An Image of God

"We don't know God. Not really."

THERE’S A LOT in the Bible about who we are after we are saved. It spells out our authority through Jesus’ name, our new nature as children of a loving Father. We’re told the principles of God, how He acts and reacts, and His will for us here on earth and into the future. We are encouraged through its teaching, and our hope rises with our trust in God’s faithfulness and goodness to us.

We attend church to hear these truths, to stir them up in us and give us a passion to follow them. We spend time in study at home to build ourselves in our most holy faith and learn and mature and grow closer to Him who died for us.

I don’t know, but spelling all that out strikes a match in me because these seem so clear in my thinking and hold first place in my heart. Jesus came to earth to set an example for us of how to be, how to live, then He laid down His life, willingly dying in our place, to fulfill the Old Covenant and the promises made to Abraham. He was raised from the dead to become the Head of the church, King of Kings and our Lord and Savior, and to write within us a new and better covenant.

“But the best example to follow is Jesus himself, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” (Hebrews 13:8, Remedy)

Yet, like 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 state, verses quoting things He said in a new light, all of that is worthless without our commitment to God’s nature described in verses 4-8. You can’t divorce the love of God from God. These are not just behaviors we are told to have but ways of thought, default reactions, that make us identical to Him.

“Love is the principle upon which life and health are built to operate, and when active in intelligent beings, love is patient and kind.” (1 Corinthians 13:4, Remedy)

We don’t know God. Not really. We know an image of Him we’ve painted, a composite of stories and recreations, acted out. He’s a dozen two-hour movies all rolled together and dressed like a mishmash of images people have drawn. When the truth is, no artist’s work really depicts Him correctly. No well-written scene completely pictures His behavior. What we’ve accepted as Him comes from our imagination.

What we must know is in our heart.

I’m pointing fingers at myself here because when I was at my lowest point in the last three years, when God spoke to me, He was nothing like all the scenes I’d stored up. And I’d had a vision of Him. I saw Him seated on a throne atop Mt. Rushmore, and knew it was Him. I’d had the Holy Spirit speak to me with my writing. His voice was so clear. I treasure those moments. They were and are precious to me. But still, I had all this church-vision around Him. HOW He spoke to me, and the mercy He showed to me, was not the same as anything I knew. It was nothing the church had taught. Nothing.

Neither was the devil. The devil spins a web of fear and deceit around everything he does because that’s all he has to convince you that something’s going wrong. We all question how we’ll react to him in a dire moment, and I know now all about my responses. In the direst pressure, what I knew, what I quoted was the Word of God, the Scriptures I’d grown up with, and the verses I’d learned to overcome fear. Fear was a huge battle for me previously, and no way was I going back there.

Yet, with the devil’s whining in one ear and God speaking differently that I knew in the other, being honest, I had to sit and take stock. What I found out was, in the end of it, that the devil is stupid, way dumber than the church knows, and God is a gentleman. I learned that the Holy Spirit is quiet because He’s quiet. Not because He’s angry, moody, in Teacher-mode, or Prophetic Wind. He’s just quiet. And He’s funny. He said some things to me that had me in stitches.

Jesus is so gentle and kind. And He’s a good sport. That seems corny, but honestly, our idea of reverence is a coffee can lid. Today on Minister Marilyn Hickey’s Facebook page, she did a short video teaching on joy and quoted a dozen verses about God having joy, being joy, giving joy, and how it makes us strong and builds our faith. Though I knew all those were in there, hearing someone who has lived well, as she has, speak them to me turned my gaze right back to the God who, in His abundant mercy, rescued me from a horrible place.

“Always be joyful;” (1 Thessalonians 5:13, Remedy)

“Always be full of joy in the Lord; I say it again, rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4, TLB)

I cannot help in this but to see the Father. How powerful He speaks and yet how peaceful. While we’re rebuking demons, spittle flying, more our emotions and ego than godliness. Abba is smiling, the light in His eyes warmer than the most beautiful setting sun. He’s not the Old Testament anymore, and yet He’s the Old Testament. We needed to know it, so He provided it, books by different authors in different ages of time, that show us how we got to where we are.

That’s its purpose. To give us a full image of Christ. Christ is Jesus, but Christ is the Spirit of God and the Father as well. They are God. We must see them separately in order to unite them full and properly, I might add. We must read the Old Testament to see the Father’s plan in the New Testament. And we must glean continually in the gospels, daily, to take hold of the correct picture of God.

“For it was God’s pleasure to have his entire identity, character—the fullness of his essence—live in Christ” (Colossians 1:19)

My grandfather had a vision of heaven before his death, and in it, he saw Jesus. He said our Savior (his words) was the most beautiful man. Now, I cannot stress enough that he would never speak that way of a person he knew on this earth. It was outside of his personality, so these words ring in me today. Because all that I’ve learned, all that I’ve written, pales in comparison to His beauty.

Physical beauty, which will overwhelm us when we see Him face-to-face. But beauty of thought. He never thought sin. Beauty of action, of behavior. He doesn’t have to wrestle against Himself, to act right. He did act right, and we have received the benefit. Beauty of nature. When He speaks, it’s beautiful. Beauty of authority.

We’re all wrong on how He is here. We’ve designed Him, focusing on His physical nature. We given Him humanity like ours. But He didn’t come to earth to lower Himself to our level but to raise us up to His. He was God in the heavenlies before then. He was God as an infant and God as a twelve-year-old in the temple, when He was among us. He was God at age twenty and God at age thirty, baptized by John in the River Jordan. He spoke, “I am he,” in the garden, and those who’d come to arrest Him fell down before Him (John 18:6). He is Jehovah.

He could have sinned. A baby doesn’t speak sentences and quote Scripture. He had to learn to walk, learn to talk, and develop mental acumen. We’re told He grew in wisdom and stature and favor with God and men (Luke 2:52). But He didn’t sin because the Father was in Him and the Spirit was upon Him in full measure (John 3:34). He was never going to sin. God is to strong, too powerful, for that.

And the devil we’ve made into some hateful siren. All he has to deceive us with are words and NOT any form of recognition. Consider this. Jesus saw him fall from heaven like lightning (Luke 10:18), yet when Satan quizzed Him in the wilderness, trying to trip Him up, he didn’t know Him or recognize Him as the God he’d worshipped. The devil walked in the plan of God, unable to recognize it as the plan of God. All he’d known as an angel of light had all gone black.

Luke 10:19 is ours. So is Acts 10:38. And John 10:10. And 1 Corinthians 13. Ephesians 1 and Romans 8 and Hebrews 11. John’s Revelation, chapter one, verse thirteen, where this disciple, who so loved Him, didn’t recognize Him as the beauty which shone from Him. For all the time they’d spent together, seeing Jesus clothed as God in the splendor of God’s Presence, John fell at His feet.

And now, so do I.

REVELATION 1:12-17, REMEDY
“When I turned to see the source of the voice that was speaking to me, I first saw seven golden lampstands, and among the lampstands was one who appeared to be human, just like a Son of Man. He was wearing a robe flowing down to his feet and had a golden breastplate on his chest; his hair was brilliant white, like snow, and his eyes shone brightly like a fire. His feet glowed like metal in a furnace, and his voice resounded with energy like a roaring river. He held seven stars in his right hand, and the words coming from his mouth were the sharp double-edged sword of truth. His face radiated energy like the sun shining at midday. When I saw him, I fell down at his feet, afraid that I couldn’t tolerate the intensity of the experience, but he gently placed his right hand on me and said, ‘Don’t be afraid. I am the Beginning and the End.’”

Image by André Santana Design from Pixabay


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com