We need to spend some more time on this from yesterday’s Catch: “You and I are the skin around God, but the God part is really God.”

Having God in our lives is not something we dare throw around lightly. This can’t be you and I coming up with something religious and calling it “God.” We use a lot of “God did this,” and “God did that,” in our lives without really knowing for sure what God is up to.

In fact from history, God has had a tendency to show up in unexpected ways. He appeared to Abraham in the form of two strangers and once as Melchizedek, King of Salem, to Elijah in a still, small voice, to Joseph and Mary as an angel, and to the rest of the world as a baby in a manger.

I think I’m trying to say that having God in our lives is a form of invasion. He sets Himself apart from us. He is more likely to manifest Himself in spite of us than because of us.  In 2 Corinthians 4:7, and indeed in the rest of New Covenant passage we have been studying in our teleconference study (“But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us”), the power of God is purposely juxtaposed against our human frailty so that God’s presence and action in our lives will be obvious.

If God is really in my life there has to be an element of danger – at least the presence of the unexpected. “I didn’t do this,” or “I didn’t come up with that.” God likes to be the only explanation.

For this reason, it just might be that God shows up more in our weaknesses than in our strengths, more in bad times than in good, more in hunger than in satisfaction, more in our failures than in our successes.

Or I suppose it could be quite the opposite if we were expecting the worst…

If these last three Catches have peaked your interest, you really need to consider joining our teleconference Bible study next Wednesday. Marti and I will be repeating the New Covenant study we conducted at the close of the year with the assistance of a few leaders who surfaced out of that session. We will give you more details as we go, but you might want to start making your plans now.