A 2-D god

I know it’s been a while since I sent a devotional so here is on a very important subject: Jeremy Camp. More specifically my Jeremy Camp poster that hangs in my dorm room.

Don’t delete this message. Allow me explain. It is no secret to my closest friends that I am a huge fan of the contemporary Christian artist Jeremy Camp (this is not an endorsement I assure you). His picture hangs on my wall, and I joke with my roommates that I talk to it. My friends always give me a look as if to say, “You know it’s not real though, right?”

During one of my many mental wanderings this morning, I imagined myself answering them in my room, “Of course not! But it’s nice to have him around.” And since in my daydreams anything can happen, I see this J. Camp poster staying tight-lipped and angry with me when my friends leave – upset that I denied his existence, when he was always there in my room when I cried myself to sleep late at night, when I wrote and sang songs of worship and pain, when I played my guitar until the discouragement was released from my fingers. “He” was there, in my room, when I needed someone but couldn’t have anyone because it was that period, that time of being alone, when you cannot expect anyone to be there for you because it just wouldn’t be fair to them. And I denied him in front of him for the sake of my friends, because if I acted like I knew he was watching me, they would think I’m crazy.

I feel that’s how we often view God. He’s this two-dimensional figure of something we greatly admire and love to sport and represent as Christians. But we keep Him in this little room in our heart. When we’re outside with our friends, He’s not there with us. He’s stays in the room. When we’re in class or at work, He’s not there. He’s in the room. But when we’re hurt, when we’re broken, when we’re scared, and when we’re alone because we just can’t be with other people, He’s there. He watches us. He’s just an image even then. We don’t let Him interact in the healing process. And when we let friends get close enough to the room, suddenly we deny the reality of His existence. We deny that He’s watching us. Because what can He say? He’s just a two-dimensional picture.

I know I can say for myself that for a large portion of my Christian journey that was who God was to me. Something to store, something that could be contained, a source of life when I opened the bottle filled with living water, but something I could close up again. I personally refuse to live like that anymore. I refuse to let Him hang on the wall. I want Him to not just take over my world, but to become my world. If you want to do so as well, I suggest to log off Facebook and spend some time in prayer. God is really yearning for you to let Him be God in your life. To be your Lord and Master. Not to rule over you, but to love you as no one else can for every moment of everyday.

I’ll close with a thought from Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life, “God … chose to create you for His own enjoyment … and He considers you valuable enough to keep with Him for eternity …” That’s how much God loves you. That’s what He wants to do with you if you let Him – to shape you into the vessel He intended in the first place. Actually, I like to think of it more as He’s already shaped us into our unique forms and the closer we get to Him the more He reveals our shape, our purpose. And all our pain comes from doing what we weren’t created to do – like square pegs trying to fit in round holes. But He won’t show us if we don’t want to see it. Don’t limit what God can do in your life. Don’t keep Him in two dimensions.