Boundaries

People set a lot of store in boundaries.  Don’t cross this line or that will happen, and it won’t be good!  Don’t do this, or you’ll be sorry!  There are those with whom you’re almost afraid to speak because you aren’t sure which unseen line your fixing to cross unintentionally.  Reactions often range from surprise to outright anger and rage.  Little wonder that some folks have trouble when God asks them to cross the line.

Our God isn’t a safe God.  He asks the impossible from the improbable.  He asks us to walk through the valley of death and fear no evil.  He’s the One who can strike thousands dead with a whisper and the one who can raise them from the dead.  We are his children but we are also his warriors.  The battle may be fought on earth and in our hearts but it belongs to the Lord.  He is the God of the wilderness – the God of thunder and lightning as well as a gentle rainfall. 

For all that we know of God and everything that he is, we still try to put boundaries around him.  Oh, I couldn’t do that, Lord, it’s not my place!  You want me to be a missionary?  OK, but I can’t go there.  We bring God down to our level of abilities and try to make him fit into the box we have on the shelf.  We limit God by not being obedient to his calling.  We stick him in a closet in our personal life; he never sees the light of day at work.

Our God is a boundless God.  He has no limits.  There’s nothing he can’t do.  There is no change he cannot effect.  There is no situation he cannot handle.  As long as we limit God to what we think he can or cannot handle we will never be complete in Christ.  You can’t say on one hand that you believe God will heal you and on the other hand hold on to the rope of medical practice that says it know better than God does and you’ll die if you don’t do as the doctor says.

Don’t get me wrong.  Medicine has its place.  God uses doctors, nurses, hospitals, and all the other medical personnel to heal our physical bodies and to keep us healthy.  But medicine only goes so far – we may have an idea of what may work to cure cancer but we have no real proof that it does.  We have established methods of working with particular diseases and drugs that alleviate symptoms, but there are always side effects (some not so very pleasant).  Chemo therapy, for example, isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  I wonder, though, if putting deadly chemicals into your body is really the best thing to do.  I wonder if pounding your body with radiation and suffering the side effects isn’t almost as bad as the disease itself.

I do appreciate the input of all my doctors.  But I don’t make decisions based solely on what they say.  I check with other doctors, read information on the Internet sites, and talk with other patients.  The most important thing I do is check in with God.  Many times what God speaks to my heart follows what the doctors want to do.  Sometimes it does not.  Sometimes God says, “Do it.”  Other times God says, “No.  This is not my will.”  I have a choice – I can follow what man says, or I can follow what God says.  I’m pretty sure not obeying God would be my worst choice.