A Funny Story with a Lesson (Plus a Bonus Thought)

Some of you already have read the story I am about to share because you saw it on Facebook, but I want to expand on the funny story with a life application, so here it goes:

The kids and I have had many a conversation about God's omnipresence in our lives/world. We usually discuss it in terms of Jesus and how He is everywhere. For some reason these conversations usually occur in the car and Robert is not with us. Abby in her attempt to understand will say, "Jesus is sitting right there," meaning the front passenger seat. This past Sunday, on the way to church, she suddenly bursts out, "Daddy, you sat on Jesus! You squished him!" She was very bothered by this and we finally convinced her that myabe Jesus was sitting in the back seat between her and Brandon. This satisfied her, she even looked over and said. "Hi, Jesus!"

The rest of the day I teased Robert about squishing Jesus and about how Jesus gave up His seat for him, which got me to thinking. How many times do we try to squish Jesus/God into what we want Him to be? We try to mold Him, conform Him and quite literally squish Him so that He fits into OUR lives and OUR way of thinking. We don't want Him in certain parts of OUR lives, so we try to squeeze Him out of the picture. We want to justify OUR ways so we tweak things just a little to make it sound right and even "holy". I think this applies to both believers and non-believers.

For the believer, we got something in our lives that doesn't quite jive with what the Bible says, so we try to twist things to hide our guilt and make us look right. Or, on the flip side, we are facing something quite big and difficult and we don't have the faith so we try to make Him look small and incapable of getting us through it. We set limits on what He can do, where He can be, who He is, when He can act and how He can work.

For the non-believer, it depends on where they are coming from, but you see those who minimize who He really is - He was just a teacher or a prophet, He wasn't who He said he was. Others might believe He is who He says He is, but say He can't forgive me, He doesn't want someone like me, etc.

So, I challenge all of us to think about how am I "squishing Jesus"? 

"'For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,' declares the Lord." Isaiah 55:8

A bonus life application: I said something to Robert about Jesus giving up His seat for Him and his response was, "And He saved me!" How true is that! Jesus did give His seat up for us, His seat next to God, the Father, to come down to earth, live a perfect life, die on the cross to save us from our sins, rise up from the dead and return to heaven where He is waiting on the day He comes back to take us home! All I can say is, thank you Jesus for giving up your seat!