What Do You Know About God?

Maybe you've heard about the little boy in Sunday school whose face looked very serious as he worked with his crayons and construction paper. His teacher asked, "What are you drawing?"

"A picture of God," he responded soberly, without looking up.

"But Bobby," the patient teacher pointed out, "no one knows what God looks like."

Continuing to draw, Bobby replied with great earnestness, "They will when I'm finished!"

We don't claim that you'll know everything there is to know about God when you finish reading this week's issue of The Lookout. Even a library full of books would only scratch the surface of God's greatness. But at least we can focus attention on what Jesus called the greatest of all commandments: to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Shouldn't we make it our lifelong quest to get better acquainted with our heavenly Father, the great "I AM," the Rock of our salvation? Current religious confusion makes it especially urgent for us to hold a biblical understanding of God.

Atheists deny God altogether. Others (pantheists and secular humanists, for example) distort the truth about God, and worship the creature rather than the Creator. Still others simply disregard God and dismiss him as irrelevant. (Psalm 10:4 notes, "In his pride the wicked does not seek him; in all his thoughts there is no room for God.") Even in the church, sometimes we diminish God's majesty until worship becomes little more than a self-centered encounter with our great "Felt-need Meeter in the Sky."

C. S. Lewis suggested that before the rest of our prayers, we should first say to God, "May it be the real I who speaks. May it be the real Thou I speak to."

We need to get reacquainted with God. Not a caricature of him, but the real God. Not a passive, white-bearded grandfather who does nothing and expects nothing, but the ruler of history and the Lord of future judgment. Not a scowling school principal who keeps track of our sins on Heaven's chalkboard, but the God of righteousness, mercy, and grace. "Now this is eternal life," Jesus said, "that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent" (John 17:3).

He has the power to fling constellations into space, yet our attentive Father counts the number of hairs on our heads. A glimpse of God's holiness caused Moses' face to glow and caused Isaiah to stammer, "I am a man of unclean lips" (Exodus 34:29; Isaiah 6:5); but God used imperfect men like these to fulfill his perfect will.

He is not an impersonal Higher Power we can manipulate for our own ends, but a purposeful God who keeps his covenant promises. He's not so small we can control him, nor so aloof we can't approach him. He's not some mystical New Age force or a vague philosophical concept, but the living God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—the personal, prayer-answering God of David, Daniel, Peter, and Paul.

Not only has he displayed his power in creation (Romans 1:20) and revealed his will through his written Word (1 Thessalonians 2:13). "The Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true—even in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life" (1 John 5:20).

Knowing God. That's not only a worthwhile theme for a magazine. It's a noble goal for life.