The following is an excerpt ( a really long excerpt) from Louie Giglio's book, I Am Not but I Know I Am...
"God is more massive than our wildest imagination, bigger than the biggest words we have to describe Him. And He's doing good today - sustaining galaxies, holding every star in place, stewarding the seemingly chaotic events of earth to His conclusion within His great story.
God is constant. He blinks and a lifetime comes and goes. To Him one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day. All of human history could be written on His fingernail, with plenty of room left over for more.
And God is doing well today, thank you. He has no dilemmas. No quandaries. No counselors. No shortages. No rivals. No fears. No cracks. No worries. He is self-existent, self-contained, self-perpetuated, self-powered, and self-aware. In other words, He's God and He knows it. He is timeless. Ageless. Changeless. Always.
After an eternity of being God, He shows no signs of wear and tear. He has no needs. His accounts are in the black. He's the owner, not to mention Creator, of all of the world's wealth and treasure. He made gold and silver, and the trees we print our paper money on. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and all the hills the cows are standing on. He holds the patent on the skies above - not to mention the earth, the seas and their depths below, the breeze, the colors of the sunset and every flowering thing. They all are His invention. He design. His idea.
God does whatever He wants. His purposes are a sure thing. There's no stopping Him. No containing Him. No refuting Him. No cutting Him off at the pass. No short-circuiting His agenda. God is in control. He sends forth lightning from His storehouse, He breathes out the wind, waters the earth, raises up rulers, directs the course of nations, births life, ordains death, and, in the midst of it all, still has time to be intimately acquainted with the everyday affairs of everyone on the planet.
God knows everything about everything and everyone. His eyes race back and forth across the cosmos faster than we can scan the words on this page. There is not a bird flying through the air or perched on a branch that escapes His field of vision. He could start with Adam and name every man, woman, and child who has ever lived, describing every detail about each one. To Him, pitch darkness and midday are one and the same. Nothing is hidden from Him. He wrestles with no mysteries. He doesn't need to wait for a polygraph machine to decipher the truth. He sees clearly, and comprehends all He sees. He's never known what it is to have a teacher, a role model, an advisor, a therapist, a loan officer, an adjustor, a doctor, or a mother.
God's rule and reign are unrivaled in history and eternity. He sits on an everlasting throne. His Kingdom has no end. Little gods abound, but He alone made the heavens and the earth. God has never feared a power struggle or a hostile takeover. He doesn't have to watch His back. He has no equal. No peer. No competition.
It makes perfect sense that His name should be
I AM. And even more sense that my name is
I am not.
You and I are tiny. Miniscule. Transient. Microscopic. A momentary and infinitesimal blip on the timeline of the universe. A seemingly undetectable alliance of dust particles held together by the breath of God.
The sum of our days is like a vapor - our accumulated efforts like chaff in the wind. Among us, even the richest of the rich owns nothing. The strongest of the strong can be felled in one faltering heartbeat. We are fleeting mortals. Frail flesh. Little specks. Phantoms.
If this fact makes you just a tad bit uncomfortable, you're not alone. Invariably, when I talk about the vastness of God and the cosmos, someone will say, 'You're making me feel bad myself and making me feel really, really small,' as if that's the worst thing that could happen. But the point is not to make you
feel small, rather to help you see and embrace the reality that you
are small. Really, really small. But that's not where the story ends.
Though we are transient dust particles in a universe that is expanding faster than the speed of light, the unexplainable mystery of mysteries is that
you and I are loved and prized by the God of all creation.
Simply because He wanted to, He fashioned each of us in His own image, creating within us the capacity to know Him. And if that wasn't staggering enough, in spite of our foolishness and rebellious hearts, God has pursued us with relentless passion and patience, fully expressing to us His unfathomable love through the mercy and grace of the cross of His Son, Jesus Christ.
Sure, just a glimpse of His glory instantly resizes us to microscopic proportions. But God is not trying to deflate us with a Milky Way-sized put down that erodes any sense of self and reduces us to a pointless existence. Just the opposite. When we see just how tiny we are, our self-worth and our God-worth can become one and the same as we are stunned with the reality that we have been made in His very likeness and invited to know Him personally.
I am not, but He knows my name.
I am not, but He has pursued me in His love.
I am not, but I have been purchased and redeemed.
I am not, but I have been invited into The Story.
I am not, but I know the Creator of the universe.
I am not, but I know I AM!"
