I frequently find myself in conversations about God with friends, relatives, and co-workers. Who is God? What is He like? What does He expect of us? One of the most fascinating things about these conversations is what other people use as a basis for their beliefs about God. Many times what people have been told about God since they were young is what people accept as fact. This is fine as long as what they are told is accurate. And how do we know if it is accurate or not? Other folks cast God according to the dictates of what they think or feel He must be like. I must admit there are times that I have done this myself. But what if God is not as I imagine Him to be? How is it possible to know?
I would submit to you that if we are to have any knowledge of God at all, it will be because he reveals Himself to us. Quite frankly, I don’t know any other way we can know for a certainty the first thing about an invisible, spirit-being. With so many differing human opinions about who He is and what He is like, it is obvious that we cant figure it out by ourselves. He must enlighten us, and has– through creation and His Word.
Given the above, it would seem to follow that we cannot define His characteristics apart from listening to what He Himself says about them, and identifying the ways in which He has demonstrated them. Again, both are found in His Word.
So what?
Take the word “love”; it’s everywhere today. . We fall in and out of love with that person. We love our job. We love the town where we live. We love this song or that TV show. Everybody “loves”. Or do they?
We feel affection, attraction, desire, passion, etc. Is this love as God defines it? If not, then we do not love. And everything short of love is just a bunch of noise.
So how do we know what love is? Here, from God’s own written revelation, is a definition.
Love is patient,
Love is kind and
Is not jealous;
Love does not brag and
Is not arrogant,
Does not act unbecomingly;
It does not seek its own,
Is not provoked,
Does not take into account a wrong suffered,
Does not rejoice in unrighteousness,
But rejoices with the truth;
Bears all things,
Believes all things,
Hopes all things,
Endures all things.
Love never fails.
May the people that we love have a better understanding of what love means because they see God’s love overflowing from our lives into theirs.