His Story/our Story: What Picture Do You have About God? (Chapter 3 an EXCERPT From God's Story)

What Picture Do You have About God? (Chapter 3 an EXCERPT From God's Story)

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One fundamental truth about life is this; you are a product of what you believed. Whatever you do would generate or come from your belief-system. At the core of who you are, the driven force is your belief.

“As a man thinks, so he is” 17 But that thinking is rooted in every-man’s beliefs.

God created us in such a way that we must depend on something; we are not created to stand alone. Something must take preeminence over our lives. Whether they be good things or bad things, whether they be things created, un-created or things we’ve created for ourselves, one way or the other, our worship must go to something other than ourselves.

We cannot worship ourselves. You can’t worship yourself. Worship must transcend to someone superior than you. This is one reason while our lives, many times are shaped by those things we believed and worshiped. Our vision and goal revolves around such personality or things. In reality, those things (or persons) we worship has become our gods both directly and indirectly.

Before we move on in this chapter, let’s define the term “god”. We use this word every now and then but many a time we may not know what we are actually saying.

First, the word “god” is a title for someone or things that have ability to create or give answers to prayers (Remember that Moses was a god in Egypt and among the children of Israel).

Just as we have various titles in the world today such as Husband, Wife, Son, Daughter, Lawyer, Teacher, President, and so on, so also the word “god”. It is an office that someone or thing has or occupy as result of his or its ability to grant, create and make things happen. We may not necessary declare someone or thing as god over us but, once our worship and adoration is toward them, we are in essence saying “You are my god”. At the core of our being we’ve accepted them as our model or examples to pattern our lives after.

So, the word ‘God’ as used in the various chapters of the Bible refers to the Creator of all things but, that does not mean that His name is “God”. His name is not God. We’ll get in to the name of God of the universe is a moment.

Having explained that, what guides and control our lives is actually the gods (or God) we’ve believed in at the core of our being. If our picture of/about God of the universe is distorted, the way we’ll think and pattern our lives will also be distorted. If the God that has been presented to us is a Monster; the mode of our worship, adoration and services will also tend towards that direction. We may not like it but, we cannot do anything about it, unless we want to rebel against that god we’ve pictured and believed in our minds.

If also the God we’ve come to believe in, is someone who only attend to us when we are tolerable, righteous or acceptable. Someone who cannot look at our bad stuffs, who is really angry or furious every now and then with us whenever we misbehave, who will only bless us after we’ve fulfilled our own part of the bargain.

“Our mode of worship, prayer, following and obeying that God will also be pattern after this. Our lives, works, dreams and relationships would be exact to that god we’ve believed in”

This is why it is very important to know whom you have believed. Like Paul said “I know whom I have believed in and I am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I committed into His hand” 18. If there is anything we believers need to go back to is to knowing “Who this God we profess to have believed in is”.

Our major challenge or problem is not that we don’t have the bible knowledge; our problem lies in the picture of God we have formed for ourselves over the years. The pictures our parents, teachers, pastors, denominations, the so called “churches and communities has painted for us as God’s picture is the very problem at the core of our being.

In order to get hold of the God of the universe and see Him the way He is actually is, we need a radical rebellion against the pictures of God that has been presented to us or those we have fed ourselves with that are based on human’s theologies and traditions of elders.

One of the tactics of the enemy is to give us a false identity of a person. Once we swallowed that, all other things will follow at their own accord. We cannot get out of this net of false identity until we actually see the truth the way it is and rebel against that which is false. The reason for our rebellion is to discover our own true identity in God. When we see God as He is, our own identities in which He has created us to be would be cleared to us. All the ambiguity surrounding who we are would be totally eliminated.

The question I would like you to ask yourself as you continue reading this book is “What picture(s) do I have about God?” and you must not stop until you are able to identify that (or those) pictures and clear them out of your mind by accepting God’s own Picture.