Rob Bell's June 13th "God is too Big for Your Bucket"

I just listened to Rob Bell's 14th message in his "Mastering the Art of Living" called "God is too Big for your Bucket". If you haven't heard his teaching on life and Scripture, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

He looks at stories in Luke 9:49-50 and Numbers 11:24-29. Both places the prophets' disciples get bent out of shape that people outside of their clique are moving in God's power.

Isn't that just like us? We think we've got God figured out and we start defending our formula--trying to manage Him. But God irritatingly keeps on pouring His Spirit out according to His rules, not ours!

Jesus and Moses both have the lenses of "Father, where are you moving? Where are you breaking in?" They don't get bent out of shape when the Father moves in ways they didn't necessarily expect. Instead, they rejoice that the Kingdom is expanding.

May we all respond like that.

[Free aside: check out all of Luke 11 and notice all of the parallels with Jesus' ministry and Moses'. Jesus splits up the crowd into groups like Moses did after he took Jethro's advice. Jesus goes up a mount, speaks with God, and radiantly glows...just like Moses. (In fact, Moses was there with Him!) Then he has an almost identical story of his followers trying to stop the Spirit's movement outside of whatever they think the lines are. Do you see what Luke is doing? He's showing that Jesus is not only like Moses, but superior to him. He's the new Moses, the one Moses himslef prophesied about in Deuteronomy 18:15: "The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to him."]