Your Spiritual Journey
God Is Not Who You Think He Is
God Is Not Who You Think He is
One of the things I read online that particularly disturbs me is a common theme being embraced today. They say that “God loves me and wants me to be happy, so He doesn’t care that I (insert favored sin here).”
It is true that God loves us, but that doesn’t mean He wants us to continue in our sin. Quite the contrary. 1 Cor.15:34 “Come back to your senses as you ought, and stop sinning; for there are some who are ignorant of God—I say this to your shame.” Acts 17:23 “In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.”
The problem is that people seem to think God conforms to their understanding of Him. No—God is God. He is not bound by our understanding or expectations of Him. God is not who we think He is—God is God.
As the saying goes, “There is a God, and I am not Him”. God determines what He believes and does what He chooses to do.
It is critical to study God’s word with the mindset that we are going to learn more about Him, and not study just to reaffirm what we want to believe. 2 Peter 2:18 “But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” And certainly, we can attain sufficient understanding of God to please Him—the Bible is adequate for that. II Timothy 3:16 “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” So never stop learning and growing in our understanding of God.
But all the while, we need to have the humility to realize that our understanding of Him is imperfect. He spoke the universe into existence—we could never truly comprehend that. As He said in Isaiah 55:8-9 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.”
We do not dictate to God. God is who He is, not who we think He should be. Let’s approach God’s word and our study accordingly.
Rich
