God Is

Oh my gosh - how I would like to just copy and paste the forward and first two chapters of A.W.Tozer's work, The Knowledge of the Holy into this post!!!  I'll springboard off a few excerpts, instead.

"What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us."

I have loved this quote from the first time I read it over 10 years ago.  What you and I think about God informs and impacts every area of our worship, our character, our choices, our interactions with others.  If God is unjust, why look to Him, let alone follow Him?  If He is just, He has the answers to the injustice I see around me.  If He judges mankind, I must find out how to satisfy His requirements.  If He doesn't, what difference do any of my choices make beyond their result here on earth?  These are just two brief considerations . . . what comes into my mind when I think about God?  What comes into yours?  And where did these notions come from? 

"All the problems of heaven and earth, though they were to confront us together and at once, would be nothing compared with the overwhelming problem of God:  That He is; what He is like; and what we as moral beings must do about Him."

Oh - I love THIS one too!!!  Every issue here on earth, even taken together, pales in comparison to the fact that God IS . . . and that we have to do with Him!!!  I heard a wonderful preacher who admitted that he still struggles with wanting to be liked when he speaks.  Then he said, "if I finish speaking and drop dead, and suddenly am standing before God Himself, in that moment what you think of me would be the LAST thing on my mind!"  It is easy to be distracted, even deluded, in this life - to live as if God doesn't exist, doesn't have expectations or requirements of me, isn't present in this moment, and doesn't have a private evaluation session with me slated on His eternal schedule!  

If God IS, I want to know all that I can about Him, and how to satisfy His righteous requirements, and how He would have me to spend my time, talents and energy on this earth!

"The idolatrous heart assumes that God is other than He is -in itself a monstrous sin - and substitutes for the true God one made after its own likeness...The idolater simply imagines things about God and acts as if they were true."

WHERE my thoughts about God come from is of utmost importance!  Human nature wants a god who is manageable - who fits our understanding, temperament and morality.  That's why so many religions have existed and still exist throughout time.  That's where moral relativism comes in.  We KNOW there is something eternal, and we seek to answer it with gods of our own imagining.  But God IS - He doesn't leave His character and attributes up to us to define. 

"The low view of God entertained almost universally among Christians is the cause of a hundred lesser evils everywhere among us.  A whole new philosophy of the Christian life has resulted from this one basic error in our religious thinking."

Even among those who claim to follow Christ - God revealed in human form - distortions about Who He Is abound, leading to all kinds of error.  Some want to preach "God is love" as if that wholly defines Him - and worse, they imply that therefore God approves of everyone and all their behaviors.  That wouldn't even fly on a human level with us - I love plenty of people, but that doesn't mean I approve of everything they do!  Yet we want to characterize God's 'love' in a way that pleases us. 

God invites us to know Him as He has revealed Himself through His Son - God in the flesh - and through His Word.  He defines Himself, as well as how we can find Him, approach Him, belong to Him and live before Him.  He clearly teaches that we are to fear Him - view Him with a healthy respect for who we are in light of Who He Is.  I LOVE the examples we see in the Word of those who saw visions of Him:  Isaiah (Is 6), Ezekiel (Ez 1,2) and John (Rev 1).  Each man sees God in His glory and immediately falls before Him as if dead.   They are overwhelmed with His awesome Holiness, and clearly see how He is all that they are not - so much so that they fall face down before him, Isaiah even crying out for mercy before God's Holiness.  When God's light falls on Paul from heaven, he too falls to the ground (Acts 9).  When God speaks to Moses from the burning bush, He tells him that He is standing on Holy ground, and Moses hides his face, for he is afraid to look at God.  (Exodus 3: 5,6)  Later Moses implores God to show him His glory, and God allows him to look upon His back as He passes by.  Moses spent 40 days and nights on Mount Sinai with God, and when he returned to the Israelites, the skin on his face shone from being in the presence of God (Ex 33,34).

Oh to realize that God Himself has invited us to know Him - to come into His presence, to be forgiven through Christ Jesus' sacrificial death on our behalf and reconciled to God, filled with His Holy Spirit, and empowered to live as He intended us to live - in union with Him.  To be restored to walk with God, as Adam and Eve did in the garden - to bathe in His glory, to see with His eyes, to love with His love, to live with purpose as we seek to glorify Him with our very being.  God Almighty - Creator of the Universe, of you and me, yearns to make Himself known to us and to be known by us.  He is calling us up, lifting our heads to behold Him, our hearts to recognize Him and to begin to see life as He sees it - not as humans have defined it.  He is calling me.  He is calling you.  And He promises that when we seek Him we WILL find Him, when we search for Him with our whole heart  (Jer 29:13). 

I end with His words to Jeremiah "Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know" (Jer 33:3).  Dear friend, do not be satisfied with what you think you know - call to Him.