The Real God - Seeking God, Part 1

What comes into your mind when you think about God is the most important thing about a pause for just a moment think that what comes into your mind, your mental picture of God is the most important thing about did you know that think about God determine every other aspect of your life. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with shipping Living on the Edges of international discipleship ministry. The Bible teaches shipping.

This program should begins a new series called the real God how he longs for you to see over the next several programs will explore seven attributes of God's character give us a fresh perspective on really is nature Bible getting an accurate view of God changes everything. Take some time and understanding. So glad you're with us and if you miss a program along the way and easy way to catch up is with shipping program was get started your strip with his message seeking God.

There's a quote by AW toes or change the course of my life. Many, many years ago. What comes to your mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you go on to say by a secret law of the soul. Whatever your mental images you will gravitate toward it, how you view yourself how you pray how you relate to others how you perceive the future. Every relationship, every decision will be rooted in. How do you mentally perceive God.

And here's what you need to know all of us are off were falling people. You have a distorted picture of God. I have a distorted picture of God. The question is how distorted your your mental image of God is a is a montage, a montage of early experiences family of origin issues some religious training and experiment.

Someone said this is what is like, or religious group or you've difficult times are painter or parent or someone close to the decide all these different things over the years have brought you to today and today when you bow your head or when you think about God.

You have a picture.

It's so unconscious.

The reason I had you started, I wanted you for some of you thought I don't know what the picture is right.

I'm guessing some of you bow your head in the well on his God. I don't know that I really think about who I'm talking to that, by the way, is a problem, but impacts everything. Let me give you some very quick examples from from my life that might help you connect the dots. I did not grow up as a Christian, I did not grow up in a church that taught the Bible.

But I remember vividly thinking that my view of God, but the time was about 16 or 17 was that there was. He was like a cosmic cop and there is this some big powerful person in the sky somewhere that had a blue suit and his arms are crossed in a toetapping and he had a badge and a big club and basically if it was fun.

It was wrong and the whole goal was to catch me doing something wrong, which was not hard to do and it was basically you've messed up again.

Ingram you've messed up again so my view of God was longing to pray in the song we sang about the light and beauty that was in my God, my God was. You don't measure up, and you need to get with the program and then I got compounded because despite a father that really love you. He went through World War II. He lost a dad with us when he was 13. He was a 50 caliber machine gunner. He spent time Guam Iwo Jima saw all of his friends killed. I became an alcoholic very functioning really cared about me and tennis hair that you didn't say I love you and no one hugged you in the way you love your son what you want them to be successful.

So I was setting goals. By the time I was nine years old I had three jobs. By the time I was 12 I let my money $3000 to my parents at 6% interest when I was 13 years old her dad and I collected and by the time I was 12 I knew I wanted to do this in basketball this and baseball have a girlfriend that look like this get a scholarship and get A's and I work like crazy because what I found is the only way you could please my dad wish he had to succeed and affirmations not love but it's the next best thing grown up. So no matter what I did.

The bar was one of the bar so I I got God in the back of my mind because our parents and we as parents and grandparents were impacting our kids and grandchildren with a view of God, but who we are and so I had a God so III trusted Christ by God's grace is introduced to the Bible and a group of athletes loved me and cared for me in a bricklayer begin disciple me but deep-seated was this God who was always waiting for you to mess up and is God who, no matter how much, so, so, do you pray 15 minutes 17 half-hour but what I'm praying a half-hour. God wants 31 minutes and pretty soon the group I was with really was in the Scripture memory so is it a verse a day.

What is it is 100 verses is a 500 versus what about a chapter.

I know some guys are memorizing books on how many books, and I became this neurotic workaholic Christian trapped in a performance trap because that's my view of God. I probably need to go to look at 12-step Christian recovery program for follow all that was rooted deeply in some family of origin issues growing up and I did know you know when you grow up in a family you think is normal for him right so we always just world is functional. Just how much and I don't think it's all bad, is a fallen world. But then I get married and my wife begins to speak to some things I realize down behind all of that. If down deep in your heart you don't view a God who, apart from anything you've ever done looks at you and says you are precious. I delight in you because of what Jesus is done. You are my son you are my daughter.

You are precious. I want to be with you. I affirm you if if that's not your God then you create all kind of different things to try and stay quote on his good side, or perform.

So if you don't think God really likes you just for who you are and you don't like yourself for who you are when your wife start saying some things that she doesn't think you're so good about who you are. I was very defensive. So you know some marriage counseling and some time were little by little by little. A guy gave me a tiny book called the knowledge of the holy by AW toes are and I'll never forget is just thin little chapters I read literally, I read a portion of that book. The last 35 years. The first 10 or 15 years a chapter a week and I would read these little chapters on the goodness of God, it's just like God finds holy pleasure and happiness of his people. Toes would write that what would happen if we could all but believe that we live in a friendly sky and a God though exalted majesty and power is eager to be friends with us. He's cordial, kind, benevolent, loving, eager to share hearts like foreign thoughts for for summits on the whole other and you think God's you know like grandma yet all he wants to do is give you dessert all the time as my wife does sort in the sense of God's white hot unapproachable holiness, and so we have we have Christians that don't see that yes God is pure and loving but he is absolutely above no, he's holy he's a consuming fire that his commands are for our benefit, but you don't mess with holy God. You don't look at his commandments as options bow in reference you meet anyone in Scripture that encounters got there face down. There is no casual. This is my body upstairs, this isn't you know point and everything's okay and you know high-fiving Jesus and Jesus is my homeboy T-shirt. This isn't the God of jewelry and stickers on the back of cars. This is the name that's too holy, even to utter that that the scribes and the Pharisees were just right before letters of his name of Yahweh would mean pronounce it out loud and then go ceremonially washed before the continue to copy the Scriptures so all of us are off, but the most important journey you ever have in your life. It's never too late is to pause at certain seasons and say God I want to see you as you are the real God not the God that I made up in my mind, not the God that's being passed around in Christian circles, the real God, the God of the Bible how he longs for you to see him. That's what work in a study and the first session here is to ask the question. Is your God too small and if you open your notes were to begin by some ground rules because if you don't get these ground rules.

I will assure you you will never see God accurately. There are three common mistakes that we make when we think about God. Three things that you have to know that her facts to know him accurately and then there's one, really, really big question that I can't answer for you.

You have to answer for yourself, but to see God the real God with 2020 vision and here's the difference. We are not here to learn more about God. There's a night and day difference between the knowledge about the person and the knowledge of person I mean not you can take a movie star or dignitaries or you know the President of the United States.

We know a lot about people like you can Wikipedia know a lot about people like that were talking about a knowledge of them a relationship, a heart knowledge a connection from the heart knowing God by way of intimate connection and relationship not knowing facts about them, not simply ideas that float around in your mind, but a connection with him. So three facts you need to know for this to happen is one is that God is not like you shocking is that God is not like you, but are Tennessee is to take sort of the best that we can think of the kindest person the best person, the most holy person and then somehow we blow it up by Tanner blow it up by hundred or blown up by million and think will God somehow someway is is a lot like a bigger, better, more pure, perfect vision of this. Here's what I want to know is not true.

There is all created things. Even the Angels and that is a category and then there's another category.

And that's God completely different category completely other. That's the concept of the word holy means he's separate. He's a cut above.

He's not like us. But every religion and even we Bible followers. We want we want to make God like us because we want to manage him what we want to control them.

Listen to what Isaiah would write when it comes to God because this is this is not a new problem. Isaiah 40 verse 25 to whom then will you compare me that I should be like him, says the holy one, lift up your eyes on high and see who created these brings out their host by number calling them all by name, by the greatness of his might and because of he is strong in power. Not one is missing. Why do you say, oh, Jacob, and Spiegel Israel my causes hidden from the Lord's disregarded by my God, do you not know have you not heard the Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He doesn't grow faint or weary is understanding is unsearchable or beyond what we can fathom just completely different that that's helpful. That's why when the 10 Commandments, you know, no other gods, no images, no pictures, nothing that can reduce him. Nothing that can get him in a smaller boxing. We got a box and we want to God that we can know and feel comfortable with its the great lines by CS Lewis. You know, and the conversations were Azlan and he says you know the little girl says Azlan where you tame. He says no I'm not taking on loving and compassionate but I'm not God's not tame, is not on call.

He's the creator were the creatures I put in your notes a great passage for me is Romans chapter 11, when the apostle Paul was talking about the sovereignty of God, the responsibility of man in the crescendo of that great book of Romans. He ends up with a doxology O the depth of both the wisdom and the knowledge of God, how he talks with all over the depth and the power and the richness of his wisdom and his knowledge.

It's beyond finding out he says who is known the mind of the Lord, that they should be his counselor. No one was ever first given to God that God would owe him. No one in that he says this amazing thing for from him and through him and to him are all things to him the glory if ever thought about that everything in all the world is from him and through him and to him and to him be the glory or the weight so I want to know is that God is not like you. And he's not like me and so there's this this category. This this awesomeness. This purity that we want to grasp this second is related to it left to ourselves. We tend to reduce God to manageable terms. I want to God that I can see I want to God that I can control want to God that I can tame and manipulate and that's not the God of the Bible. Every world religion you know the old totems right or the moon or the stars or the image of a God is you know a lion or some animal and it was a strength of the bear. And if you go to anthropology all over the world and you see what people worship we get some concept.

Whether it's a strength or some power in the moon or the stars and we take something we get it where we can see it and we actually as human beings will bow down to things their own hands. Create an Isaiah would later reprove his people and say you worship God's you have made yourselves. They have ears they can't hear they have hands but they can't feel to have feet and they can't walk, and he was contrasting them to the real God. But we all do that. We just reduce him. Exodus 3201 to 6 is the first and most graphics to remember the story of when the people were delivered out of Egypt and just try unit to not make it a Bible story and try to imagine what would've been like you know for 10 generations.

You've heard about this invisible God who made some promises to some people that lived a long time ago, when Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and some guy named Joseph and you've heard the stories passed on carefully and you're a slave in life is hard and I'm is been 400 years and then this Moses guy shows up and then there's these these wild things happening that happen to the Egyptians. They don't happen to you and since you live there you know that every one of these plagues is an attack on one of the Egyptian gods and so one by one that got this got this got the hell God's in the last God was the Egyptians believe that Pharaoh was God and so his son would be the next God and so the last plague was the firstborn children and you didn't get it. And what's his blood over the doorpost. All of the bunch of weird stuff and pretty soon it's the middle of the night and everyone say and get out of here and get out of here now. Here's gold her silver and take your kids and you know you in a couple million people. And then there's this fire hovering over you and and then there's this wall of water and you remember that night in the wall of water supply 4050 60 feet this dryland and it's like you know you kids think anyone campground. This is a weird experience in the water comes back and I mean you know this is like you seen power, power, power, power, right, and then your 60 days in you just 60 days.

Hanan, you know, doesn't feel quite like a camping trip anymore and you're in the middle of nowhere in wilderness it's it's wildernesses like desert type and you know where to get water, revealing a food where we can all live in units is 60 days and pretty soon Moses said because God's ever come to this mountainous Mount Sinai and you get there and you know he disappears for a while and you know then it's like, okay, you guys are supposed to come out and you come up to the mountain and you get to purify yourself and get just a bunch of weird stuff. What you need to wash your clothes on antisex for couple days and then mark off this boundary and if anyone crosses the boundary I and then you come out that morning.

Exodus 19 motorways where Brad and you come out that morning everyone standing in in the pretty soon.

Pretty soon here. This ramp toward the latter is really really sweet party.

Let's listen part of it all and then you hear voices. God's voice and you tremble on the earth starts to shaking your face down and you look up in smoke. Now there's fire here on my guy and you're just terrified and then Moses speaks and hear his voice again and you Moses. Moses no more. You just talk to me can't take it and that's gotten right. This is a you are there moment and then after all. Now get this.

And then Moses says that God okay I'm good to go up. He wants me to come and he's going to give me commands you what he wants.

He wants to do a cutting it's a covenant and and because of your background, you understand the covenant has to do with blood covenant has to do that will make a commitment to God that we are saying that we would die before we break the covenant and he sang the same thing and he's going to give us the agreement of the covenant what what it is working agree to. I'm to go up and get that self Moses goes up and then were people right as you see him on Wednesday, now thing a long time kids get restless is an camping trip.

Is he coming back at all. Erin we need a God. I mean, you know people get restless is getting a little tighter. We we we did we a solution okay.

Peer pressure is very powerful. Once you all take off and hearing bring it to me and he fashions a calf and they put a golden calf, and from there Egyptian background, the bull, the calf power fertility will calling Yahweh because we don't get in trouble right syncretism. It always works, so will calling Yahweh. Then tomorrow will bring your sacrifices and the said they brought their sacrifices and then they begin to express their worship in the King James's revelry. It's it's like a really hot weekend in Vegas. I mean, and you need understand all the worship the ancient world built into all the fertility gods. It was if sexuality all kind of immoral ways and then ends God looks down and sees what's happening says Moses we can problem. Here's the question I want to ask you how in the world could you have that kind of experience with God. See those kind of miracles that kind of power actually hear his voice, see the earth shake and then demand that you had to have something you could see I want to tell you it's human nature, and before we get like I don't know as early Christian member reading through the Bible and stuff like this, something many people are nuts where the disciples you know like your Jesus would heal someone, then then there uptight about not having bread and I was young and never read the Bible without mentioning I wish I was there and I would have this kind of problems I have to. I do have a confession. I need to make that so far it's where the sign of spiritual growth. I've never come home after you know, long day of work and say honey, you know, just stay right here. I know little statue in the back room and go pray to. I've never done that just wants not never worshiped, but I've worshiped a lot of titles that I've created my head idles like success.

Family kids education prosperity money comfort self-fulfillment see retweet we don't worship idols.

They actually used. God made a picture worshiped it in a way that they can actually get what they wanted and the way they thought would satisfy them with total disregard and I like to suggest the same thing listening to the first part of Chip's message God from his series, the real God will be back with his application, but before he is to give you a quick sketch of the series overall in the real God chip looks at seven key attributes of God's character and explains that none of them is ever diminished or overshadowed by the others which means that God is 100% love 100% just and 100% merciful kind of mindbending when you think about it that way and why it becomes a lifelong adventure to get to know him for who he really is a great way to learn how these attributes of God work together is to do this study with a small group of friends.

So for a limited time. The small group resources for the real God are discounted because we want to do everything we can to help you get a clear accurate view of God to place your order or to get more information on the real God.

Go to LivingontheEdge.org Special offers on the chipping roadmap or give us a call at 8883336003 chip as you think about how people are doing mean we hear from hundreds and hundreds of people when you think a series the real God is so important. Dave, I have to tell you if someone said I can only listen to one series that Living on the Edge, what would it be I would say it's this series. Everything everything in our life rises and falls with our view of God. If we have a warped perception of God, then it works, our relationships, it works our decisions. It works everything and we all have a warped perception of God, you know, some out of family background think he's, you know, like a bad cop whose arms crossed and and other people think he's like Santa Claus and every time they don't get what they want and just if they don't believe hard enough and everything doesn't go their way. Then God let them down. Having a high accurate holy view of God were you grasp his power and his love and his compassion is the key to cultivating a relationship that's deep and meaningful and authentic and so I invite the Living on the Edge, family, and even invite you as part of our family to ask a friend.

You have to listen to this series as we will actually cover seven attributes of God and will talk about what practical impact they have and how we live each and every day to help you make getting to know God. Your number one priority encourage you to do this study with a small group of friends. We've temporarily discounted the small group resources for the real God doing this series together will get you to a deeper level of understanding is you process and talk about these key attributes of who God really is included in each discounted workbook is a unique code to unlock the online videos get the workbooks use your codes and your good to go.

To take advantage of this limited time offer. Just go to LivingontheEdge.org or tap special offers on the chipping roadmap for more information. Give us a call a 8883336003 that's AAA 333-6003 will now here's chip with his application.

I don't know about you, but as I listen to the very end of today's program. I was convicted even though I was preaching. I was convicted. Know what I realize I realize that unconsciously, the culture has so shaped my mind that when my life isn't working out right when I'm not happy when I get a struggle in my marriage when my car breaks down when I have an unexpected emergency like today. There's a part of me that immediately just says what's the deal God. Hey, what's wrong and I'm kind of upset. How come you not come through for me what even I don't like your timing and all those kind of thoughts are built around a false view of God so much of this world's culture has crept into my thinking like I am God and he's the one who supposed to make my life work out instead of remembering he's God and my privilege is to get to be rightly related to him through Christ and then my goal was to walk in a way that pleases him. How about you, how do you view God.

How do you see him, you unconsciously. I don't mean in some terrible selfish way that you unconsciously begin to view God as a self-help genie is he the one who's going to make everything work out your way or do you see him as the high holy, sovereign of the universe, to whom, apart from Christ, you absolutely have no hope. Yet in Christ. You are the center of his attention and he loves you. Think about what you just before we close going to say thanks to those of you who are giving regularly to the ministry of Living on the Edge you're making a huge difference helping other Christians live like Christians if you're enjoying the benefits of Living on the Edge, but are get on the team would you do that today. You can set up a recurring donation by calling us at triple late.

333-6003. Tapping the donate button on the app or visiting us all along that LivingontheEdge.org. Thanks for doing whatever the Lord leads you to do for all of us here, this is Dave Drewry saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge