These days it seems that there are as many different “flavors” of who God is as people. Even people who go to the same church have worldviews that shape one’s foundation so differently.
If the foundation of a house is bad, the whole house is bad. A worldview built on faulty premises of the true God is faulty on all counts.
To digress, I will give an example. Last week, I was halfway watching a TV show where one of the main characters that week had lost his dad. He spoke of his dad looking down on him and being proud of him, etc. Basically, the guy had a set of beliefs that made him feel better and close to his dad. The other main character disagreed with him but said it was okay if it made him feel better. When my dad died, it was very important to me to look at things as they are…realistically and Biblically. My dad is not all-knowing or omnipresent like my Heavenly Father. And, to look with the premise that my dad is looking down on me, I am saying that I am the center of his universe. The reality is, my dad had a relationship with Jesus Christ and, in turn, God the Father. When he entered the Father’s presence at His death, he experienced the fullness of God. I do not think he has thought of anything since that moment besides the beauty and glory of God. I believe He has been praising Him exceedingly without a thought of me, and I rejoice that He is experiencing Him.
Throughout God’s word, one can see that God is perfect in all ways, holy, and He will not share His glory with another. Whatever we “think” or “believe” about God, He is who He is. We may shape “who He is to us” by the way we explain Him or the way we treat others or how we define situations, but He does not bend to our whim. There are some who put emphasis on getting God to perform for them in faith, and there are some who think we need or can perform for God to please Him. There are some who believe that we are the center of God’s universe (which from time to time would include all of us–just look at the way we complain and demand) and believe He is there to make our lives easier or happy or fulfilled on our terms. In our postmodern world, we do not like others to point out the cracks in our foundation that point to faulty premises of who God is because we say we can experience and define Him in the way that fits us. How do you like it when people experience and define you in their own way? Do they really know you or just their perception?
The truth is, we all make an idol of God in some way in our lives…meaning we make Him to be something that He is not. The only thing that takes that idol down is finding out who He really is in His word. We see all the facets of His character there…the love and the justice…the perfect. We are faced with our sin of who we have crafted Him to be, and, through His grace, we can repent and know Him more truely and deeply. Whether we take the time now to see who He really is, we will see who He really is in the end. I guarantee who He really is is better than anything we have crafted Him to be. My prayer this morning is to not get swept up in a fairy tale to make me feel better or justified or safe for the moment but to know the One, True, Living Almighty God.
The Art of Coming Alive 