Ancient and Oppressive

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During our travels into Utah, we spent a long stretch of time in New Mexico. As we drove through that state, I felt the Holy Spirit begin to speak loudly to me about ancient and oppressive spirits.

It was one of those things that is difficult to put into words because it wasn't about something I could see or touch. It was a deep reminder of something Scripture has told us all along: our battle is not against flesh and blood.

There is a spiritual world around us that we cannot see with our physical eyes.

And I think sometimes we are much more comfortable pretending that it isn't there.

We can talk about history. We can talk about cultures, civilizations, wars, religions, and the rise and fall of nations. We can explain things through what we can see and measure.

But Scripture tells us there is more happening than what our eyes can perceive.

There are powers and principalities. There is spiritual warfare. And as believers in the Most High, Yahweh, this is not something we should shy away from.

It doesn't mean we walk around afraid of demons or looking for a spiritual explanation behind every difficult thing that happens.

It means we remember that what we see is not all there is.

And as we traveled farther into Utah, that realization only became stronger.

A God Bigger Than Our Understanding

When we visited Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, I was overwhelmed by something completely different, yet somehow connected.

The age.

The scale.

The sheer impossibility of it all.

We stood in front of rock formations that were so massive and ancient that they made our little human timelines feel almost laughable.

We spend so much of our lives trying to explain God's creation.

We want to know how it happened.

We want to know when it happened.

We want to know exactly what caused this layer of rock or that formation. We want measurements, dates, theories, explanations and facts.

And there is absolutely nothing wrong with seeking knowledge.

God gave us minds for a reason.

But standing there in those canyons, I felt reminded that knowledge was never meant to replace wonder.

Sometimes I think we become so determined to explain creation that we forget to simply look at it.

To stand there and realize that the God we worship spoke, and something came into existence.

The God who made those canyons knows every layer of rock.

He knows every grain of sand.

He knows the history of every mountain, every valley, every river and every living thing that has passed through those places.

And yet somehow, we still think we can put Him neatly inside the limits of what our human minds can comprehend.

We can't.

And maybe we're not supposed to.

Awe Before Answers

I was reminded that we are called to approach God's Word with awe and wonder just as much as we approach it with knowledge and facts.

We should study.

We should ask questions.

We should seek understanding.

We should wrestle with difficult passages and dig deeply into Scripture.

But there should also be moments when we simply sit back and say:

"Yahweh, You are so much bigger than I am."

There is something beautiful about realizing that we don't have to understand everything in order to stand in wonder.

Creation doesn't need us to completely comprehend it before it can point us back to its Creator.

Those massive red rocks in Utah didn't make me feel like I had figured God out.

They made me feel like I had barely begun to understand how great He is.

And maybe that is part of what He was showing me as we traveled through New Mexico and into Utah.

There is an ancient spiritual battle happening around us that we cannot see.

There is an ancient creation that we cannot fully comprehend.

And in the middle of both is the same God.

The God who created it all. The God who sees what we cannot see. The God who knows what we cannot know. The God who is not threatened by the things that frighten us.

We don't have to live unaware of the spiritual battle.

And we don't have to live afraid of it either.

We belong to Him.

So as we continue down the road, I'm learning to look a little differently.

To pay attention.

To listen.

To pray.

To stand in awe.

And sometimes, instead of trying so hard to explain what I'm seeing, to simply stand there and whisper,

"How great You are."