What's God really like?
God's Word is the expression of His Nature. The essential properties that make up God (what makes God, God) are expressed in His Word. We can know the one true God, if we just take a look at what the Word of God says.
God is light and there is no darkness in him at all.--1 John 1:5 (NLT)
Love comes from God...for God is love.--1 John 4:7-8 (NLT)
He is the only true God, and he is eternal life.--1 John 5:20 (NLT)
My purpose is to give life in all its fullness.--John 10:10 (NLT)
God is light, love, and life (in all its fullness). God has been talked about, lied about, and argued about for thousands of years, but if we could just get these three concepts down, that have been given to us by St. John, we would be light years ahead of the game.
Is there darkness in our ideas about God? A feeling that God has a dark side. (That God is just like us.) God is not made in our sinful image, but before we first sinned, we were made in God's image. Do we think that He likes or at least permits suffering when He decides it's necessary. Then somewhere our thinking is screwed up.
Do we think that God hates certain people? All people? Anyone? Even those "damn (fill in the blank with your own favorite ethnic, religious, political, or sexual orientation group)." If we do then we're listening to the wrong spirit.
Do we feel that life, as one woman once told me, is not a bowl of cherries, but it's a bowl of crap. (Okay, she was a bit depressed and angry at the time.) We have all heard and maybe believed that "life is a bitch." Yes, but God does not want it to be that way. Why doesn't He change it? His nature is to change things, but He will not force Himself on us. He is not like us remember.
The Word of God, if we will look at it, will tell us who this God of the universe really is.
---thoughts on a teaching by Ed Cole
God is light and there is no darkness in him at all.--1 John 1:5 (NLT)
Love comes from God...for God is love.--1 John 4:7-8 (NLT)
He is the only true God, and he is eternal life.--1 John 5:20 (NLT)
My purpose is to give life in all its fullness.--John 10:10 (NLT)
God is light, love, and life (in all its fullness). God has been talked about, lied about, and argued about for thousands of years, but if we could just get these three concepts down, that have been given to us by St. John, we would be light years ahead of the game.
Is there darkness in our ideas about God? A feeling that God has a dark side. (That God is just like us.) God is not made in our sinful image, but before we first sinned, we were made in God's image. Do we think that He likes or at least permits suffering when He decides it's necessary. Then somewhere our thinking is screwed up.
Do we think that God hates certain people? All people? Anyone? Even those "damn (fill in the blank with your own favorite ethnic, religious, political, or sexual orientation group)." If we do then we're listening to the wrong spirit.
Do we feel that life, as one woman once told me, is not a bowl of cherries, but it's a bowl of crap. (Okay, she was a bit depressed and angry at the time.) We have all heard and maybe believed that "life is a bitch." Yes, but God does not want it to be that way. Why doesn't He change it? His nature is to change things, but He will not force Himself on us. He is not like us remember.
The Word of God, if we will look at it, will tell us who this God of the universe really is.
---thoughts on a teaching by Ed Cole
posted by rachman | 10:48 PM
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