Who is God that man should worship Him?
Understanding God
Recovery is the first step in breaking free from the grasp of sin. The recovery process deals with us recovering our understanding of God and Lucifer. It also deals with us understanding who we are as the creation of God and what our sin has done to us. Some of the information that we will uncover might have already been taught to us. Some of us might have never heard it. Still, it is very important that we understand some basic truths that we will deal with.
In order for us to gain a complete understanding of God, we must first view him as the Scriptures describe him. The book of Genesis begins with a description of God. It says, “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” This opening sentence let us know that God is a creative being. Just how God created the earth, the animals, and man is still the center of many debates, but we are not here to argue if God did or how God did what He did.
This simple statement in Genesis shows us that God is much like us. He is creative. Creativity involves more than just the ability to put something together, like assembling a car or putting together a jigsaw puzzle. In order for one to be creative, one must be imaginative, innovative, artistic, calculating, logical, prepared, and able to do. Throughout the Holy Bible, we find evidence of God’s creativity. If we just look around in the world that we live in, we can examine perfect examples of God’s creativity. This is what the Scriptures say in Genesis 1:2, “ Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness covered the face of the earth and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” God used the creative powers of the Word of God to bring into being what he had imagined in his mind. God imagined light and said ‘ Let there be light ‘ and it was. God imagined the sea and said ‘Let there be.’ and it was.
Genesis 1:26 shows us a more personal side of God’s creativity. It says, “ Then God says, ‘ Let us make man in our image and likeness.’ God imagined man and imagined how man would look and God took time to create man. He did not create man to look like anything in heaven. He did not create man to behave like anything he had created. He made man to be like him. Man was created in the image and likeness of God. Man possesses some of the same characteristics of the Creator. The Scriptures say that God breathe into man the breath of life or his Spirit. (Genesis 2:7)
The book of Numbers 14:11-20 gives us a look at God’s personality. Moses, in his plea for the rebellious nation of Israel, describes God as slow to anger, abounding in love, and forgiving. David continues to add to the list. He says in Psalms 36:5-9 that God is faithful, righteous, and just. The bible shows us that the love of God reaches out of the heavens and touches each of us. It shows us that we can count on God to do just what his word says that he will do. God will do abundantly more than we can ever ask or think because of his great love for us.
The Scriptures also describe God as being different from his creation. To understand this concept let us picture the family of God as it really is. As a family, God is our father, his spoken Word is our mother, and the Spirit of God is the character traits. This means that God imagined us, then the Word of God produced or gave birth to us, and the Spirit of God brought us to life. (Genesis 2:7) As the offspring of God, the Word of God, and the Spirit of God, we, the children of God, inherited many of his character traits. These traits were automatically passed down to us when we were born. At birth, every child of God has the ability to think, imagine, and calculate. Every child of God acts, looks, and thinks like God. Yet, in spite of these same character traits, God is still different from us. He is different from us because he is the Father.
Another reason that God is different from us is, we are the by-products of the union of three separate parts of God. When a man and a woman produce a child, the child might have his father’s eyes and his mother’s looks. Because of the combination of the different traits of the birth parent, the child will be like the parents, think like the parents, and act like the parents, but the child will also be very different. When the Word of God combined with the Spirit of God to create what God had imagined in his mind, the by-product became the child of God or man. The child of God was just that, he was the child of God. He was made in the image of God as God had imagined him to look. The union of the physical spoken Word of God and the Spirit of God brought forth a spiritual physical man. (Genesis 1:27-30)
Another description of God would be that he is eternal. Eternal in this sense means that he is everlasting. David wrote in one of the Psalms that God is from everlasting to everlasting. God is eternal because he was here when the Big Bang happened and he will be here when the Big Bang happens again. The Scriptures describe eternal as being the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, and the first and the last. God is definitely eternal.
The sorrows of God
To understand God’s position in our lives and his position concerning our sins, let us, now, think of God as being the parent of a wayward child. Let us imagine us as being that child. When the child is first brought home, there is much joy. Everything that the newborn does is enjoyed and laughed at. As the child grows, he begins to take on some of the characteristics of the parents. However, as the child continues to grow, because of his surroundings the child soon starts to develop his own characteristics and personality. The child soon begins to explore the world around him. As the child grows and explores, he soon goes outside of the boundaries set by his parents. We all know that a child does not have to be taught to be bad, but a child must be taught to be good.
In much the same way, we, too, find ourselves outside of the boundaries of God. When God created us, we brought much joy to the heart of God. As we grew, we started exploring the things that God had provided for us and the things that God did not want us to mess with. We soon found ourselves outside of the boundaries that God had set for us. This is where sin happens. Sin is being outside of the boundaries of God. Sin is breaking the house rules of God.
These house rules of God are what the Scriptures tell us that we must be like. Remember that we said earlier that some of the characteristics of God are (1) he is calculating, (2) he is logical, and (3) he is prepared. With the influence of Lucifer and our imagination, we know how to be bad. God knew this and he logically calculated that we would sin, and he was prepared. The bible is our instructions on how to act and be the way that God created us to be. However, when we do not act, as God would have us to act, we fall into sin. When we sin, we must become aware of five very important things.
1. Sin brings sorrow to the heart of God. {Genesis 6:6-8; Romans 1:18}
This does not mean that God wishes that he had never made us. Rather it means that as a parent is upset when their child is rebellious, God is also upset when we are rebellious. Sin is rebellion against God. God is upset about what we are doing to ourselves when we do sin. God is upset that we chose death by sinning, for the wages of sin is death. God is upset because we have substituted the truth for a lie. God is upset because we have traded a priceless treasure for a piece of junk. When we step outside of the boundaries of God, we reject everything that God has to offer for anything that will support our self-centered lifestyle.
2. Sin breaks our fellowship with God. {Genesis 3:8; Acts 3:19}
Because God is holy, he cannot tolerate sin. Because God is morally perfect, he will not and cannot condone or ignore such willful disobedience and rebellion. When we fall into sin, we break our fellowship with God. We reject God’s way of life. Then, we create in our mind ideals of what a god should be like or do. Finally, we grow to hate God. God does not cause this breakup. When we reject God, God allows us to live, as we want to. God gives us over to our sin and allows us to feel the consequences of our actions.
When we choose to follow other gods and break our fellowship with God, he does not try to stop us. God will let us declare our independence from him. He will allow us to go our separate ways. In time, we become slaves to our sin. In time, we lose our choice not to sin. It can be better understood if we think of our sins in term of our addiction.
Before any of us ever tried any kind of drug or alcohol, we never imagined that we would be addicted to it. The beer and cigarette commercials tell us that there are many good benefits to be gained from using their product. Nevertheless, they do not show us the addicts. The drug pushers do not tell the potential users that they could become addicted when they use the drug. The pushers tell the users only what the users want to hear and that is usually a lie.
When we believe these lies, we soon become trapped into a life that we no longer have control over. When we drink that first beer, no beautiful people appear as they do in the commercials. However, we do get drunk. Soon, we start liking the feeling that we get. Before we know anything, we are trapped into a lifetime of getting drunk. When we take that first hit of crack, it is much the same way. We like the feeling and soon we find ourselves on our knees searching the floor for some imaginary crumbs that does not exist. Then after we finish doing the crackhead crawl, we find ourselves doing anything to get another hit. We, at this point, are out of control.
3. God is not limited by our sins {Matthew 1:1-17)
Nevertheless, God’s work in human history is not, will not, and cannot be limited by humanity’s failures and sins. God has often worked through ordinary people to accomplish his will. Some of the people that God worked through like Abraham, Ruth, and David are considered heroes of faith. God blessed Abram because of his faithfulness. God changed his name to Abraham and gave him a son. The bible says that David was a man after God’s own heart. Still, some had shady reputations, like Rahab and Matthew, the tax collector. Nevertheless, in spite of who they were or what they might have later become, it is clear that they started as just ordinary people. They were ordinary people that were caught up in a world of sin, like you and I. They were ordinary people that did not know God and never had trusted in him. Yet, through these ordinary people, God was able to do great things.
Today, God is still doing great things through ordinary people. What is so great about the God of the Holy Bible? What so great about the God that we serve? The answer is God is not limited by our sins. Even when we find ourselves in the deep trenches of sin, God is not limited. Even when we find ourselves helpless, lost, and stuck on stupid while stand on Crack Street, God will not be limited. Although we might limit ourselves to the blessings of God because of our sins, God is not limited from coming to our rescue.
Psalms 23:4 say, “ Although I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for thou art with me. Thou rod and Thou staff they comfort me.” When we sin, we are faced with death, for the Scriptures say that the wages of sin is death. When we walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, we are traveling through the place where sin resides. David knew that although he faced death, he did not have to fear it because God was his friend and God would come to his aid. This is the same promise that we, as the children of God, can claim. Although we may find ourselves in sin, we can turn to God for help. Even when we cannot find the answers to our problems, God’s rod, the Scriptures, and God’s staff, his Holy Spirit, will be there to guide, correct, protect, and lead us to the rock that is higher than we are. (Psalms 61:2)
Let us examine the Apostle Paul. The Scriptures says that for years Paul, then Saul, persecuted the church from one corner of the known world to the other. No matter where the early Christians would hide, Saul would search for them and find them. To use a phrase, Saul always got his man. Then one day, God changed things around. Saul became the subject of a divine manhunt. Saul was not hunted because of his religious belief. Saul was not hunted because he had done something wrong. God needed someone to do a job for him and Saul was the best man for the job. One day on the road to Damascus, the manhunt for Saul ended. God touches Saul, changed his name, changed his mission, and change the course of human history. Sometimes, when God has need of us, we have no chose but to say, “ Hear am I, oh Lord. Send me.
It is the same with each child of God. God can take the worst of us and recreate us to be the best saint. Just because we are surrounded by our sins does not mean God cannot save us. Just because the world has labeled us as useless, and thrown us to the side, does not mean that God does not have need of us. In the Old Testament, God used two lepers that no one wanted to touch to save the starving nation of Israel. (2 Kings 7:3-11) God will use ordinary people to do His will.
4. God looks for those in sin. (Luke 15: 3-6)
Even in today’s advanced society, some Christians are bothered when they see other Christians associating with sinners. The Christians that are seen with the undesirable people; the Christians that are seen coming out of the undesirable places are often talked about and even sometimes have their salvation questioned by other Christians. Nevertheless, as children of God, we need to come to understand that God is not a respecter of person. God looks for those that are lost in sin. Jesus gave us a perfect example of this. Jesus was often found in the company of sinners and even His inner circle of disciples included some notorious sinners, like Matthew, the tax collector. The Scriptures says that Jesus came to save the lost. Jesus came to show God’s love for the sinner.
This love of God for his unrepented children has no boundaries. John 3:16 states, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believe in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” Romans 8:31-32 states, “If God is for us, who can be against us. He who did not even spare his own son, but gave him up for us all – how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things.” If God gave his only son for us, God will not hold back his salvation from us. Since God gave his only son for us, God will come to our rescue when we need him the most. God is looking for those in sin because they need his salvation the most.
5. God will forgive our sins. (1 John 1:5-10; 2:1-2)
If we want to have fellowship with God and receive his help in breaking free from our sins, we must put aside our sinful ways of living. We cannot claim to belong to God while living in sin. The Scriptures say very clearly that we cannot serve God and Lucifer. If we want to break free from our sins, we must let go of our sins. Sin brings death. The Scriptures clearly state that the wages of sin is death. Jesus died for the sins of the whole world. He paid the penalty for our sins by his death on the cross.
At our conversion from a life of sin, all of our sins are forgiven. However, after we become Christians, we still sin and we still need to confess our sins. Our confessions are not offered so that God will accept us, they are offered so that we can remain in fellowship with God. We cannot hide our sins or lie about them to God because he already knows them. God will not push us away when we confess our sin. Rather, God will draw us closer to him.
Our confessions free us to enjoy fellowship with God. It allows us to enjoy the blessings and the joy of God. True confession involves more than remembering what we did wrong and reciting it back to God. God already knows all of our sin, so he does not need to be reminded. True confession involves a commitment not to continue in sin. True confession brings us closer to God and gives us strength to defeat the temptation the next time. In confessing our sins, we are agreeing with God that we are sinners and we want to turn from our sins.
