Deep Calls to Deep
In My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers says, “We are designed with a great capacity for God; and sin and our individuality are the things that keep us from getting at God.”
Humans are “designed with a great capacity for God.” The Bible says we are created in his image--we're somehow like him, then. This means we have a tremendous capacity to know him--to experience him--to receive and be transformed by his love for us. It can grow deeper and deeper throughout our entire lives. But many things keep us from responding to his call.
His nature is profound--far more than we can comprehend. Even though we have a "great capacity" for God, we can never come to the end--the bottom and sides--of knowing him. All through our lives, he reveals new things about himself to us. This nature of God continually calls to us and fills us because we are designed to be somehow like him, as we see in Psalm 42. His fathomless love speaks to the most profound in us: “Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me” (7).
When we seek him, we will find him. And we have the capacity to receive that love in amazing ways. Charles Finney, a 19th-century revivalist, told of a feeling of "waves of liquid love” pouring through him (Walker and Marus). That describes exactly how I felt one night when I was on the Walk to Emmaus; when I opened my heart to him, that love came pouring in like the ocean.
We thirst for him, even when we don’t know that’s what the problem is—when we’re out in the middle of the desert of life. In Psalm 63, David says,
O God, you are my God,
earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you,
my body longs for you,
in a dry and weary land
where there is no water.
I have seen you in the sanctuary
and beheld your power and your glory.
Because your love is better than life,
my lips will glorify you.
I will praise you as long as I live,
and in your name I will lift up my hands.
My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods;
with singing lips my mouth will praise you.
On my bed I remember you;
I think of you through the watches of the night.
Because you are my help,
I sing in the shadow of your wings.
My soul clings to you;
your right hand upholds me.
His love is better than life.
Chambers, Oswald. My Utmost for His Highest. Uhrichsville, OH: Barbour, 1935; 1963. November 18 entry.
Walker, Ken, and Rob Marus. “Baptists renew debate over charismatic practices.” Baptist Standard online.
21 July 1999. 25 Feb. 2006
http://www.baptiststandard.com/1999/7_21/pages/charismatic.html
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