Knowing God & Freebie (Bible Tag 19)

#52slowstitchbibletags freebie know knowing god

Many people have a wrong perception of God. They see God as an angry old man with a lightening bolt ready to zap them and see Jesus, kind and caring full of love.

God is not only knowable, but He desires to be known. Every attribute of God, every revelation of His character, every demonstration of His unfailing love, every declaration of His watchful care, every assertion of His tender mercies purposes, every manifestation of His loving kindness—are revealed in the life of Christ.

Read the Prodigal Son Parable in Luke 15:11-32. The forgiving father remains consistent throughout the story, is a representation of God. In telling the story, Jesus identifies with God in His compassionate attitude toward the lost.

Every aspect of God's nature should be measured by one fundamental truth about His nature: God is love (1 John 4:8). Jesus is the embodiment of what love looks and sounds like, as well as what love does.

God never uses shame or guilt; those emotions come from outside of God. God is love, and His love for you is completely manifested in His Son's life, death, and resurrection.

Jesus made God known to us. His life, teachings, and miracles of Jesus revealed God the Father. He showed people "the name" of God, which is God's character, authority, power, and nature. His prayer in John 17 is set in the context of His impending arrest, torture, and execution.

I made known to them your name,
and I will continue to make it known,
that the love with which you have loved me
may be in them, and I in them.
John 17:26

Hebrews 1:3 says, "He is the radiance of the glory of God." The world failed to recognize Jesus as God's message to them. The disciples recognized this because they believed that Jesus was God's chosen one. God's love was a central theme in Jesus' teachings and intended to be the hallmark of the Christian faith.

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:34–35

That love (Colossians 3:14) leads to unity, which is founded on genuine obedience to Christ (John 14:15), demonstrating His truth to the world (Matthew 5:13–16).

George Macdonald said this:

Come to God with all your desires and instincts, all your lofty ideals, all your longing for purity and unselfishness, all your yearning to love and be true, all your aspirations after self-forgetfulness and childlikeness; come to Him with all your weaknesses, all your shames, all your futilities; with all your helplessness over your own thoughts; with all your failure, all your doubts, fears, dishonesties, meannesses, paltrinesses, misjudgments, wearinesses, disappointments, and stalenesses.

Be sure of this, He will take you and all your misery into His care, in His limitless heart. He is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. If He were a king, a governor, if the name that described Him were the Almighty, you may well doubt whether there could be light enough in Him for you and your darkness. But He is your Father, and more your Father than the word can mean in any lips but His who said, “My Father and your Father, my God and your God.”

Such a Father is light, an infinite, perfect light. If He were any less or any other than He is, and you could continue growing, you must at length come to the point where you wouldn’t be dissatisfied with Him; but He is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.

The Father has given to us the Son and the Spirit to pull us into a life of shared union—of participating through the Spirit in the Son's collaboration with the Father—so that we could be brought in love into the very trinitarian life of God.

Although the lost world is unable to see God, they can see Christians, and what they see in us will determine what they think about God. They will come to believe that God is love if they observe love and unity. They will reject the message of the gospel if they witness hostility and division.

The very heart of God's magnificent perfection is found in His will. It makes it possible for us, His creation, to develop into the image of the Creator, as revealed in His son. We enter into fellowship with Him through conforming to and carrying out His will.

So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. Eph 3:17-21