Who Is God Anyway?

Did you know that our beliefs about God can affect the way we relate to Him and therefore affects the quality of our life? Our experiences with our earthly fathers and other authority figures have influenced our concept of God as Father.

The more negative or painful our earthly relationships, the more distorted our view of our heavenly Father is likely to be. Thankfully, we can know our heavenly Father as He really is through Jesus and by renewing our mind with scripture. The more we know God as He really is the more we trust Him and can love Him. With this in mind, it is important that we clearly understand where and how our concept of God originated.

Remember, what was behind you can define you and then confine you. This is one of the reasons we can take comfort in God's name being I AM. He told Moses tell them I AM sent you. My name is I AM, not I was, not I will be but, I AM! I Am everything you need at any given moment in your life.

Remember in Ex. 34: 5-9 God comes to Moses to show what He is really like. He connects His glory to His own character. God begins to share with Moses the DNA of God. Let's go over these six characteristics of God together.

(I credit Graham Cook for these 6 points of the DNA of God)

Compassionate - Empathy. God knows everything you are going through and He is with you and for you. He has compassion for you. It's used 111 times in scripture. When God repeats Himself that many times He really wants us to get it. Compassion is love and sorrow mixed in our hearts for another. Compassion is an action that takes the weight off another person. In other words God our Father stands with us in our pain.

Gracious - Grace means to release favor to another person when they least deserve it. To act kindly, be friendly, be courteous. To impart unmerited blessing. God loves to be compassionate toward you. God will never change the way He feels about you, thinks about you and cares about you. God loves being your God. He loves loving you, He adores adoring you.

Slow to anger - He has a long fuse. He is easily able to patiently bear with us. It takes a lot to make Him mad. He is slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness.

Full of mercy - Mercy treats the offender better than they deserve. Father is abundant with mercy. Rich, overflowing, generous, super abundant, God loves being merciful to you. God loves being kind to people who don't deserve it. God is amazing, astounding and eye opening with His mercy towards you.

Faithful - He will never ever leave us or forsake us, no matter what we do. We are wonderfully and beautifully stuck with Jesus Christ. God will keep His word to complete the work He is doing in you.

Forgiving - When Jesus died for our sins on the cross all of our sins were future. How exciting to know that you are forever deeply loved, completely forgiven, fully pleasing, totally accepted, absolutely complete in Christ.

May we cry out with Paul in Phillipians 3:10 that are deepest desire will be"that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformd to His death."

(adapted from Graham Cooke's talk on Uncommon Love)

It's Never too Late With God!

"And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose." Romans 8:28

Have you ever thought that because you made a really bad choice, that you would forever be stuck with God's second best for your life, always wondering what might have been?

If you have, you are not alone. This deception from the enemy has been used to keep believers from experiencing deep intimacy with God for centuries. When we've made choices that we believed really messed things up, it's difficult to believe that God wants to still give us His very best.

Sure there may be unpleasant consequences because of our bad decisions, that might require His loving discipline, but God's love for you and giving you His best, is never at stake for you. This is called grace. No, not greasy grace or a license to sin. If you think about it we can sin under law and under grace. Besides, God's grace never leads us to sin more.

In fact, Titus 2:11-12 tells us just the opposite. ....The grace of God teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age.

Maybe you're thinking, sure He might bless me, but my life will never be as good as it could have been? I have some good news that can set you free from this damaging, distorted belief, that is rooted in a wrong concept of God.

The good news is that God's love is greater than your bad choices! There is nothing you can do, no matter how big or small, no matter how ugly it was, that will make your life less than God's best for you.  Why? Because you belong to the living God, and it is His responsibility to ensure that your life stays on track. The bible says that He has promised to complete the work He has begun in you. Romans 8:28

In Colossians 1:16 we read, "By Him all things were create, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities-all things have been created through Him and for Him."

This means that the world does not exist in a cosmic setting where everything occurs by happenstance. Instead the bible tells us that everything is functioning by the all powerful, mighty hand of God. Do the stars that He created hang up in the sky on their own? No!

God holds them up there, and knows each star by name. Isaiah 40:26 Does the earth keep spinning on its axis by it's own power? No! God designed it that way.

Proverbs 5:21 says, that God ponders or knows your every move. How intimate and meticulous is our God. The word has the idea of somebody walking alongside you with His face inches away from yours, lovingly examining and scrutinizing your every move.

Satan, the great deceiver, wants you and I to believe that because of our bad choices, God will forever look at us a little differently than He used to before we "blew it", and certainly cannot use us as He once could have or would have.

If you want to experience the depths of intimacy with God through Jesus His Son, it is important to know and believe that God is in full control of your life. In fact, if you cannot believe that God is in control of all of your life, than you cannot be sure that He is in control of any of your life!

Yes, but what about....? What about what? We all would do well to repent of the sin of unbelief! Satan is a liar and the father of lies. No longer allow him the ground to crawl on.

So be encouraged today my dear friends. Nothing ever catches God off guard or by surprise. He knew it all when He was lovingly and intimately creating you in your mother's womb. God is in the business of turning crucifixions into resurrections.

Nothing you've done, no matter how wrong or stupid it was, will limit your God and Father from working in your life, or stop Him from intimately loving you. It's never to late with God and His love is greater than all of our bad choices.

© All Rights Reserved

Finding Hope When You Feel Hopeless!

"The Righteous face many troubles, but the Lord rescues them from each and every one. For the Lord protects them from harm-not one of their bones will be broken". Psalm 34:19-20

Have you ever felt like you've had the hope kicked out of you? Do you ever feel overwhelmed by your pain, hurts, circumstances and/or your trials in life? Do you find it easy at times to doubt whether God will answer your cry's for help?

If you can relate to any of these feelings you are not alone my dear friends. In fact, many of God's people today and over the centuries have felt the same feelings from time to time.

Would you allow the loving words of our God and Father to comfort you, and remind you of who He is and what He promises?

"Can anything ever separate us from Christ's love? Does it mean He no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or are hungry or cold or in danger or threatened with death. The scriptures say, "For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep". Despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.

"I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from His love. Death can't, and life can't. The angels can't, and the demons can't. Our fears for today, our worries about tomorrow, and even the powers of hell can't keep God's love away. Whether we are high above the sky or in the deepest ocean, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord!!"  Romans 8:35-39 (NLT)

I don't know how bad it has been and/or how deeply you have been hurt at times in your life. Maybe you've had days or nights when you thought that you would not make it through another day.  May I remind you and encourage you, that you did make it? You did not fail and you were and are not alone. Our God was and is faithful in your life.

So feel free to rest in God's love for you. Soon you will discover that the hope you are looking for is found in an intimate relationship with Jesus.

© All Rights Reserved.