"As deep calls unto deep" is an encouraging phrase, because it infers that God is not the only one who has unseen depths to be explored. In His image, I have been given the capacity to interact with God in a meaningful way, where the unseen riches of who I am beckons to the fullness of who He is.
Much of Christian culture is dedicated to working through the difficulties and hinderances to a deeper relationship with God. Because we acknowledge the dysfunction on our end, we feel that if we can remove those hinderances, our relationship with God will be fuller, stronger, and more rewarding. This is, again, a true reality for many people. We are given the free-will to manage ourselves, and we reserve the right to keep things in the way of our relationship with God. There are things He cannot deal with if He doesn't have our permission, so I support the right sort of self-investigation; guided by the Holy Spirit, in the context of accountability, remaining true to what the Word declares over our nature.
I am an "inner-healing enthusiast". I believe in it, promote it, and participate in it frequently. Personally, though, I am always challenging my own perception of God, as I want to be free to live an authentic Christianity. I'm just beginning to wonder, though, if I really need to get God out of the box I sometimes put Him in.
They say that one million earths can fit inside the sun. God put His essence into an obscure being on an obscure planet billions of sizes smaller than the rest of His creation, and called it " very good". In our attempt to understand Him, we think of God as even bigger than the universe He created. He becomes this monstrous figure, this entity in the sky that holds the cosmos in His hands. It's a metaphor that certainly explains why some feel God is impersonal and distant.
However big God is (and whatever size of shoe He wears), that God made a decision before He created humanity: He would bend low, shrink His size, and come as a baby to the obscure world He created. He would humble himself, and reduce His nature to that of a human man; one who laughed and cried, ate and drank- one who needed His mother's milk and His father's protection.
This God stepped into a box, called "human flesh". He reduced His essence to the limitations of ours, as an expression of love.
I'm beginning to think that the ways we supposedly "limit" God make us way to important. If I want God's sovereignty to affect my life, I want a God that can sovereignly love me no matter what I've done to separate myself from that love. And I'm beginning to believe that the only legitimate limitations, the ones we chose that actually kept us from him, were removed through the Cross. I'm no longer so worried all the ways I could limit Him; I'm now trying to think about all the ways He stepped into my box and loved me anyway.
Can we limit God through our own dysfunctions and perceptions? Certainly, yes. And is God still capable of breaking our boxes, if we let Him? In the most wonderful of ways. This pales in comparison, however, to a God that steps into our perception and loves us anyway. And for every moment that we truly aren't aware of Him, He saves up all of that love for later. For what we can't yet receive from Him, we soon will. He is not afraid of our limitations.
This is why those who think their sickness is from God can still hear His voice and feel His love. This is why grace comes upon those that never did anything to deserve it. This is why the Kingdom isn't a meritocracy. He loves us, as much as He we let Him love us, as long as we let Him love us.
I don't grow to "get it right" or to move towards some sort of gnostic, ascetic perfection. I grow so that I have more room in my depths for His depths. So that I have a greater capacity to understand His love.
He breaks the box He's in when His love outgrows it; and suddenly, I need a bigger box.
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