God Is Always "More"

When one of my kids was little, I would read her a bedtime story about Jonah and the Big Fish (Jonah 1-4). When I finished reading, I asked her what she knew about God. She said …. ”God lives inside me, but you won’t find him there because He’s too big!” (He’s there but not there). Wow! What a deep theological idea for a little kid!

Yes, God is there but he is also everywhere (Psalm 139:1-12). He’s here, there and everywhere. He is in our lives but He’s also “out there.” God is always "more" than anything we could ever experience or say or even think. God is essentially a mystery. He will remain a mystery (in our fleshly state). In this final article on the names of God, we need to remind ourselves of who God really is:

1) God Is "More" Than Our Names For Him — Just as a person’s name doesn’t really describe him, the writers of the Bible knew this, so they utilized a variety of names for God, knowing that God could never be completely grasped by a single name.

2) "More" reverence For God’s Name — Wrongful use of God’s name is expressly forbidden in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:7). Because of this, there is an extraordinary reverence for God’s name throughout the Testaments. Ancient Hebrew has no vowels hence the sacred name is YHWH. Since “The Name” was so sacred and for fear of using God’s name wrongly, the ancient Jews would only call him “the Holy One” or "Adonai" which means “my Lord.”

3) God Is "More" Than Images — Just as in our own lives, images or titles can help us identify someone but really doesn’t tell us about his or her character …. brother, sister, daughter, mother etc. These all imply relationships but nothing about personalities. Because God is a mystery, he defies reduction and will always remain somewhat illusive. The writers of the Bible knew this and so they developed a variety of images for God. These were titles or images that were familiar to people and they could relate God to the character that was being described.

4) God Is "More" Than Human Experience — The Bible provides a variety of ways in which people experienced God. Moses encounters God in a burning bush (Exodus 3); God was revealed to Samuel in his dreams (1 Samuel 3); Ezekiel and Daniel in visions (Ezekiel 1:1; Ezekiel 8:1-4; Daniel 2); Mary through an angelic visit (Luke 1); Jesus in the form of a voice from heaven; Paul, in a vision of the Lord himself (Acts 9).

What emerges is the realization that no two people, not even in the Bible, experience God in the same way. No single experience of God could ever completely capture the mystery of God. God is always "more …. more" than any of us can ever imagine! —Barbara Hyland, guest writer

—Mike Riley, Gospel Snippets