Have you ever had a sneaking suspicion that God was coordinating everything so you would hear the same message over and over again? It’s happened to me a number of times, and I always have to laugh when I realize what’s going on and I think, “Ok, God, I get it. This is the lesson I should be learning right now.” I had that laughter moment again this morning at church (I’m really loving the opportunity to sit in church on a Sunday morning). We were focusing on the passage in the Gospels where Jesus asks the disciples two questions: “Who do people say that I am?” and “Who do you say that I am?” As we called out various descriptions of who Jesus is (healer, comforter, Lord, saviour, shepherd, etc.), the words were written on pieces of paper that were put together to form a silhouette of Jesus. Ian then talked about how we sometimes “lose” one or more of those descriptions of Jesus, causing us to lose sight of who Jesus really is. What if we saw Him only as “Lord” and never as “friend”? What if we forgot that He is the Son of God? What if we forgot that He is our Saviour? Without an accurate picture of Jesus, our relationship with Him will be affected.
This was the third time in a week that I was hearing this concept. The first came during a talk in “Believing God” (the Beth Moore Bible study I’m going through right now); we just had a session where Beth talked about that same passage in light of God. She talked about how our perceptions of God are shaped by other people’s thoughts of God, about how we need to be aware of who we think God is, and about how we need to be most concerned with who God says He is. If we’re not believing in the God of the Bible, then we’re not really believing in God, which makes it impossible for our faith to grow.
The second challenge came from the book The Sacred Romance (which I’ve mentioned on this blog before). In the chapter titled “The Wildness of God”, the authors talk about being aware of what you’re believing about God. So often our experiences dictate a reality that makes it hard to believe that God really loves or cares about us. The only way to combat those lies is to know God for who He really is, to seek to know His heart.
Over the next few days I will be exploring what I believe about God… mostly because that’s what Beth Moore has us doing in our homework this week, but also because I’m realizing that I’ve never stopped to think about it. I’ve been quite willing to let others tell me who they think God is, and I know that many experiences in my life have affected who I think God is, but I’ve never taken the time to process any of that or compare it to what God has to say about who He is.
I pray that you might be challenged to do some exploring yourself. Ask God to help you be open to seek Him for who He really is, not the image you have created. I can’t wait to see what happens when our eyes are opened to the Truth.
I think it is so easy to make God who we want him to be in our own minds. I remember when I was over in England was when I really started looking at the bible and figuring out what it said not how what I always knew could be reinforced through it. Good Luck in your searching.