Like my title? Don’t worry, I’m not talking about physically big people. I’m talking about how people appear to other people. I just got done reading “When People are Big and God is Small” by Ed Welsch. Eye opening book really. In reading it, I am amazed at how self-focused we really are. The vast majority of us are enslaved to what other people think about us. I have found this to be true in my own life many, many times. For example, it is perfectly normal for me to avoid talking with someone whom I perceive as “better than me”, for fear of saying something stupid and “messing things up”. And so routinely I am controlled by how other people might see me. People have been big to me, very big, which has resulted in shyness, awkward smiles and conversations, and chameleon-likeness on my part. Why is it that we are like this? I know that everyone struggles with this from time to time. Welsch argues in his book that it’s because we are looking to other people to fill our needs instead of looking to God. Hey, but I look to God! Why am I still tempted to cry when I’m criticized? Why do I feel out of this world when I am complemented if I “look to God” to meet my needs?……
Our sin nature is very deep. And without preaching, and without being cliche, I must say that thank God He is sovereign and does meet our needs. If it weren’t for the blood of Christ, where would we be?
Big people….

I was reading in Genesis chapter three the other day and was struck by what the serpent said to Eve.

Gen 3:4-5 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

I have always that the serpent was straight-out lying to Eve. However, if you look at what he told her, only part of it is a lie and even that is subjective. God didn’t want their eyes to be opened. The only way as humans for them to fully understand evil was to experience it. Also, while they did bring death into the world through their sin, they didn’t physically die on the day that they ate of the fruit.

As I was pondering that, I began to think about how subtle Satan’s deceptions were (and are still today). What he said about God was true; he just made it sound bad whereas God was really doing it for their own good. What he said about them was ultimately a lie, but by the time they could realize the consequences, it was too late.

Those two principles are significant in the ways we are tempted to sin as well. Sin doesn’t feel hurtful when we are doing it, it’s only after the fact that we realize that God was trying to save us from something that would ultimately hurt us a separate us from him. In his book __Future Grace__, John Piper says, “Satan began by calling God’s goodness into question and that has been his primary strategy ever since. His aim is to subvert trust by influencing us to believe that the promise of sin is more satisfying then the promise of God.”