God Is Out of Control – a Guest Post By Michael Hidalgo

This is an excerpt from Changing Faith: Questions, Doubts and Choices About an Unchanging God, a new book by Michael Hidalgo.

We live each day walking on a thin veneer of certainty.Many of us live with a desire to control things because it gives us security and certainty. We want control so badly we even try to control God. It’s almost as if we place boundaries around him, box him in and create a framework for him. We look for him in all the expected places, thinking he will work within the small world we create for him.

We often live as though our way of thinking and of doing things is also God’s way. We divide over issues, use the Bible to defend our position and claim we are on God’s side. But whenever we reduce the big, massive, expansive, unchanging God to our way of doing things, we are attempting to create God in our image. And when we attempt to make God more like us, there is a good chance we become less like him.

We must remember God does not observe all the dividing lines we have set up. He calls all of us to exist as “one new humanity” (Ephesians 2:14-16). The church has struggled with this since its beginning. In the book of Acts the story of how God moves begins predictably enough. Those who followed Jesus and believed in him received the Holy Spirit in Jerusalem during the feast of Pentecost. This was just the beginning, because God’s Spirit was on the move.

Jesus said, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). Even so, some had a tough time imagining how far God would go to reach all people.

In the book of Acts, Luke told a story of Peter’s surprise at the movement of God. One afternoon Peter had a vision. He saw a sheet come down from heaven filled with all kinds of animals, and a voice said, “‘Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.’ Peter objected, ‘Surely not, Lord! I have never eaten anything impure or unclean’” (Acts 10:13-14, ©NIV).

According to Peter’s religious tradition he was not supposed to eat certain animals. How could God ask him to do something that betrayed his faith and violated Scripture? After Peter had the vision, men from the household of Cornelius, a Roman centurion, visited Peter. They invited him to go with them to teach Cornelius and his family about Jesus.

It was against the law for a Jewish man like Peter to associate with or visit people like Cornelius. How could God want Peter to be around people like this? However, as Peter learned, God is not concerned about our boundaries and laws. /tweet/

When Peter entered Cornelius’s house he remembered the vision and said, “God does not show favoritism” (Acts 10:34). While Peter spoke to them, those present received the Holy Spirit, just as Jesus’ followers in Jerusalem had.

When Peter returned to Jerusalem, some of the religious criticized Peter for going to the home of a Roman soldier and having a meal. Peter responded by telling the story of the vision, the invitation, how he saw God move and how those in Cornelius’s household received the Holy Spirit too. He then said to his critics, “Who was I to think that I could stand in God’s way?” (Acts 11:17).

We all should ask Peter’s question: “Who are we to stand in God’s way?” Who are we to draw lines, craft barriers, construct boxes, create in-groups and out-groups, and determine the ways and places God will work? When Peter’s critics heard his story, they celebrated. They experienced a change of faith and saw God does not play by our rules or see the world from our limited viewpoint. He cannot be controlled anymore than we can control the wind.
This is good news.

Our joy is found in moving from seeing God as limited to our small world to discovering that he is unpredictable. God is beyond control and is moving in places we never thought possible.

And when we wake up to this, we dive deeper into a changing faith.

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Michael Hidalgo is the lead pastor of Denver Community Church, and is the author of Changing Faith: Questions, Doubts and Choices About an Unchanging Godand UnLost: Being Found by the One We Are Looking For. He blogs regularly at michael-hidalgo.com. He lives with his wife and children in downtown Denver, CO. Follow him on Twitter @michaelhidalgo.