What is God Like? – Part 2

When you think about it, the most we can know about other people is what they reveal to us. The extent and quality of our knowledge of them depends more on them than on us. Knowing God is no different. Only what God has chosen of Himself to be revealed can be known, and that which God has chosen to reveal to us can be found in Holy Scripture.

Our quest to know God begins by understanding that God is our Creator and that we are a part of His creation (Genesis 1:1 Psalm 24:1). God said that man is created in His image. Man is above the rest of creation and was given dominion over it (Genesis 1:26-28). Creation is marred by the ‘fall (‘Genesis 3:17-18) but still offers a glimpse of His works (Romans 1:19-20). This glimpse of God that we do have is available to all men – we are all born with the knowledge that God IS. By considering creation’s vastness, complexity, beauty, and order we can have a sense of the awesomeness of God. However, considering how often and how lightly we use the term “awesome” in today’s culture, I don’t think it’s nearly a “big enough”  word to begin describing our God.

I remember when I was just a wee lad and we would visit my grandparents’ farm in Wisconsin. There weren’t any street lights and I remember looking up at the night sky and all the stars with a feeling of “WOW, God made that!” filling my little heart with wonder at how BIG God is. That was awesome.

I also remember a church, nestled in tall pine trees across the road from Grandma’s house. I found an old photo of that church, dated back to around 1955. As if it was yesterday, I can still hear the hymn “Holy, Holy, Holy” resounding through the pines as we walked to church. That was awesome.

I can’t even describe just how “BIG” God was to this 5 year old – from just looking at the night sky and hearing a hymn. As we grow older and begin to read scripture our sense of God’s greatness looms even larger, or at least it should.

Face it; we don’t much care for hearing God when He speaks to us about our sin, our guilt, our helplessness, our weakness, our blindness, and spiritual “deadness”. We would rather hear just the “good stuff” He would tell us about ourselves. Nevertheless, knowing God first involves listening to His Word, receiving it as the Holy Spirit interprets it as it applies to us and to the character of God. When we see our “true selves” in the blinding light of Scripture, we can ‘know” God more fully, and even might have something to boast about.

“This is what the LORD says: “Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth,for in these I delight,” declares the LORD.” – Jeremiah 9:23-24

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To be continued. . .

Part 1

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5