Viewing God And Yourself

When spirituality becomes focused on feeling and experience rather than truth, everyone's view of God becomes valid. Sadly, we see this in our culture. Everyone has a view of who God is, but many have an inaccurate view. In America, many people have the viewpoint called Moralistic Therapeutic Deism: there is a god who just wants you to be nice and will help you out when you need it but is ok with you being distant from him and living your own life. With this view of God, it's understandable why many Americans don't fear God. This was my viewpoint for most of my life.

Obviously, our view of God will impact how we respond to God. When I started following Jesus, the changes that took place were brought about from an accurate view of God. My view of God (and myself) changed, and I started changing. God used certain people and the Bible to give me an accurate view of God. The following is one of the things that got me to view God, and myself, more accurately.

A great teacher and pastor (Francis Chan) talks about how when people were (and will be) in the presence of God and his glory, they were terrified. In Isaiah 6, Isaiah sees the Lord on his throne and angelic beings who never stop praising God, and his response was utter terror. He says in verse 5, "'Woe to me!' I cried. 'I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.'"

It's interesting that Isaiah's response is, "I'm going to die, because I am unclean and I have seen God." It's a response we don't often see when talking about God. But that makes sense. If God really is like that (read Isaiah 6:1-7), then our response wouldn't be mere acknowledgement. If we compare ourselves with something that awesome and holy, we recognize our shortcomings and our unworthiness to be in his presence (Romans 3:23). This is what happened when I started following Jesus; I began seeing God for who he really is, and God used that to show me how hypocritical I was for saying that I knew God and was a Christian.

This should also happen when people interact with Christians. Our lives, which are shaped by knowing, loving, and following Christ, should point people to an accurate view of God and should cause them to question their inaccurate view of God.

People will not seek after God if they don't have an accurate view of him. They need Jesus followers around them, showing them God's love, giving them an accurate view of God (Romans 10:14-15), and then praying that God will show himself to them and draw them to himself. Getting an accurate view of God will change people, as it did me, because God is not the god of Monotheistic Therapeutic Deism, and Jesus was not just a good teacher or a prophet. Christians are Christians because they have an accurate view of God, which by God's grace moves them to trust in Christ and truly know and follow him.

Seeking God

This morning I commented to my sister about how Islam treats reading the Quran as a religious activity/duty (some professing Christians treat the Bible in this way too), whereas I genuinely desire to read the Bible so I can learn more about God, not to check it off a religious to-do list. I love God because he first loved me (1 John 4:19).  Reading more about this God who loves me increases my knowledge of him, and this has been changing my life considerably.

God says in Jeremiah, "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart" (Jeremiah 29:13). We know that God exists (the universe and the moral law that exists within us point to this), and the great thing is that he is not distant (it may feel like he is at points, but that's another topic) and that we can learn more about God.

A very important thing to note on seeking God is the attitude in which we seek him. We should not approach or seek God in arrogance or pride. Pride was what first separated us from God. God is not unapproachable, but we must remember who God is and who we are when seeking him. We cannot think that we know better than God. This is what Job thought, and after he was finished asking his questions to God, God responded by "putting him in his place." God humbled Job by reminding him that he is not God. 

In Isaiah, God says, "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:9). When seeking God, we can't assume that we are above God and know better than him. Remember that God created billions of galaxies, that he holds everything together (Colossians 1:17), and that he is Lord (ruler/king) of everything. 

Strangely enough, we will only seek God after we fear him, about which I will write more in my next post.

Remain Or Live

I have been following Jesus for about two and a half years now. Best two and a half years of my life. God doesn't speak just through the Bible, but He has been teaching me many things through it. Here's something that he showed me last week.

Don't read this post for the sake of entertainment, especially if you don't know Jesus.

While reading through John, I was struck again by a misconception people have about our natural standing with God since the Fall. I'll mention two passages that reminded me of this. The first verse really stuck out to me; It's from John the Baptist's Testimony about Jesus:

"Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him." -John 3:36

The last part struck me: "God's wrath remains on him." That means that from birth, God's wrath is on us until we give our lives to Jesus. God, our Creator, gave mankind the choice to remain or die, and we chose to die. We chose life apart from God, which is death compared to life with God. Disobeying a perfect, holy God resulted in God's wrath, the consequence of sin: eternal death apart from him.

But the whole point of Jesus coming to earth was to provide a way back from death to life. Take a look at what Jesus says in John 5:24:

"I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life."

 Through Jesus we can cross from death to life. The only way to get back to God is through Jesus (John 14:6).

Now here is the misconception: Many people think that we start out innocent, or neutral. John Piper explained it with the analogy of the pendulum of a metronome. Many people think that we begin at the center, and we can swing toward the good side or the bad side. The truth, however, is that we are all completely on the bad side from the start, and there is no way we can change that or earn our way to the good side. Here is the Good News, from Romans 3:23-24:

"for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus."

Through Jesus alone, we can cross over from death to life. But the fact of the matter is this: we all are facing eternal death if we aren't living for Jesus. We have the choice to remain where we are, on the road to death, or to turn to Jesus (called repenting).

If you aren't living with Jesus, you are not on a good path. Don't read this passively. When we stand before our Creator, we won't have an excuse for not following Jesus. He has lovingly and graciously given us a way back to him, and to reject him is foolish and eternally costly.

 Looking back to my life before knowing Jesus, I can see that I was not innocent at all, even though for a long time I appeared to be a Christian, and I would have said I was. No matter how good we appear to be, we know how bent toward evil we are on the inside. We need to be fixed, to be changed, to return to God, and Jesus is the only one who can do it. Our choice is to remain or live. Repent and turn to Jesus, and live.