Dear Friends:

I was the first appointment of the day for an ENT doctor that I needed to see last week. As I sat in the waiting room filling out paperwork, the doctor’s support staff began to come in to get ready for their work day. One of them was particularly expressive about her morning activities including her commute to the office. Her detailed account of events leading to her arrival that day was polka dotted with “Oh, my God!” (sometimes abbreviated “Omigod” and at other times emphasized by saying the words very slowly and distinctly “Ohhhhh, my God) in just about every other sentence.

I was not deceived for even a moment into thinking that she was engaged in a highly theological discussion with co-workers. The impression was more that this young woman had no idea who she was talking about when she said “Oh, my God!” The words coming out of her mouth had no meaning beyond being a common expression of the day, one that she had adopted with enthusiasm!

But listening to her made me think of another way that we as humans misuse the name of our God. Have you ever heard someone say, “But my God wouldn’t send anyone to Hell”? Or “My God wouldn’t allow innocent children to suffer”? It makes me wonder who this god is that he or she seems to own. Quite often the god they are describing doesn’t sound at all like the God of the Bible.

It makes me think of a speaker I heard once who said that God created man in His own image and now there are people out there who want to return the favor. They are creating a god in their image, one that they can control, one that sees the world pretty much as they do, and one that is certainly without a judgmental bone in his body!  Does it matter? It absolutely does! I believe from the depth of my being that what we think about God is the most important thing about us. It will shape how we live our lives on earth and it will shape how we live our lives eternally.

If we see God as a heavenly grandfather who just loves us and expects nothing in return, we will live self-indulgent lives devoid of responsibility and accountability.

If we see Him as a stern autocrat who watches our every move so He can pounce on us when we do wrong, we certainly are not going to have a personally rewarding relationship with Him. Instead we will spend every day in trying to measure up to impossible standards and despairing as we fall short.

If we see Him as loving but not strong, we will never be able to trust Him to meet our needs or come to our rescue in this life.

If we see Him as all-powerful, but not loving, we will tend to run from Him in fear and not gravitate toward Him in our need.

It is vitally important that we, as Christ followers, do not adopt the culture’s view of God. We must develop over our lifetimes a view of God that is as accurate and as complete as possible. Only then will we be able to relate to Him as He desires and live lives in which we can truly delight in our relationship with the Almighty One.

We will never know all there is about God. In fact, I think part of the joy of Heaven will be in each day finding out more and more and more about our infinite Creator. There will never be an end to what we can know about Him. But there is certain basic knowledge about Himself that God has revealed and when we begin to put our minds around those concepts, we begin to relate to Him as He designed us to do. We can begin to live our lives with an understanding of the totality of both His love and His holiness.

So, if we can separate ourselves from the cultural “Oh, my God” expressions and distance our thinking from those who would create God in their own image by telling us what their God would or would not do, I think we can take an honest look at what the Bible says when it uses the expression “My God”.

He is ours.

As Puritan writer Thomas Watson said, “It is little comfort to know there is a God unless he be ours.” And Psalm 48:24 assures us of God’s personal involvement with us for now and for eternity: “For this God is our God for ever and ever; he will be our guide even to the end.” Just think of it: The God of Heaven wants to belong to us. He wants to be our God.

He says it again in Jeremiah 31:33b “I will be their God and they will be my people.” There is mutual belonging here. God belongs to us and we belong to Him. As God’s children, we have a proprietary interest in Him. If nothing else, this understanding should motivate us to cultivate that interest, to learn all we can about Him, and to nurture our relationship with Him. He is our God!

So, for us, it is good and acceptable to use the expression “My God,” as long as we use it in love and awe. He is ours and we are His!

He is our hope.

In the thoughts we shared last month, we talked about the hope that we have because we belong to God. Psalm 43:5 reminds us of that idea when it says, “Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.” No matter how bad it gets, we do not have to be downcast or disturbed. We have set our hope in God, not a far off impersonal god, but one whom the psalm writer describes as “my Savior and my God.” The reason we have hope is because of the personal relationship we have with God. He is ours!

He is our Lord.

One of the most well known “My God” expressions in the entire Bible is that spoken by one of Jesus’ disciples. Remember Thomas? He had trouble believing that Jesus had actually risen from the dead. Given that, I imagine he also had some trouble believing that the Jesus he knew was the Son of God. But when he saw Jesus face-to-face after the resurrection, Thomas makes three things very clear. (1) He knew Jesus was God. (2) He bowed before Jesus as Lord. And (3) he made the relationship personal, summing it all up with these five simple words, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28). When we begin to see God as He really is, we will bow in worship; we will want to make Him our Lord.  

He is enough.

Paul was pretty confident in his God when he told the Christians at Philippi, “My God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19). That’s quite a statement. Paul drew on his claim of knowing God personally and then promised that whatever these believers needed would be supplied.

What that means to me is that my God is adequate. He is enough. If I have God, He controls the supply line and will not let me go without anything that I need to be fully at rest in Him.

“The promise itself – the promise to be ‘your God’ . . . is a comprehensive promise which, when unpacked, proves to contain within itself all the ‘exceeding great and precious promises’ in which God has pledged Himself to meet our needs. . . What is being proclaimed here is God’s undertaking to uphold and protect us when men and things are threatening, to provide for us as long as our earthly pilgrimage lasts, and to lead us finally into the full enjoyment of Himself” (J. I. Packer in Knowing God, p. 238).  

He is my God and I am glad. Is He your God, too? If so, let’s delight in Him, enjoy Him, get to know Him, and glorify Him in our praise and in our lives.

His and yours,

Bev

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