Can God Fit in You?

A prayer from the African pastor Augustine in the 4th century has stirred my thought for some time: God, “you were closer to me than I am to myself”. If you place that prayer alongside Paul’s prayer that the Ephesians be filled with all the fulness of God (Ephesians 3:19), you quickly find yourself in a bottomless sea of wonder and prayer.

Join me in this wonder for a minute: God is closer to me than I am to myself. If I go down inside myself, sinking to my deepest consciousness, descending into the dark quiet pool that seems to be my purest, untouchable inner being, I am still only knocking on the door, waiting to be allowed into my true self. I am still shut out of myself. This is why we cannot fully become the people God created us to be unless we are reconciled to the God who wants to be in us.

How do I come closer? How do I finally touch the subterranean bedrock, the “I” from which comes all my instincts, assumptions, and unspoken, unnamable desires? To go through that door into who I truly am, in faith I must leave behind the “self” I can make and access on my own and enter into God within me. In this place within me that I cannot reach on my own, abides the transcendent, holy, exalted and almighty One—the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Father lives in me through the Spirit of his Son, Jesus Christ as me. So, when God enters and unites with me, it’s not as if I am now made of two parts, like a salad with both lettuce and tomatoes—some parts me and some parts God. No, God and I are one.

All of this happens without God for one second being anyone else than the Holy One, whom no eye can see. Let us never confuse ourselves with God! God is God and we are not. Further, it is not some fraction of God that is in me. Paul prays that we would have the fullness of God in us—the whole living, loving fierceness that is God himself—in us.

But the stunning reality conveyed by Augustine’s prayer is that this Triune God can abide in me in such a way that he becomes my deepest, most authentic, inner self, all without trampling or overwhelming me. I don’t become less like myself with God in me. I become more gloriously unique, free to be myself. I become a more real, thicker substance rather than wispy and superficial.

Isn’t our God glorious in his humility! To appear in you as you! The Lord who made the northern lights, who cut the Red Sea, and wrote the book of Revelation is fully present, burning within you as you. And the bush was not consumed.

Now you know why you sometimes experience the urge to shout for happiness in the congregation! Now you know why you feel little flickers of home when we stand together and sing praises to the Lord. Now you know why evil makes you feel so yucky and empty. Now you know how you were able to crawl through that black pit of suffering last winter. Now you know why people find you so fascinating and mysterious! God has filled you with his whole self and is closer to you than you are to yourself.

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Layton Friesen is the Academic Dean at Steinbach Bible College.

This article was originally published in The Recorder Vol 62 No1