Big God or Little god

When you realize you have a big, awesome, majestic, holy, righteous, loving, grace-giving Father literally walking in you every second of every day, it changes the way you walk. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson. And I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com or on our Family Life app. This is Family Life Today. I'm pretty excited for our listeners today.

Why is that? Because I have sat under your teaching. You've been my pastor for 40 years. So I thought you'd say my teaching in the kitchen and in the family room.

You sat under my teacher. You mean at church. Yeah, like you have led our church. I've been sitting under your teaching for so many years, but you have some core messages that, man, when you preach on this, it oozes out of your very soul.

It's part of who you are. Do you know which one I'm thinking about? Like you have a few core messages, but one of your favorite things to preach about.

Anybody that's heard me probably would say, Big Godder. Yes. Yeah. So that's where we're going to go today. I like it because you totally live this out in your life. Your view of God being a big God is the most important thing to impact and transform a marriage. In fact, we talk about that at the Weekend to Remember Marriage Getaways, how big your God is. In fact, you can go right now to sign up for a Weekend to Remember for half price, which is amazing.

Yeah. And you want to do it right now at familylifetoday.com. Sign up and go. And I'm telling you, you will not only get a transformed marriage, but a transformed view of God. He is a God that does the impossible, especially in our marriages.

And I'll never forget probably 40 years ago hearing this idea from Dr. Howard Hendricks. Talk about sitting in the chapel at Dallas Seminary when some of the seminarians would come in and preach. And he was a prophet. He's a prophet there.

And he said, I would sit in the back. And often I would listen to them and realize some of them had a big God and some of them had a little God. Like he would distinguish between the two. Yeah, like Big Godder, Little Godder. And it wasn't that God is small or big. It was just that their understanding of the greatness and the majesty of God was some of them were more Little Godters. Their God wasn't that big and others were Big Godters. They believed in a huge, huge God. And do you think this pertains to our marriages? Yeah, I mean, I know that for me, that understanding as a young follower of Christ, obviously I heard that and thought, I want to be a Big Godder. And I want to believe in a God who can do the impossible because that's literally who he is. And yet, as you think about that, whatever you believe about God, I call that your theology, is going to influence every part of your life, every decision you make.

And obviously it's going to affect your family and your marriage and how you are a husband or a wife or how you do as a father or a mother. I think it's core. Me too. It's a core belief. And it's interesting.

Jesus said, when the disciples asked in Matthew 17, Luke 13, it's referenced several times, when the disciples asked Jesus to increase their faith, what did he say? He said, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed. And maybe some of you have seen the size of a mustard seed. It's teeny tiny. Yeah, minuscule.

Yeah. If you have faith that tiny, that small, you could say to this mountain, move. In other words, he's saying it's not the size of your faith that matters. I believe he's saying it's not the size of your faith that matters. It's the size of your God that matters. You don't need great big faith in a little God. You need little mustard seed size faith in a huge, majestic, holy God of the impossible. So what's your hope for today for our listeners? What would you say like, oh man, I really hope this for you today? My hope is that we all would get a better understanding of who God is and an understanding of what that means for our marriage and our family and our job, our life, you name it.

Because when you realize you have a big, awesome, majestic, holy, righteous, loving, grace-giving Father literally walking in you every second of every day, it changes the way you walk, changes the way you live. I remember when I was in high school, I was driving my car, just got my license with a buddy on the high school football team named Bob. We called him Big Bob because he was just this big offensive lineman.

I think it was 250, 300 pounds. And, you know, we were driving through our little town, Finley, Ohio. And I'm embarrassed to admit this, but somehow, I mean, I just sort of cut this guy off and he was some guy with his family and he got on my bumper and was trying to, you know, just yell at me. So there's a little bit of road rage going on.

Yeah. You know, this is a long, long time ago. And again, I'm just a high school kid, but all I know is I shouldn't have done this. I slow down even slower to just to bug him.

And then he drives around me. Wait, what? You don't know this story? No, you did that. Yeah.

I mean, I just, I don't know. The guy was bugging me and I just thought it was ridiculous. He's doing this. He's got his wife and kids in the car.

And you're an irritating teenager. So instead of saying, God bless you and move on, I slow down and irritating more. He pulls in front of me. I pull in front of him.

It was just, I don't even admit this, but finally I'm like, this is getting out of control. I'm just going to whip off of the street and lose him. So he was in front of me at this point. And so I just turned into this subdivision and he went on and I'm like, that's the end of that.

And I'm not kidding. Less than 30 seconds later, he went up to the light, turned, came in that subdivision on the street I'm on. The same street at like 50 miles an hour. We're in a subdivision now. And he's coming right at me. And now I'm scared. So I like pull over, like my tires go into the front yard of this house. So he gets out of his car and starts running toward my car. I mean, he's really upset.

I'll never forget. I had my window down for whatever reason. I put it in reverse. And I'm like, I'm getting out of here.

And Bob's like, just this dude's crazy. Get out of here. So I took the back out. He grabs me. He ran up and grabbed my collar. And I was so scared. I just backed up really quick.

He lost his grip. But as I'm pulling away, he takes his fist and he pounds it as hard as he can and he dents my hood. Just bam.

Is this your little green Capri you had? Yeah. I mean, I was like, this is my car. So I put it in park.

Oh, no. And then I'm like, that's it. And I get out of my car. So now you're mad.

Yeah. And I walk up. We're still 15 yards away. And I'm, as I walk up, he starts to walk toward me and he's a bigger man. And I'm just a 16 year old boy. And then I'm scared, like, oh, what do I get myself into? So I'm about ready to turn and go back to the car. And all of a sudden I see him get very fearful and he starts backing up. And he starts walking away. He's just like, okay, dude.

Yeah, I'm sorry. I got, you know, and just, he just backs up. And I had no idea why until I turned around and I saw Big Bob was standing behind me, sort of in his tight- Is he like 6'4"?

Wasn't he 6'4"? Oh, he's 6'4", almost 300 pounds, tight t-shirt on. And I realized he's not scared of me. He's scared of Bob. He saw Big Bob and that scared to death. So as he's walking back to the car, I'm like, yeah, you should get out of here. You know, you're wrong. And I just thought later, I thought, look at my confidence, how it all changed the second I realized Big Bob was with me.

Right. And so obviously, you know, the application is like, you know, the truth is Big Bob didn't follow me around the rest of my life. But there is a God who's huge. He's majestic. He's holy. The attributes of God are the most incredible truth you'll ever get your arms around.

The leader of the universe. Of all creation. And the Bible's clear, if you're a follower of Jesus, where does Big God live? Yeah, if you've repented, if you've called on the name of Jesus, he resides within us. We are now the temple of the Holy Spirit. And so the implications of that truth are, just think about this, if we lived as if we really understood that is the God who resides in us and literally walks into every situation in our lives with us, actually better than that, in us. You know, remember Jesus said, it's better for you that I go away. And the disciples are like, what are you talking about?

That can't be better. And yet it's like, no, now it is better because he couldn't be with them everywhere. But now in the Holy Spirit of God, he can be in us.

That's who he is. And so the confidence that I experienced in that little subdivision is a confidence we could have every second of our day, knowing there's a God that lives in us and walks with us every second. And so the truth is, and this is the theme of one of my core messages, is this, write this down.

If you're listening, write this down or put this away so you'll never forget it. I think this is a life changing truth that I've never forgotten. And it's literally this, the size of your God will determine the outcome of your life. And what I mean by that is, if you're a little Godder, as Howard Hendricks said, you just might see little things happen. If you're a big Godder, and again, I'm not saying that, you know, if you have a big God, everything's going to be right in your life and everything's going to be perfect. You're still going to have trials and hard times, but you're going to have a little bit of faith.

That's all you need. Must receive inside faith in a big God who gives you confidence to walk into each and every situation with the belief that God is here and God is at work. And therefore, I can take risks that I would never take on my own because I'm not on my own. I am literally walking with the God of the universe. I can imagine some listeners hearing that and thinking, OK, I get that for me, the size of my God will determine the outcome of my life. And when you apply it to marriage, they might be thinking, but my spouse doesn't have that same view of God. And because of their little faith or their little God, it's affecting he or she is affecting our marriage. What would you say to that person?

I was going to throw it back to you and say, what would you say? I would say you can only do your part and that majestic God lives in you. And that's enough for right now. Like he's in control of that. You can trust him in that. And I think I've spent way too much time judging you, judging other people of like, oh, if they would only such and such, our marriage would be good. And I think that that's really important.

This is on us. This is the size of my God. I can't make your God get any bigger. You know, he's already huge. But in your eyes, does that make sense?

Yeah. On the other side, I'd say if God is big, then you can trust your spouse to him. You're not going to change him, but God can. And so it's like I can work on me.

I can't change them. But God is huge. God is the God of the impossible. All things are possible with him. I'm going to trust my spouse to him. And I think, you know, as you think about life, life is literally, and I'm saying literally because I really think it's actually a balance between faith and fear. How big is my God?

What am I going to do about it? I mean, think about when our boys were just little boys on the side of a pool, you know, and I'd be in the pool. And whether it was C.J. or Austin or Cody, you know, when they're first going to do the jump, when they jump into the pool. For the first time. You know, before you just sort of carry them in the pool and they got their little floaties on or whatever. But this is when they're just getting a little bit older, maybe close to what, two years old, maybe where they're actually going to jump. You know, I can remember you're in the pool looking at them and you're just like, it's this battle between faith and fear because they're thinking, you know, I'm afraid I've never done this, the water. And then they look, and especially in my case, they're like, look at dad's huge arms.

I'm kidding. But to them, they looked huge. But, you know, there's a thing as I know him and he's carried me before. But there's that that tension. And I love how John Orberg actually talked about this in his book. If you want to walk on water, you got to get on the boat.

By the way, a great book about how big is your God and trusting, taking risk. You know, the whole thought is this. So if I jump, I find out if your child jumps, your grandchild jumps, they find out that dad can be trusted.

And guess what? They're going to run out of the pool and jump again because they've experienced, they took a risk and God, their father met them and caught them. But there's consequences if they don't jump as well, because if they don't jump, like maybe they just walk away. They never risk. They never have the the adventure of finding out that the father can be trusted. And they may even think, yeah, I'm just not really a risky person. And they don't take other opportunities and they sort of develop a life of just safety. And I think it's one of the scariest things that we can do is live a life safe. I don't want to do that.

And yet you're right. I'm thinking back to the first time I was 18 years old and I gave Jesus everything. And I told him, like, Lord, it's basically I'm jumping. I'm going to jump off this cliff of faith. I'm going to go wherever you want me to. I'll do whatever you want.

I am all yours. And that's scary because it feels like you have no control. You don't know what God's going to do, where he's going to take you, what the outcome will be. But because I had gotten to know him, I had a sense of he's going to catch me. But you're not at that point the first time.

It's just like what you said with our kids in the pool. They're wondering, is my father there? Will he catch me?

Is he a good father? I would challenge every single one of us to make that leap because we have done it now multiple times, all the time. And he has always caught us. Yeah. And in some sense, we're sitting here in this studio because of a leap of faith.

Yeah, you're right. Beginning with trusting our lives to Christ. And then just as we said, that little boy or girl on the side of the pool, once they jump and realize he's trustworthy, my dad is all competent to take care of me.

You take other jumps. But here's a question that I think is important to consider is what happens if we wake up tomorrow morning and we believe in a small God? If we wake up and our God is too small, what are the consequences of that? And again, I think there's so many.

One of them could be this. I'm going to say it this way. We live in fear and anxiety. We live in constant fear and anxiety because everything depends on us. Our moods will be governed by our circumstances. Isn't that true?

Yes. Because God's too small to change anything. And so we live that way. And I think often that's what we do as parents. We live fear based because our God's not big enough. And so we parent out of fear.

We all have a tendency to do that, especially in this culture. We're afraid of what our kids are going to be exposed to. And there is a healthy fear in that.

Like, we don't want to put them in situations that would put them at risk. But I had this one situation, our oldest, I think he was 13, and he asked to go to a friend's house. And I didn't know the family just for the day, just to hang out. I didn't know the family quite as well.

They went to our Christian school at the time. But I had this. I just had this angst. I was afraid of pornography. I just had a lot of fears.

Fear based parenting. Yes. And so I was going to say no, but he's getting a little older and I'm wanting to give him more opportunities.

He really liked this guy. And so I said, yes, totally petrified. You know, and as a parent, then you go through all your fears of what could happen.

And so I remember taking all of that. I remember going upstairs to my bedroom and I prayed this prayer like, Lord, I don't know if that was a dumb thing to do. I don't know if that's a smart thing to do. But here's what I'm praying. Jesus, I pray that if anything bad CJ could be exposed to, I'm praying that you somehow stop it. I've read in the Bible how you can do all things that are big and miraculous and that you can't even imagine. This seems like a little thing.

So if there's anything that he could be exposed to that would be negative, would you just stop it miraculously? It was almost as if I'm just saying, here it is, God. I'm giving it to you. All my fears, my anxiety, my worry. So later he came home. It was late at night. I think he was going to bed. I'm like, hey, so what do you guys do today? He goes, oh, man, he had all these channels on his TV. You know, I'm thinking, oh, it's HBO, you know, all these things he could watch. He goes, we were really excited because his parents were gone and we were going to watch these movies.

And I'm like, oh, no. And he goes, and then the cable went out. They had a dish and the whole thing went out. So we had to play outside the whole day, which was really fun. But we were really pretty excited about watching all these cable shows. And I was like, what?

You know, inside like what? What? What just happened?

It was amazing. And so God answered your prayer. Yeah, he did. Now let me ask you this. Did he always do that?

You know, I can't always explain why God did or didn't do the things I wanted him to do. All I can do is trust him with those. Yeah, it was a reminder. Yeah. It's so easy as a parent to just parent in fear. And there are a lot of fears. And our kids will fail as we fail.

Yeah. But at the end of the day, there's a Heavenly Father that's more concerned about our kids than we are. So it comes back to, OK, am I going to trust in a big God or am I going to trust in myself? Here's another one. If we wake up tomorrow and our God is too small.

I wrote it down this way. And again, it comes out of that book. If you want to walk on water, get out of the boat. But if our God is too small, we give in to temptations.

Yeah. What do you mean by that? We give in to temptations and even addictions because we believe it's up to us to fill ourselves up. There's not a God who's going to meet us. I wrote God isn't big enough or close enough to come through for us. So we settle for a cheap substitute that we know will leave us empty.

Wow. And it's just again, it's like if God's small, it's almost like he's impotent. He can't provide what we're looking for.

He can't meet our needs and our fulfillment. I'll never forget. I was at a Super Bowl breakfast 30, 40 years ago, a long time ago. And Dr. Larry Crabbe spoke. Oh, we loved him. He was such an insightful Bible teacher, writer, author. He's a therapist. Yeah, he's since passed and he's now with the Lord.

But I'll never forget. It was just all the NFL chaplains that were at this meeting at this breakfast. And afterwards, and I never do this, I went up to ask him a question. I usually just leave the speaker guy alone, but I went up to him and I'll never forget. I sort of said, hey, you know, I have a friend who has this struggle. And I could tell he looked at me like he's smiling, like, is this a friend or is this you? But I said, I have a friend who has a struggle. You know, sometimes when he travels with his NFL team as the chaplain, he struggles with looking at porn.

And there wasn't Internet porn back then, but it was like movie channels. And the question is this, why does this guy struggle with this? And I could tell he looked at me like, I think this is you, but I'll never forget his answer.

I mean, this is four decades ago. He just looked at me and he said, because God's not enough. And I go, what do you mean? He goes, I think he probably struggles because in that moment, the pleasure is immediate and God is distant and his God is too small. He doesn't know that God can meet the very core search of this man's heart. That is what God does.

He's that big. That's a consequence of having a small God. It's like we don't understand our search for whatever it is we're filling with a substitute can actually be met by the God of the universe. That's really good for all of our temptations. Is God enough that we're asking that? I think as I hear that, I think, well, how do we make him enough in that instant? You know, because you lived that out. Yeah.

And I'd say the bottom line is where we started. You don't need to increase your faith. You need to increase your understanding of who God is. How do you do that?

I think the best thing you and I can do and I encourage our listener to do is get in the Word. Because what happens when I believe when you read the Word consistently, you're just in taking his Word. Here's what happens. Your view of God gets bigger. You know, you see him show up in different situations throughout scripture.

I mean, literally page after page in impossible situations. He shows up and he shows them who he is. But as we're reading that, it gives us again, just must succeed faith. But it's like, that's who he is.

I forgot. It's almost like you're reading a scripture. You're like, I think God wrote that for me. Because you're going through something that you're afraid or your God has become too small and it just reminds you he can be trusted.

I am with you on that. And we've shared on here before, but every year I go through the Bible and isn't this true for me? Every time I open the Word, I'm like, oh, this is so good. And I've read it hundreds of times. But every time it's a reminder of this is who God is. This is how big he is. I can jump into his arms. I can trust him because he did it before and he's doing it now and he will do it again.

Yeah. So I would say, boy, oh boy, if you're listening and you're in a valley, maybe your marriage is struggling. Maybe your child has walked away and you just don't know if God will show up. I would say pray. But the biggest thing I say, open your word, remind yourself of who he is. He is the God of all creation. And what's amazing about that, that means he's big. He's holy. He's in control of the universe. But he's also the God of the small.

That's what I was going to say. Which means he's personal and loving. And not only is he big, but he knows and he sees and he's literally there. And he cares. He loves you.

Yeah. And I'm not going to sit here and say he's going to do a miracle and it's all going to work out just the way you want. I don't know how it's going to work out and I don't know how God's going to show up, but he is going to show up in a powerful way.

And you just need to trust a little bit in a huge, big God and let him be God and do what he will do for you, through you and through your family. What Dave and Ann Wilson have been talking about today has been the foundation for so many years of everything we talk about and teach at our Family Life Weekend to Remember Marriage Getaways. Many of you know, we've been hosting these getaways for more than four decades now. And there have been millions of couples who have attended, spent a weekend with us, couples who some of them were in distress in their marriage.

Many of them who were coming who were in a good marriage and they just wanted a tune up. They wanted to make sure their marriage continued to head in the right direction. And what they found is that a weekend away with us, focusing on the big God who cares about the little things we're going through, learning about what his word has to say about marriage.

It's been transformative, revolutionary for so many couples. We've got about 30 of these getaways happening in cities all across the country this fall. And if you sign up today to attend a Weekend to Remember Marriage Getaway, you can save 50% off the regular registration fee.

And let me just add this. The registration comes with a money back guarantee. So if you come to the getaway and there's any reason, you just say, I want my money back. We give you your money back.

No questions asked. So there's really not a lot to lose. You can save money today by going to familylifetoday.com. Click the link to the Weekend to Remember. Find when a getaway is happening in a city near where you live. Register online. And again, you'll save 50% off the registration fee. That special offer is good through tomorrow.

So take advantage of that. Go to familylifetoday.com and register for an upcoming Weekend to Remember Marriage Getaway. Now, tomorrow, we want to talk about what you should do if you're at a point in your marriage where you go, I just don't know that we can make it.

I've tried everything I know to do. I'm not sure I want to keep going. Tony and Carrie Neuhauf are going to join us. Their marriage was at that place. And we're going to hear what they did. And so I hope you can tune in for that. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Anne Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.