As i woke up this morning, my eyes opened as they usually do, thank you Lord, to see the ceiling above my bed. In my house i’m glad their are ceilings. That means there’s a roof defending us from wind, sun, rain, and inclement weather. But then a thought started to drift across my waking mind, like a feather gently being blown along by a breeze. With God i have no use for ceilings in my relationship with Him, but yet in all my walking about, in all my preaching and teaching, in all my praying, i carry ideas of limited options, even though my mouth declares He is God of the impossible.
How often do we come to God’s table of possibilities with ceilings of impossibilities? His endless possibilities are, more often than we think, met with our ceilings of limited options, putting a cap on His open Heaven with all our debilitating lack of faith, unbelief, a heart full of “I doubt its”, and plain old “don’t want to”. Ceilings. Most of us don’t even know we’ve got them.
A ceiling is a boundary, thus far and no further. Like when we get really put out with something or someone we might say, “That’s it! I’ve had it!” Meaning, we’ve hit our limit, or ceiling, and we’re not going to take it anymore.
And there are indeed limits. As example, shoes only walk so far, our lungs can only take in a limited amount of breath at a time, food only keeps just so long, our bodies have an expiration date or there’s a limit on our life span, a motor can only run only so fast before it breaks, tires only have x-amount of estimated miles of wear before they reach their limit, and on and on.
Matthew 19:25-26, “When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished, saying, “Who then can be saved?” But Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”” Friends, nothing is so dead, God can’t grow life out of it. Selah.
It isn’t possible to know what you don’t know, and we just have to be good with the fact there are a multitude of things we don’t know. Actually, as you’ve probably read, our brain can only retain approximately 15% of all the information in the universe, so that leaves 85% we know nothing about, and nothing means nothing there. In light of that, i have to wonder what brilliant person managed to make that calculation and how did they know how much our brain could retain? Not only that, just because we might possess that 15%, i’ll just bet our level of understanding of it all is in very, very small numbers represented by percentages which are less than one. Even our imagination has a ceiling unless God expands it.
In many situations, limits and ceilings are a good thing, the idea is a kindness, but other times they more represent limiting options. Why do we, often, when presented with the infinite possibilities of God, suddenly decide we need to reason our way out of engaging with Him? It is highly likely it is not the atheist, the agnostic, the infidel, or the people devoted to bringing about a godless society. The problem is not with the world, but within our own ranks. Often the Lord is prevented from doing amazing things in our lives, all because our ceilings don’t allow it. Most times it’s just all more than we can hardly believe. We claim He is God of the impossible, yet we come to Him with all our reasons why He shouldn’t, couldn’t or wouldn’t. Why, always reasoning “why”, but then we rarely seem to conclude it wasn’t God but us with our ceilings of what we figured was possible.
Many people firmly believe God must operate within their idea of church structures, and they must have methods, and walls, and layouts, and especially titles, and hierarchy which are almost as rigidly followed as a military command post. And most astoundingly, those people teach the children that their method is how you do church, always with an underlying, unspoken rule of “do not step off the page”. They cannot see or hear any further than their outline of how things should be done. They say, “this is how it’s done in the Bible” therefore God couldn’t possibly do church any other way. Ceilings.
In Matthew 14 Jesus sent the guys on ahead in a boat. The wind and waves were giving them a really hard time, enough so they were laboring against the weather. But then, Jesus comes stepping along, walking on the water, and when they saw Him it totally scared the soup out of them. He calmed them down, not the weather, just those in the weather, and then, as usual, Peter had something to say. i’ve re-imagined the conversation at this point. Peter: Lord, if it is really you, i mean really you, if you give the word i’d like to try walking on water too!” From behind him comes a hissing from the other disciples: “Peter! Shut up man! What are you doing? Are you nuts? Can’t you see this boat is rocking out, the wind is howling, and the rain, oh good grief, the rain!” Suddenly Jesus calls to Peter: “Sure! Step out.” Spectacularly, Peter begins to climb out of the boat and the other disciples are grabbing for him a little saying, “Hold up there Pete! For goodness sake man, think! This is not rational!” Another may have said, “Let him go! You know how he is.” And another might say, “Well, the Lord did call to him and it’s better to drown while obeying God than it is to do nothing.” Finally, Peter puts his feet on the water and it feels pretty solid. He gives it a few more steps, walking in the impossiblity of the moment. Suddenly, out of nowhere, he begins to reason within himself, reasoning who did he think he was that he might be like Jesus and walk on water, afterall, pride does go before a fall. He might start remembering the time he charged extra to the widow lady and didn’t feel bad about cheating her just a little bit, seeing himself as unworthy of God’s miraculous. With the wind whistling and rain coming down sideways, he may have began to reason, “others may, but probably not me”, and his faith begins to fade as he begins to sink, and the more he sinks the more his faith fades. In desperation he calls out one of the most powerful prayers in the universe, “Lord help!” Immediately, Jesus grabbed him. Think, now, i don’t know it, but i’d bet they walked back, together, and climbed in the boat, so it’s not like Jesus dragged him through the water because Peter had the nerve to believe in the impossible. Jesus welcomed and even encouraged Peter’s effort to reach past his doubt and unbelief, past his self-manufactured ceilings of possibilities and get out of the boat with Jesus. At first Peter had no limiting options, but the farther he walked towards the Lord, walking in the impossible, the more his self-defined limiting options began to overwhelm his faith. So, think….
With God we have no use for ceilings in our relationship with Him, but yet in all our walking about, in all our preaching and teaching, in all our praying, we carry unrecognized ideas of limited options, even though our mouth declares He is the God of the impossible.
How often do we come to God’s table of possibilities with ceilings? Do we ever ask the Lord to raise our ceilings? His endless possibilities are, more often than we think, met with our ceilings of limited options, putting a cap on His open Heaven with all our debilitating lack of faith, unbelief, a heart full of “I doubt it”, and just plain old “don’t want to”. Ceilings.
What do you think?
i’m Social Porter with Living In His Name Ministries.