A God Who Is Willing To Limit Himself

There is a thought that will move you more than any other; an idea that will reveal more to you about the character of God than anything else. It's the revelation that God Himself, the Creator of everything, lowers Himself to unimaginably low levels in order to be with His children. Imagine with me, someone of infinite majesty and gorgeous power, someone so high and beautiful that there was no one equal with this someone. Nobody came even close to touching the plain on which this someone rested. Imagine someone outside of time, un-subjected to death, full of kindness, immortal, lacking nothing except another soul to share existence with. Now imagine that someone creating a creatio ex nihilo, a creation from nothing, and filling it with beings of free will and life. Now imagine that person leaving his glory, splendor, and majesty behind and wrapping himself in flesh; the creation of his own hands. Imagine the Creator becoming the created; abandoning his reign over death and subjecting himself to our pain, wading into our suffering. Imagine the bullet-proof becoming vulnerable, the satisfied becoming subject to hunger, the infinite renouncing immortality, and the unbreakable becoming breakable. You have just imagined the story of God's relentless pursuit of humanity.

You see, we talk a lot of God's goodness and relentless love, but I don't think we fully realize the depth of adoration He has shown us. God went from creating us, to becoming one of us, to being killed by us, to becoming one with us. (I highly recommend the videos I've attached at the bottom of this post. They address issues I discuss here.) God went from exhaling the cosmos into existence, to being misunderstood to such an extent that he took on flesh and allowed himself to be squeezed into the world covered in blood. Then he went from being born and living as a human, to feeling the sting of thorns pressed into his scalp. Then he went from feeling the sting of thorns pressed into his scalp, to absorbing the emotional pain of the whole world while dying the most painful physical death devised by man. All of that He did to hold your hand in communion and cradle you in a beautiful dance of relational exchange.

You know what that tells me? That tells me that, not only are you deemed priceless, but the One who thinks you're worth everything is willing to lower Himself to unimaginable depths, simply to be with you. And yes, you might think, "Seth, I know all this! I know my immeasurable value and how far God is willing to go to commune with me." But I think it's still very important to frequently remind ourselves how much we are cherished and just how far God is willing to dive in order to hold our hand. Even the way Jesus came to earth demonstrates His willingness to limit Himself to be with you. He came as an infant, a helpless child, born into the world the same way you are. He breathed your air and fought your struggles. To quote Papa in "the Shack":

"When we three spoke ourselves into human existence as the Son of God, we became fully human. We also chose to embrace all the limitations this entailed. Even though we have always been present in this created universe, we now became flesh and blood. It would be like this bird, whose nature it is to fly, choosing only to walk and remain grounded. He doesn't stop being a bird, but it does alter his experience of life significantly."

Just as you limit yourself to your children's level, coloring pictures and using easy English with them, God limits Himself to our understanding. Only He does it far better than us. Because of His willingness to be on our level, we now intimately know a God who is so good that he subjects Himself to our misconceptions and misunderstandings about Him. He squeezes His vastness into our heart and mind, knowing that we sometimes don't understand how good He truly is.
I'll end with a quote from a British TV show called "Doctor Who" that really hits the mark. The following is a conversation about humanity between an immortal savior who stands outside of time, and a human girl who he cares for, when she is feeling very small and insignificant. The relationship between God and humanity is captured perfectly in this beautiful conversation:

"To you, I haven't been born yet. And to you, I've been dead a hundred billion years."
"To you, I'm a ghost. We're all ghosts to you...We must be nothing."

"No. No...You're not that."

"Then what are we? What can we possibly be?"

"You are the only mystery worth solving."

We are "the only mystery worth solving" to God, and He will limit Himself to whatever degree it takes in order to be near to us.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2a4_mmT6_9s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P0eCF6Hq-c