Friday, October 16, 2009

Viewing God Rightly

The way we view God in our hearts shapes everything about us. This is apparent in many different ways. Questioning His existence allows doubt to creep in and cause anxiety. If we disbelieve His goodness and wisdom, then it becomes easier for us to ignore His commandments about proper living. When we diminish God's omnipotence, our prayer life dwindles from a lack of faith in His ability to answer our requests so we start to rely on our strength. When we disregard His great love for us, we do not and can not love others the way Christ commands.

Hence, viewing God rightly is essential to the Christian life. Currently, I believe the majority of Christians including myself suffer from a low view of God. Instead of magnifying God in the sense of striving to see Him as BIG as He is, we magnify God in the blasphemy of seeing Him as small then trying to make Him look bigger. To solve this devastating problem, we must repent of the latter and ask for divine help in the former. Then, God will faithfully begin to craft our notions of Him to conform more and more to His true essence. We will see His awesome majesty and glory more rightly than before.

Developing such a high, majestic view of God will bring us to the beauty of the Gospel. When we start to rightly understand God's holiness, our hearts will cry out in sorrow because of their depraved condition. In this desperation, we will see our need for a Savior to rescue us from the just and holy wrath of God the Father. Bearing the cross, Christ comes in as our righteous advocate. God grants us pardon in light of Christ's sacrifice and we receive the spiritual blessings Christ deserves. Naturally, we will find our joy in worshiping God the Father for radiating His glory in the beautiful love story of sending His Son to die in our place and securing an eternity with Him. With this view of God, our lives will dramatically change!

I think Isaiah 6:1-8 portrays the effects of viewing God rightly. Check it out:

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another:
"Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory."

At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

"Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty."

Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, "See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for."

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?"
And I said, "Here am I. Send me!"

In Him,

Mark

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