It all begins with God -- what we think about God shapes what we think about ourselves and those around us and our world. It begins with God.James Bryan Smith, in The Good and Beautiful God: Falling in Love With the God Jesus Knows (The Apprentice Series)
, helps us think about this.God is trustworthy.
"The God Jesus reveals would never do anything to harm us. He has no malice or evil intentions. He is completely good. ... I can trust God" (56).
But many of us have a false narrative: he tells the story of folks growing up under God-teaching about repenting before it is too late as a constant approach to how God relates to humans and this world. That God is not worthy of trust.
Have you experienced the God-Can't-be-Trusted Narrative? What shapes that narrative? How did it arise? What does it look like?
Smith proposes an alternative narrative. One word sums up the God-narrative of Jesus: Abba, the Aramaic word for "Father." "The intimate word conveys not a casual sort of familiarity but the deepest, most trustful reverence" (58, quoting CFD Moule).
God as Father according to Jesus defines fatherhood. We need to spend time ridding ourselves of unworthy notions of fatherhood that we attribute to God. In other words, instead of imposing our notion of "father" (male, etc) onto God, we need to impose what Jesus says about God onto what "Father" means and what "fatherhood" means.
The Lord's Prayer can be used to reshape what we think about God as Father. Here it is and you can ask yourself this question:
What does the Lord's Prayer tell me about God as Father?
Our Father in heaven,This kind of God-Father is trustworthy. How can this narrative help us?
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.
The chp is followed by a discipline of writing down your blessings in life.
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ChristSpeak (#1) asks: 'How would you relate the "repent before it's too late" perspective and the God as father perspective? Are they antithetical to each other?'
I don't see a tension there. God the Father desires relationship with us, but relationship is only possible when it's properly reciprocated. Is it not reasonable and just for a loving father to have finite patience with those who continue to deny entering into relationship with him, especially given the ample warning we're given of the consequences?
I must admit, I still struggle with what it means to trust God. I see that I am not the only one: Ex Auditu, volume 24 from 2008 is the report of a symposium on "The Idolatry of Security." I do not subscribe to this journal, but requested this one because of my wrestling with the issue of what it means to trust God, particularly for someone brought up in a culture so committed to establishing security and especially at a time at which the definition and cost of security are so intensely studied. William H. William ("Security," pp185-191) says, "Our only reassurance from God is the promise that God will never allow anything worse to happen to us than God allowed to happen to his only Son. There, does that make you feel better?" (p. 189).
I've been thinking that, as harsh as this sounds, the Father who loves me and does not will for me to remain as I am (Phil 1:6) often has a different idea about what faithfulness on His part looks like than I might.
I experienced the narrative in a couple of ways. My perception of the "repent before it was too late" teaching was a reflection of my own parent's threats for behavior management that were not always carried out. I couldn't trust a God who might just be manipulating me... and my perception was that these were probably also just idle threats..but the primary way I experienced this concept was my false assumption that because He did not provide those things that I thought were GOOD for me, that He was not worthy of trust. My belief was the false belief...if God is good, and I try to be, He'll bless me. He didn't bless me in the way I wanted, I had worked for nothing, and He wasn't trustworthy.
Of course the real important issue---the true nature of God's character and how we perceive it---is about what story we have been told or come up with on our own about God. That story can be false from our church, our family, our culture or be false in our own interpretation according to our own nature and the nature of the "thief who comes to kill, steal, and destroy."
I finally heard the story, in a trusting relationship with a counselor, that helped reveal to me God's Grace, Mercy, and Faithfulness. That was an ultimate blessing.
God is the only Person I feel that I can truly trust. I think it's based on my life experience with people and various hurts that I have found God to be the only One who does not hurt, is not evil, vindictive, etc. He's the only One whom I can pour my heart out to and feel that He truly understands. He truly is my all and all.
God, as Creator of the Universe, is Sovereign and all-powerful. Hell was created in answer to the rebellion that broke out in Heaven in Eternity-past when Satan, the Devil, called Lucifer in Isaiah 14:12, and the angels that followed him (Rev. 12:3) waged war against a Holy, good, righteous, just God. The fact that God didn't respond immediately by simply annihilating those that were in rebellion against Him evidences His patience, love, mercy, and unselfishness. In John 8:44 Jesus refers to Satan as one who "does not stand in the truth" and the originator of lying; from this we can conclude that at least part of the war waged against God in Heaven in Eternity-past involved slander against God, defamation of His Holy name, and misrepresentation of His most glorious and wonderful character. God has allowed Satan to operate, subject to God's ultimate Sovereignty, but with limited freedom, here on this Earth for thousands of years to accomplish among other things these two ends: 1)that the true nature of the Devil might be made manifest - demonstrated through his unending schemes of deceit, selfishness, perversions, self-ambition, etc. and 2)that God's patience, love, mercy, goodness, longsuffering, gentleness, etc. might be made known to all of His creation. God is "not willing that ANY should perish, but that ALL should come to repentance" (II Peter 3:9). It will be an individual's rejection of the love of God and God's provision of salvation that condemns that individual to suffer the punishments of hell (John 3:18). YES, God is a just God and can be trusted to make sure that EVERYTHING is finally made right; His righteous character demands that of Him and He can do no less. But when we know about God what Jesus the Messiah spent years teaching, we know that God's nature is that of an unselfish, loving, compassionate, giving, patient, caring, easily entreated Heavenly Father; to act in judgment is, according to Isaiah 28:21, a strange thing for Him - an unusual act, a foreign thing - something He must do because His righteous character demands it, but His loving, forgiving nature will never become accustomed to. God IS an all-powerful, Sovereign Being...but is is His MERCY and FORGIVENESS that make Him so very GREAT!
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