God Is Always There First
When I was a kid, I thought God was in the past. Or at the very least, I thought God sort of hung out in the past, and was always trying to pull people back into the past where God was. I know it sounds crazy, but hear me out. The phrases I heard to describe God and God's actions were almost always in the past tense. They went something like this: God spoke . God created. God acted. God redeemed. God did. Most of the Christians I was around in my formative years seemed to be totally fine with this idea. In fact, most of them seemed to prefer the past to the present. To them, the past was when everything was as it should have been. The present was where the world was going to hell in a hand basket. I think there are a lot of Christians who unwittingly adopt the belief that if we could all just get back to the God of the past, then we would truly be ready to experience whatever God has in store for us in the future. ...