Westside Church

The goal of the Christian life is to be a disciple.  This is how Jesus referred to the twelve men he chose to spend most of his time with – they were his disciples.  In his great commission he charged these twelve to go and make more disciples (Mt. 28).  A disciple by definition is a learner, or a student of the master.  I love this definition.  In life we never arrive.  There's always something more to learn and life is a perpetual growing experience.

In high school my favorite subject was history.  I loved reading about the explorers.  Imagine sailing across the Atlantic ocean and discovering for the first time an entire continent, or traveling with Lewis and Clark as they forged a trail across North America and finally reached the Pacific ocean.  There's a part of me that feels ripped off growing up in a generation where most everything has already been discovered and every rock turned over.  We've even been to the moon!  Sometimes it feels like we know it all.  If we need an answer to any question, we have a wealth of information only a click a way.  Where's the mystery in life?  Where do we turn to find the adventure of discovery?

 

This is what I love about God calling us to be His disciples.  There's no end to discovering the mystery of who He is.  He's infinite.  Every time I discover a truth that I think I can wrap my mind around, I quickly discover there is another layer to it.  I'm sure many of you can identify with the experience of reading a familiar passage of scripture, maybe even for the hundredth time, only to discover something revolutionary that you never understood before.  That's what God is like.

 

One of my favorite passages of scripture is the exchange God has with Moses through a burning bush on Mt. Horeb.  God reveals Himself to Moses and asks him to complete a difficult and dangerous task.  In Moses day, you worshiped whatever God you followed by creating an image, or an idol of your god in order to bow down before what your hands had made.  You can imagine Moses' confusion when he asked to know God's name.  “I Am” God replied.  I am what?  I imagine Moses was hoping for something more.  I am the God of power.  I am the God of countless riches.  All the other gods of this age could be defined, they had form, they had a specialty.  Not this God.  It's as if God was saying to Moses, you'll never come to the end of who I am.  Even my name is incomprehensible to you.

 

God is an unscalable mountain.  He's an ocean with no floor.  At times the thought of an infinite God seems overwhelming, but I would rather stand before God overwhelmed, than bored!