wisdom. Listen friends, I could literally go on all day and name the character traits of God and not exhaust the depths of who He is!

This is exactly why I see God like I see the ocean. At every step in the ocean, I experience something new. Something awesome. At every depth, I see something new. There is never a time that I will have seen it all nor understood the complexity of the ocean. I don’t beat myself up about that. It’s truth and it’s beautiful that I can keep coming back to the ocean, whether it’s in CA, TX, NC, England, Australia, China, Madagascar… and I will always see the ocean and I will get to experience something new and wonderful.

My encouragement to you today is not to lose focus on the grandness of God. Let’s rest in that and continue to try and understand how big our God is. Let’s pray for more understanding and the ability to know God more. Let’s also be a people of grace. I extend myself grace when I learn something I didn’t know about God before. I am not stupid merely, a student learning each day. When God catches me off guard, showing me something new about His power or love or goodness or a hundred other things He is teaching me, I don’t get down on myself. I marvel in newness of this wonderful relationship I am in with the Creator of all I see. Let’s continue coming back to the place where He is. Stepping out in the water, going deeper. Exploring His vastness with wonder and awe.