God Is Not

Who You Think He Is

“To whom then will you liken God? or what likeness will you compare to him?” Isaiah 40:18
“To whom then will you liken me, or shall I be equal? said the Holy One.”  Isaiah 40:25
“To whom will you liken me, and make me equal, and compare me, that we may be like?”  Isaiah 46:5
“For who in the heaven can be compared to the LORD? who among the sons of the mighty can be likened to the LORD?”  Psalms 89:6

I have been thinking a lot lately about who God is, and who people think God is. There is a lot written about God and many people claim to know something about God. The title of this article was in something written by a friend of mine. It reminded me that we do not make God what He is by what we think.

It is the Person of God which is of utmost importance, not the ideas about Him. When ideas about God are made of utmost importance, then man becomes the ultimate arbiter of the truth of those ideas and of their applicability to life. When that happens, truth is left sitting on the shifting sands of man’s philosophy because new ideas from those philosophies are always being put forth and with varying degrees of impact on the sum of human thought. And eventually, in the shuffle, the concept of God gets lost at least in terms of its importance to man.

Most people are looking for a god who thinks like they think, who likes what they like, who favors what they favor, and blesses what they bless. And a lot of people find a Jesus who does just that; all they have to do is ignore anything He said, or did, which goes contrary to what they wish He’d done or said.

God has always desired to reveal Himself to mankind. He gave us the scriptures, and He gives us His Holy Spirit for the express purpose of revealing Himself to us. This does not mean that we can ever comprehend the entirety of God, but we can know who He is within the limits of what He has revealed.

We cannot know God on our own terms. We cannot define God solely based on our human knowledge and intellect. We will only truly know Him when we believe by faith what is written in His Word. God is who He says He is, and it does not matter if that transcends our pitiful human understanding.

In Hebrews, we find that “He that comes to God must believe that He is.” We cannot truly enjoy  a relationship with God unless we are willing to accept Him as He is. We must believe He is who He says He is. We must come to Him on His terms. There is no room for trying to fit God into our box.

We will only be happy when we give up our idea of God and let Him reveal Himself to us daily in His Word.

Gordon Crook