God is God and I am not. Could I say anything more elementary than that? It’s a simple statement, yet it contains two profound truths that I need to remember every day. God is God. I am not.

There are moments when my God-given limits are in the rear-view mirror. I’ve sped past them (or at least attempted to). I’ve cleared them like a hurdle, but the results are almost always the same. I’m left anxious, stressed, tired, and overworked.

These moments are usually born of forgetting the simple statement: God is God and I am not. We get it twisted, don’t we? I begin to act like I’m God—like I am the one who is all-knowing, all-powerful, ever-present, and unlimited by time. I begin to believe the lie that I am the one who holds all things together. God becomes small in this picture, virtually non-existent. I’ve fallen into what Romans 1:25 describes as the heart of our sinful condition: worshiping the creation (me) rather than the Creator (God).

These moments call me to repentance. In Colossians 3:6, Paul exhorts, “Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him.” I received Jesus through repentance and faith, and I walk in him in repentance and faith. Day in and day out, I repeat this rhythm. I look down at my heart and repent of the sin I see there. I look up at the cross, remembering that I have been buried with Christ and raised to walk in newness of life (Rom. 6:4).

We recognize our need for repentance and faith, but my question is this: do we see clearly our sinful attempts to operate outside our limits? Too often, we are like Eve, falling into the temptation to “be like God” (Gen. 3:5). Jen Wilkin recounts Eve’s sin and its effects:

“So the finite reached to pluck the infinite from a low-hanging bough, and human history began its corrosive pattern of God-rivalry, pitting and eroding every peak and crevice of creation with the relentless repetitions of that first grasping, the long-armed reach of the human aspiring to the divine.”¹

Jen Wilkin, None Like Him: 10 Ways God is Different from Us (and Why That’s a Good Thing)

There are daily, small moments that give evidence of the one I’m trusting. They clearly display when I’m attempting to hurdle the obstacles of my limits, forgetting that God is God and I am not. Consider these examples:

• Pulling an all-nighter or skipping meals in a self-sufficient attempt to do it all.
• Holding tightly to schedule and agenda from the belief that I am sovereign over all.
• Spending time in mindless laziness as if time itself were unlimited.
• Making snap judgments about other people, believing that I alone accurately see and understand.

Do I see moments like these as significant enough to call me to repentance and faith? As I repent of my misguided, sinful attempts to be like God, I am able to rest in who he is. He alone is self-sufficient, sovereign, eternal, and omniscient. I don’t need to be! Instead, I’m moved to faithful dependence on the One who alone is God. Repentance and faith are our paths through a broken relationship with our limits, back to the heart of God.

“For you are great and do wondrous things;

you alone are God.

Teach me your way, O LORD,

that I may walk in your truth;

unite my heart to fear your name.”

Psalm 86:11, emphasis added

¹ Jen Wilkin, None Like Him: 10 Ways God is Different from Us (and Why That’s a Good Thing). (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2016), 23.