What comes to mind when you think about God?

Greetings!

     Let me start with a question: What comes to mind when you think about God?
     One particular man has said that your answer to that question, "is the most important thing about [you]."   So think about it again: "What comes into your mind when you think about God?"   This week's "thought" explains why he makes the above assertion.  It is taken from the book, "The Knowledge of the Holy" by A. W. Tozer, and I pass it along to you because I want to challenge you to think more deeply about what you believe about God.

     As with most of the "thoughts" I pass along, I believe Tozer is right in the things he says.  What we believe about God does have a tremendous effect upon who we are, what we do, and who we will become.  I pray that his words might cause you to earnestly consider, and if necessary make some adjustments, in relation to your view of God. In fact, if you desire a very thoughtful and readable consideration of what Scripture tells us God is like, this book is well-worth the cost and time it takes to read it (or listen to it) The following entry tells you why he wrote the book.  Enjoy.

     "What comes to mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us. The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man's spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God.  Worship is either pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God. For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at any given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like.  We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God. This is true not only of the individual Christian, but the company of Christians that composes the Church.  Always the most revealing thing about the Church is her idea of God, just as her most significant message is what she says about Him or leaves unsaid, for her silence is often more eloquent than her speech. She can never escape the self-disclosure of her witness concerning God.

     Were we able to extract from any person a complete answer to the question, "What comes to mind when you think about God?" we might predict with certainty the spiritual future of that person.  Were we able to know exactly what our most influential religious leaders think of God today, we might be able with some precision to foretell where the Church will stand tomorrow. Without doubt, the mightiest thought the mind can entertain is the thought of God, and the weightiest word in any language is its word for God.  Thought and speech are God's gifts to creatures made in His image; these are intimately associated with Him and impossible apart from Him...  We may speak because God spoke.  In Him word and idea are indivisible.

That our idea of God correspond as nearly as possible to the true being of God is of immense importance to us.  Compared with our actual thoughts of Him, our creedal statements are of little consequence. Our real idea of God may lie buried under the rubbish of conventional religious notions and may require an intelligent and vigorous search before it is finally unearthed and exposed for what it is. Only after an ordeal of painful self-probing are we likely to discover what we actually believe about God.  A right conception of God is basic not only to systematic theology but to practical Christian living as well.  It is to worship what the foundation is to the Temple. Where it is inadequate or out of plumb, the whole structure must sooner or later collapse.  I believe there is scarcely an error in doctrine or a failure in applying Christian ethics that cannot be traced finally to imperfect and ignoble thoughts about God...

     The church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshiping people. This she has done not deliberately, but little by little and without her knowledge; and her very unawareness only makes her situation all the more tragic.  This low view of God... 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.  With our loss of the sense of [God's] majesty has come the further loss of religious awe and consciousness of the divine Presence. We have lost our spirit of worship and our ability to withdraw inwardly to meet God in adoring silence. Modern Christianity is simply not producing the kind of Christian who can appreciate or experience the life in the Spirit. The words, "Be still and know that I am God," mean next to nothing to the self-confident bustling worshiper [of our day]...  The decline of the knowledge of the Holy has brought on our troubles...  A rediscovery of the majesty of God will go a long way toward curing those troubles. It is impossible to keep our moral practices sound and our inward attitudes right while our idea of God is erroneous or inadequate.  If we would bring back spiritual power to our lives, we must begin to think of God more nearly as He is." 

     I have seen the truth of what he says play itself out in my own life, as well as in society.  You too (if you are the introspective type) may be able to see traces of that progression (in a positive or negative direction) in your own life.  We inevitably (subconsciously) take on the characteristics of the God that we worship.  In fact, speaking of idols and those who make them the psalmist says: "Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them" (Psalm 115:8).  This is why it makes such a difference what we believe about God.  "We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God," as Tozer put it.

     Do you believe God is permissive? You believe God is a heartless taskmaster?  You believe God is gracious and kind?  You believe God is a heartless rule-enforcer?  You believe God is Santa Claus in the sky?  Do you believe ______________?   The answer to these questions is extremely important, for you will gravitate toward exhibiting the characteristics of the God you envision.  As many have realized (and used for both good and bad purposes -- like the empathetic counselor who wants to free from guilt with the Gospel, or the terrorist who wants to enlist people to do unspeakable acts of cruelty): All you need to do to bring about change in a person is to change their view of God. 

     Which leads me to ask you one last time: "What comes to mind when you think about God?"   And to close, let me ask you to imagine how different you, and this world could be, if the answer to that question was, "Jesus." (Hebrews 1:3).

Just some food for thought, Pastor Jeff

He Touched Me - My Pilgrimage of Prayer

Greetings All,

     After sending out my "thought"  last week from John Powell's book, "He Touched Me - My Pilgrimage of Prayer,"  and receiving the positive response I got back as a result, I thought I would send out one more from the same book.  This selection has to do with honest "self-disclosure" with God in our times of prayer.  I have found what he says to be true to my own experience and have recommended it to others. Therefore, I also commend it to you.  Enjoy. 

     "I hear Jesus say, "Without me you can do nothing. You can bear no fruit. I am the Vine and you are the branches. Cut off from me you are dead."  I hear St. John say that only he who knows God can know the meaning of love.  I hear St. Paul describe love as the highest and greatest gift of the Spirit.  Wherever I have found love I have felt the presence of God; God at work in the minds and hearts and muscles of people.

     My experience of God has been working this transformation in me, too. Oh, I am still a very selfish person. God is not finished with me yet. Others may not think of me as a very effective lover, but they do not know the before and after; they cannot read the motives of the heart. The process of divinization, in which God makes us more and more into his image and likeness, is a slow and gradual process.  I am still a pilgrim.  But I have been touched and I am partially transformed. This is the basis of my hope. The God who has touched me in the past will act again and again in my life. Over and over again I will feel his finger and find him.

     Where has all this led me? Where has God, through all this, been leading me? I now understand and approach prayer as communication in a relationship of love, a speaking and listening in truth and in trust. Speaking to God honestly is the beginning of prayer.  It locates a person before God.  I believe that the primary "giving" of love is the giving of one's self through self-disclosure. Without such self-disclosure there is not real giving, for it is only in that moment when we are willing to put our true selves on the line, to be taken for better or for worse, to be accepted or rejected, that true interpersonal encounter begins.  We do not begin to offer ourselves to others until we offer ourselves in this way, for love demands presence, not presents. All my "gifts" (presents) are a mere motion until I have given my true self (presence) in honest self-revelation.

     As in all interpersonal relationships, so in the relationship with God. I do not put myself into his hands or confront his freedom of choice to accept or reject me, to love or loathe me, until I have told him who I really am. Only then can I ask him: Will you have me?  Will you let me be yours? Will you be mine? Martin Luther's first law of success in prayer was: "Don't lie to God!"  In speaking to God in the dialogue of prayer, we must reveal our true and naked selves. We must tell him the truth of our thoughts, desires, and feelings, whatever they may be.  They may not be what I would like them to be, but they are not right or wrong, true or false. They are me.

     I am sure that this has benefited me in many other ways, but certainly it has enabled to speak more honestly to my God. It has freed me from the lie of those prefabricated pious cliches that are death to true conversational prayer.  I have told him where I really live -- in belief and unbelief. I have told him of my weariness in answering his call.  Of the emotional resentment I feel at being a public utility, a servant to be used and taken for granted. I have ventilated all my neurotic, throbbing emotions... I have been like Job of the Old Testament, cursing the day he made me, and like the prophet Jeremiah, accusing God of making not a prophet, but a fool of me. I have been a King David singing of his mercy and forgiveness, which I have always needed along the way of my pilgrimage.

     There is something so healing about "letting it all out" with God. The psychiatrist Karl Jung defined neurosis in terms of an inner cleavage, a war within, the existence of fraction-hood or inward division. With Paul we all know that there is, "another law warring in my members."  The real problem is confronted when we come to the question of our willingness to accept ourselves in this human condition of weakness. Will we be comfortable as a fraction, a creature of ambiguity whose evil is always mixed somehow with good and whose good is always somehow tainted with evil?

     I am sure that my comfort in this human condition depends for me on whether God will accept me this way or not.  I am worth only what I am worth in his eyes.  All the rest is charade. So, I have to put myself on the line the way I am. Charades with God is wasted time. I have to place myself in the posture of trusting his greatness and understanding. This is the essential beginning of prayer."

     Self-disclosure with God requires two things:

     1st) It requires the assurance we will not be rejected for what we share. That is, we need to be assured of the Gospel doctrine of justification; that our acceptance is secured through another on our behalf. That God accepts us fully for Jesus sake, through faith in Him.  Or to put it in theological terms, we must believe the message of the Gospel -- that our justification is not dependent upon our sanctification or performance, but just the opposite!  If we do not believe this, then complete honesty with God and others is nearly impossible.

     2nd) To be searingly honest with God I must believe the biblical declaration that the God  who loves and accepts me in Jesus is all-knowing (Psalm 139:1-4). We must believe that there is nothing hidden from Him, not even the secret things we alone know about ourselves (Ecclesiastes 12:14).  If we think we can hide something from God, we will.  It's not until we know He knows all that we are, that we are  freed to share what we truly feel and struggle with - that mishmash of conflicting desires and compulsions Paul speaks of in Romans 7.  In fact, believing that God knows all, even the secret things, makes anything but complete openness and honesty and transparency and truthfulness with God seem so utterly childish and foolish -- like the child who naively thinks he's not fully exposed to the sight of others simply because he covers his own eyes with his hands! 

     God's omniscience actually beckons me to be completely truthful with him, because it assures me he already knows everything I'm thinking, feeling, and even repressing.  It helps me realize that in prayer he simply wants to hear me tell him what he already knows about me!  It's part of healing that neurotic cleavage and fraction-hood and bringing me (and you) to wholeness. And Powell is right, it does open the door to become the true beginning of real prayer.  Then honest communication replaces the pious cliches we often use to mask the truth of who we are and experience God loving even the darkest parts of us.

In the Bonds of the Transforming Truth of the Gospel,  Pastor Jeff