Your God Is Too Glorious: A 7-Day Devotional by Chad BirdSample

Incognito 

God hides in plain sight. In the back alleys and warehouses and boardrooms that look nothing like God’s hangouts. He’s dressed up as the misfits who embarrass us and the tollbooth workers we pass by.

And he’s beneath our skin too. He has sunk himself into our unglamorous lives that there he might do what he does best: give, love, serve, help, and pray. The little things we do—like pouring cereal for our sleepy children before school, driving a delivery truck to keep businesses rolling, visiting a friend who’s laid up in the hospital—these seemingly little things are divine deeds over which angels rejoice. 

The Lord’s incognito way of infiltrating the commonalities of life and infusing them with a divine purpose is not limited to our humanity. He’s active not only in lackluster people but also in lackluster things and places. Sometimes, in fact, these things and places are not only lacking in glory but are positively bizarre. They’re the last place one would suppose the Lord of heaven would be found on earth. 

The Scriptures, especially the Old Testament, parade before us example after example of how God chooses godforsaken places as the venues in which to teach his people that he won’t forsake them. For instance, in the desert wilderness of the Sinai peninsula, for four long decades, Yahweh taught his people how to live by faith in his Word of promise. The five foundational books of the Bible—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy—were all written by Moses here. The covenant of the law was enacted here. The priesthood, the tabernacle, and many promises of the Messiah all originated in this place where death was everywhere.

Later, God would compel David, Elijah, and even Jesus into the wilderness in order that there they might live by faith in the Word of their Father. In the desert, not in a garden, God did his best work among his people. It is no different today. When it feels like we’re in a place forsaken by God, when it seems our lives are a barren wilderness full of nothing but disappointments, as we drag ourselves from one oasis to the next—precisely in that wilderness of suffering, when it feels like God is most absent, he is most present in our lives. 

Where do you see God in the ordinary or wilderness parts of your life today?