MamaArcher's Blog

The Great Grandeur of the Lord

This post has been swimming around in my head for almost a year now. I decided I should finally tackle the task of trying to write it out.

The great grandeur of the Lord lies in who he is! Describing the Lord is an endless task but I would like to focus on two attributes. Ones that are often out of balance. He is transcendent and he is eminent. Both terms are 16th century Latin terms. Transcendence means God is the supreme and majestic ruler of the universe. He lives beyond ordinary understanding, he is beyond us. Eminence means to remain within, being nearby and not far away, able to be approached.

There is a disheartening trend in many churches and in the lives of many Christians today. Many have failed to find the balance between the two. Some will see and focus on his transcendency and see God as an unapproachable and uninvolved being. Other focus on his eminence and develop a peer view and become to casual. The culture we are in today takes more of the eminence to the extreme approach. It seems to me the great grandeur of the Lord has been lost.

This trend is very evident to those who are willing to open their eyes and look. Yet for those who are caught up in the modern movement of making God more “relevant”, accommodating individual styles of entertaining (movie clips & bumper sticker theology) rather than directing pure worship, trying to be “Be a Better You” type of philosophy will most likely not be able to see this.

God is eminent; this is true. If we are believers, we have been adopted into the family of God. We are children of God. We are co-heirs with Christ. Yet, we should not forget our meager beginnings and become too comfortable and spoiled. We must remember that Jesus is God. We must not minimize his divinity. We may be brothers and sisters to Christ but he is still God and we are not. The human family is designed to be a picture of the heavenly one, but we live in a fallen state. God himself uses the earthly family to show us how to relate to Him. But, we must not loose site of our fallen state in humanity. In our fallen condition our earthly families (siblings) fight, hate, slander, and even attack with violence against one another. This may be why in scripture God tells us there is one who sticks closer than a brother.

Have we become too familiar with Christ? Before your red flags fly, please hear me out. Do we really see and know him as GOD? Or have we reduced to him to the level of a buddy, just a friend, a confidant when convenient? As an example, I received a flyer from a local church in the mail. Let me share with you what it said. On the front were the words, “You won’t believe this is a church!” It was covered with all kinds of casual shoes each labeled with a different staff position. The flip-flops were labeled pastor. On the back were the times of the services. All of the children’s ministries were in conflict with the church services. Under the youth department were these words, “Get to know this Jesus dude. Playstation, Wiii, X-Box, …..”.

Many have taken the eminence of God to the extreme and the reverence, the righteousness, holiness, and the great grandeur of the Lord has been lost. Even the children of the king should approach him in a way that recognizes and honors the fact that he is the king. How much more reverence, awe and humbleness should the children of the King of all creation have in their approach? Yet, more than not, the children have become to comfortable and overlook their position before him and in doing so bring disrespect and a lack of honor before the throne.