e190 I Feel You Hovering, God (bring me from chaos to the light)

This is Faith to Witness 99, motivating us to hear God and share the Shepherd. 

Season 3 Episode 190  I Feel You Hovering, God (bring me from chaos to the light)

Here’s the gist, human. God “hovered” over the dark surface of the deep. 

Genesis 1:1-2

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

The Spirit of God moved first. He hovered. It is a bird metaphor—like an eagle over her nest. Volumes have been written to interpret the beginning of creation. It is a truly joyous moment that we cannot possibly comprehend. We weren’t there. We have never seen such a thing as God creating our world to live in. Six days of creating that brings us our world and humanity. We know this. It started with God, hovering.

So I can’t help but think about how God hovers over each of us, in any given moment. Hovering, his full attention on the right time to bring what? The light. His light. No less so than when he made that first move to breathe life into our creation. 

It leads me to this question: How long does the Spirit of God hover over the lost sheep until I, or you, follow the bleating and find this little, lost woolly creature? Because the Spirit of God is ready and waiting to bring this creature to new life with the 99. 

Join us to consider the power of surrendering to a God who patiently, expectantly, waits to bring the light, the truth, to our moments, our days, our path, our witness, our life. 

Right out of the scripture gate. The first five verses of Genesis.

E190. 

It seems impossible to pretty much stick to five verses in Genesis today. But we should try. Because when the Spirit of God moved over the waters, when he moved over the darkness in the deep—and hovered—it was, and is, an eternal ultimatum on who our Creator is.

Consider for a moment the word “hovering” that is used to describe the Holy Spirit. In the Hebrew text the word is “rachaph” (רָחַף) (rah-KHAM) which in its primitive root means not only just to “hover” as we say in English but which also denotes waiting in patient expectation or to “brood” and “flutter, move or shake”. Genesis 1:2 describes the active presence of God poised to bring order and life out of a chaotic, unformed state. The image of the Spirit “hovering” over the “face of the waters” suggests a nurturing, protective stance—much like a mother bird brooding over her hungry young.

Genesis 1:1-2

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

I’m Kathryn Bise, your host.

If you have listened to a few Faith to Witness 99 episodes you may know that I believe we should seek God’s nature diligently, to know him deeply. This is how we abide in his Son. It explains why I started my Bible trek and stopped on verse two in the first chapter of Genesis.

To think about what just happened. God’s nature. And to feel the rush of Holy Spirit flooding my brain, and my heart, with how a God who hovers, to borrow the words of prophet Jeremiah, “make my bones shake.” (Jeremiah 23:9)

You heard me. I stopped right at the beginning of God creating the heavens and the earth to take in the power of a God who hovers. And why this speaks to how he claims me in this earthly life. 

The How of God’s Hovering

It is a powerful thing to know God is present, that I can picture in my mind’s eye the shadow of his wing span, that when God prepares to move in my life, his nearness is a sure thing. And it is a nearness over the void in my character, the void in my witness, the void in my next steps, the void in my relationships. All of it.

He is hovering in preparation to bring the light, some order to my life. Order out of chaos. Like the universe he created. My God has a divine telescopic lens, zooming in to the microscopic warriors running through my veins. 

His hovering prepares my heart for change. Before I even know change is needed.

A God Who Moves First and Occupies the Void

The commentator, Matthew Henry, notes that The Spirit of God was the first mover. The earth was “formless, empty” and dark over “the surface of the deep. God’s spirit “hovered”; and I read recently that God does not avoid the void, he occupies it. 

God waits patiently for the moment when our prideful choices are formless, empty and void. As he prepares. One description of rachaph” (rah-KHAM) says this:  “trembling with energy, the energetic friction of life preparing to burst forth.” 

Another description notes that God’s hovering shows that God works in dark, quiet spaces before the light appears.

It makes perfect spiritual sense to me that I often run through a list of choices, selected alternatives to God’s plan while he hovers. I create solutions and play them out, to be disappointed that I didn’t accomplish what I thought needed to be done. I end up void of motivation. I run short on spiritual steam. But God steps in, when I have exhausted the resources of my human nature, when I admit, when I surrender to this: that I am void and empty of his spiritual DEEP. 

He can fill that void. How does God do it?

A God Who Brings Order Through Light

Consider,

Genesis 1:3-5

3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

When God hovers he is preparing to shed light on what needs to happen next. All we have to do to find out what it is in Genesis is to continue to read on about day one through day six, then day seven. That’s creation. Not all that easy to visualize really. We weren’t there. 

When God hovers in my life, he is patiently preparing for my reception to what he brings. Clarity first. He sheds light on the truth of a situation. The truth of a circumstance, an inner battle. He brings light to what my heart’s intent is. Because if I don’t start with the truth, according to God’s truth, I haven’t started. I am just living in chaos, a void. 

Recently I was praying in my car en route to a fitness class. I was telling God, I was telling Jesus what I thought was upsetting me, words over words over words. A good ten minutes of trying to come to grips with why I felt the way I did. While God hovered: listening, loving, breathing his Spirit into my words. Until my words took a turn toward the truth, and God moved. Surrendering to God’s light, brings clarity. “Let there be light.” 

When we seek our Heavenly Father’s counsel, he brings a rhythm to the light. Something you can move forward with, set a tempo with. His light will bring clarity. He will define our waters, separate them with his sky, populate our lives with provision and people. When we choose darkness we choose a chaotic void, driven by our self-ambition, self-interest, self-promotion. This kind of movement is like the chaotic void, the formless and empty water before God moved. 

I Have a God Who Hovers

This is an affirmation, a presence of mind and soul that says “I have a God who hovers” over me, who is ready and patiently preparing my spiritual nest to create new works in me toward his purpose for me. 

And those works include what we talk about all the time here. How to go finding the lost sheep. That brings the mental image of God hovering over a lost sheep just waiting for me to climb the terrain, to the ledge where the lost sheep is living. God hovers on that ledge, preparing that sheep, protecting that sheep, for my arrival. To help that lost sheep find its way. 

This image is so powerful, isn’t it? Can we not imagine saying to God, “I feel you hovering, Lord” and becoming more mindful of his presence, Holy Spirit’s presence, to help us surrender to him? That our God is not far away, he is near.

Make my bones shake, Lord.

And to think about, in the words of Moses, in the final days before his death, just as the Israeli nation was to cross the Jordan into the land God had promised them, to assign this image to our minds. When our decision-making is formless and empty, and void of our God. Here Moses is referring to Jacob, (who is Israel, as he was so named), symbolic of God’s chosen nation. 

It is a picture of how an eagle mothers her young—signifying movement, preparation, protective brooding, not static waiting.

Deuteronomy 32:10-11

10 In a desert land he found him,

    in a barren and howling waste.

He shielded him and cared for him;

    he guarded him as the apple of his eye,

11 like an eagle that stirs up its nest

    and hovers over its young,

that spreads its wings to catch them

    and carries them aloft.

This is who our God is. He spreads his wings to protect us, prepare us, and to catch us and carry us with his light, his truth.

I feel you hovering, Lord. I see the shadow of your wings.