It’s never too late to discover new mysteries about God and His Kingdom. That would include what we know about our Earth that we did not know existed.

As my pastoral ministry was coming to a close, I wrote a compilation of essays to leave behind for our staff who would take over the leadership of our church. I did not intend to write a book from the essays, but the Lord told me to make the essays a book that would be titled “Thoughts to Leave Behind.”

The first chapter in the book was titled “Wonder and Mystery.” I wanted the pastors and leaders who would follow me to maintain a sense of wonder and mystery in their lives, ministries, and the created order. A few days ago, I learned something new about God’s creation.

Scientists have found an entire ocean hiding beneath our feet. Deep below the surface of the Earth, about 400 miles down, researchers discovered a massive water reservoir trapped below the Earth’s mantle. It holds three times more water than all our surface oceans combined.

That discovery changes everything we thought we knew about Earth’s water cycle. It means water doesn’t just move above ground. It circulates deep within our planet. It affects earthquakes, volcanoes, and even the balance of life itself.

I immediately thought of the flood that Noah and his family endured when it rained for 40 days and created the flood with the help of the springs of what Scripture describes as “the great deep.”. I had always focused on a flood that was caused only by rain, not considering another water source – “the springs of the great deep.”

“In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the Earth forty days and forty nights” (Genesis 7:11-12).

This was one of those undiscovered mysteries that the Lord revealed to me. The Lord created the world, but He also set aside mysteries that we will discover as we follow Him. These discoveries are not just in the natural world. They will be spiritual discoveries revealing in our time what has been hidden in the past to be discovered as we walk with God in this era of time.

To God, nothing is a mystery. For the rest of us, we have many mysteries yet to discover that will deepen our faith and our understanding of Jesus.

To reduce the Lord and His creation to something we think we completely understand will be a faith that lacks an expectation of something new. That shallow understanding will dismiss those things we cannot yet see or understand. That limited expression of our faith will leave out the discovery of the wonderful and mysterious discoveries of those things that will make our faith alive and ever-expanding. It’s that kind of faith I wanted to leave behind.