Relating to a Personal God

At first glance, such a topic wouldn’t seem to fit in a blog about the last days and living for Christ. I figure is no rule that says every entry must be about the “end times” or talking about events in the book of Revelation.

While understanding end-time events is important to living our lives today as Christians, we should also be getting back to the basics to understand more deeply what the Bible says about those core doctrines of the Christian faith.

This all hit me last weekend, when I realized how unfamiliar I was with those basics. And with that, I felt compelled to go back and revisit those basics. Having sat in several interesting theological lectures and discussions over a weekend retreat, the topics quickly became hyper-intellectual and I was lost trying to make sense of it all. Having left the retreat with more questions about God than when I came in with, that didn’t sit very well.

In one particular lecture, the presenter spent 3 hours talking about how different cultures put a face on Jesus. His conclusion was correct, in the sense that Jesus cannot hold the cultural baskets that we try to place him in. While I appreciated the lecture and the conclusion, I also wondered why he put so much emphasis on the visual aspect of the face of Jesus and how it relates to cultures. One person challenged him on precisely this point, asking if this exercise is even relevant. The presenter replied to this challenge, but he soon got sidetracked and never really answered the question. He admitted this himself.

Later on, I left the retreat and attended a church downtown on Sunday morning where the sermon was very timely. I learned more in 30 minutes during that sermon about who God he is than what was spent at the entire retreat attending lectures, discussions, and poring over books in the library. The sermon really got down to the basics. I am grateful to God that he was able to bring me there (both to the retreat and the church service) and show this revelation about himself as 3 persons with one essence, that is: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The doctrine of the Trinity is a good example of one that has been muddled up , and as a result, there are many who don’t have a clear understanding of who God is. I finally came to grips with this after nearly 12 years of being saved, to which I’ll admit I had a sketchy understanding of at best. I doubt I’m the only one who had trouble understanding the concept of the Trinity. I have to wonder how many other Christians out there are struggling with understanding who God is.

Some have said that the Roman Catholics coined the term ‘Trinity’. The word ‘trinity’ may not appear in the Bible, but the concept is extremely biblical as can be supported by many passages, which I’ll quote a few.

God revealed as Father: John 6:27 and 1 Corinthians 8:6
God revealed as Son: John 1:1, 14; John 20:26-29, Hebrews 1:8
God revealed as Holy Spirit: Acts 5:3,4 and 1 Corinthians 6:11

I really like the following two passages because they show the trinity in action and how God co-exists as all three persons.

Luke 3:21-22: When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven opened up and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love, with you I am well pleased.’”

John 14:15-17: Jesus speaking to his disciples. “If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever – the Spirit of truth.”

In relating to God, we are relating to a personal God, as revealed in 3 persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each of these persons is distinct, yet each shares the same essence.

A person is by definition self-conscious, self-determining, with rational intellect. Essence means the most basic, intrinsic, personal qualities that characterize a being.
We are told in Colossians 1:15 that Jesus is “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.” The reference to the invisible God is in line with John 4:24 where the Bible says that “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and truth.”

A good starting point here is that God is not like us. He is the eternal, unchanging, creator of all things, whereas we humans are changing, finite, created beings. To make God in our image is to essentially create a idol. Because of who God is, we are the ones who need to adjust our expectations.

The expectation is that we have a limited ability to understand and describe God, as shown by Isaiah 29:16. This blog entry can’t even come close to describing God’s nature, yet I’d still rather post a tiny snippet of truth from the Bible than spend hours blabbing on about my own intellectual ideas of who God is.

We really should stop projecting aspects of ourselves onto God, or trying to fit him into our realities. Making God fit our personal or cultural box is a lazy thing to do, and is ultimately dangerous.

It is true that God made man in his image, but there are many more aspects of the invisible God that are not like us. In other words, it is healthy to start from the fact that God is not like us, and then we can relax in the revelation of what he has given to us.

I’m sure we’ve all had the experience of talking to someone who projects parts of him or herself onto us in a conversation, and how does that make us feel? For example, I had someone call me stubborn out of the blue in a conversation, yet it was the person who called me stubborn who was projecting that part of himself onto me. As they say, you spot it, you got it.

We do this to God all the time. Maybe we are the type-A personality who projects that onto God and relates to him as the control freak. Or in my case, we could be the detail perfectionist who always wants things to go smoothly, and so we relate to God as the personal errand boy who can always locate a parking spot or guarantee fast internet and flawless cell phone reception.

We can approach God as someone who is not like us, yet as a personal God who wants to relate to us.