Our Perspective On God

I am often surprised when I find out how very differently others see God from how I do. Somehow he is such a fixed person in my mind, that I assume everyone knows him the way I do. But then I hear perspectives and thoughts that are very different from mine. This reminds me how unique we all are. Even people who don’t believe in God or who believe in a different god, have a specific picture of the world and how and why it works the way it does. Our perspective makes a huge difference. This next topic is important, because how we see God impacts our outlook on life, and how we interact with him. In a world where so many people are crafting their own reality, it is important that we don’t craft God to be how we think he is, or how we want him to be, rather we want to make sure we see him for who he truly is.

We recently finished reading a book called The Wednesday Wars. In the book the main character is a junior high school kid who is convinced his teacher hates him. It is actually a really good read. Everything the teacher does is interpreted by him as, “See, she hates me”, when in fact, at least for us grown up readers, it is evident that she actually cares about this kid and is going out of her way to be a positive influence in his life. Unfortunately I think God often gets the bad wrap because we have pre-decided that he is not for us. Abi and Justin know this and devoted an entire session to clearing up who God is and who he is not, because they know how our perspective on God will impact how we walk out our lives. Maybe you already have a very accurate picture of Him, but if not, this post is going to redefine what God looks like, who he is and who he’s not, and get some pointers in how to go about finding out for ourselves what he is like. There is so much confusion and misunderstanding about God which complicates our healing journey. Don’t feel like you need to take this post as the way you have to view Him. Ask him yourself to take you on a journey of showing you who he truly is, and give him permission to remove any false perceptions you have had of him. Please make sure to find confirming scriptures for any aspects God shows you about himself through avenues other than the Bible.

Abi began by introducing the fruit of the spirit from Galatians 5:22-23.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

I really like the Passion Translation of these verses:

“But the fruit produced by the Holy Spirit within you is divine love in all its varied expressions: joy that overflows, peace that subdues, patience that endures, kindness in action, a life full of virtue, faith that prevails, gentleness of heart, and strength of spirit. Never set the law above these qualities, for they are meant to be limitless.”
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Read this verse for an exercise this way: God is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. This is who he is, not just what he produces in us. Many people grow up believing God is more angry and serious than anything else. I bet it would be interesting to do a study of how many times God is referenced as angry and stoic versus how many times he is described as merciful, faithful, good, present, loving, kind, etc. If my God is perpetually or even often angry, I have to step outside of his nature to produce joy, patience, gentleness, etc. If the fruit of the Spirit is missing in my life, something is missing.

The question then is how can we have this fruit produced in our lives? Abi shared the example of seeing patience missing in her life. She was warned multiple times never to pray for patience because it would bring about the most trying of times. I remember hearing something like this myself. At the time, that made no sense to me. Who cares if it causes trying circumstances? I want it, I figured the price would be worth it. Nobody at the time told me what Abi shared in class. She said God spoke to her and said, “Patience is not achieved through a horrible season, but by seeing how patient I am”. He reminded her that whatever we look at the most is magnified and we become like. The more we experience his patience towards us, the more patient we get with ourselves and others. I find this verse backs up what she is saying:

2 Corinthians 3:17-18 For the Lord is the Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. ¹⁸ So all of us who have had that veil removed can see and reflect the glory of the Lord. And the Lord—who is the Spirit—makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image.

She went on to say that people struggling with shame and self-hatred are impatient with themselves because they say things to themselves such as, “I should know this by now”, instead of giving themselves grace. She further explained that we act towards ourselves much like we imagine God to be. This is a big statement. Another back-door investigation trick for me. It never occurred to me that how I treat myself might be a reflection of what I subconsciously think God is like. Doesn’t that open up a whole new can of worms!

Abi encouraged us to begin doing an exercise, or meditation on each of the characteristics mentioned in Galatians 5:22. Who is the most loving, nurturing, caring person you have ever known? That is how God is except so many times more. Who is the most patient, unconditionally accepting human in your life? That is what God is like, except multiplied exponentially. If you have to do a whole lot of multiplying from your baseline human example, it’s ok, we all fall short. The point is that this is what God is like, and the more we begin seeing him like it, the more we become like him.

Another, more thorough and solid way to go about this exercise is to look up each aspect of the fruit of the Spirit in a concordance, read all the verses that are listed that mention joy, for instance, and begin to build a picture of whether we have had a different definition of joy than the Bible reveals. Doing all the nine aspects of the fruit of the Spirit is a great beginning, but don’t stop there.

When highlighting joy, Abi mentioned the verse, “The joy of the Lord is my strength” to explain that if we don’t connect to God being joyful, meaning he smiles, is happy, and in a good mood, then we miss out on a lot of power and strength. Good point, Abi. Joy is very much one I need to work on.

Here are some thoughts by Mike Bickle on God being joyful when he was learning about it himself. Hopefully it will bless you.

“When I was introduced by the Holy Spirit to a smiling God, it changed my life. I began to look up and think of God with a big grin on His face when He looked at me. Then I heard Him say: “Oh, I love you. I enjoy you! You fill Me with such pleasure.” I responded: “Who, me? Do You have the right person? Don’t You see my sin and failure?” But the Father lovingly answered: “I see the sincerity in your heart. You look at the outward man, but I see the cry in your heart to please Me. I feel great delight and pleasure over you!”

He actually enjoys you! What a powerful concept! Not only does He smile, but He smiles when He looks at you! Most people struggle to imagine this because they never quite grasp the first premise: that He is a smiling God. They only perceive a God who frowns with disappointment most of the time. When they hear that He is smiling and rejoicing over them, it’s like the words mean nothing to them. The truth goes right over their heads. They can’t reconcile this with their picture of a dour Deity who turns His eyes on them and scowls. We will not easily believe that God burns with desire for us, or that He is exceedingly beautiful, if we do not first believe that He is glad. It must be the foundation of our theology: our God is a God who smiles. A great ocean of delight resides within His personality. This is the God that holds us in His gaze, and the God we gaze upon and behold. And He is, above all, glad.”

You can do a word search on all of these qualities, read all the verses that have patience in it and learn that God is very patient, he doesn’t snap like humans do. His patience will heal me because he gives me as much time as I need to grow.

We can develop faithfulness by experiencing him as faithful, by meditating on his faithfulness, looking for it, being grateful for it.

I can personally attest to his gentleness, because he has had to correct me many times, and yet I always walk away from it amazed at how gently he was doing it while still getting the point across. He is not going to ask us to become something he is not. If I don’t think he is gentle, then I have a wrong understanding of him.

Abi’s statement in reference to self-control was interesting because she said he never takes away our free will – an act of self-control – because he could easily do so. She said that as she sees how he lets her make choices, even if they create messes, she finds herself letting others make their own choices even if it creates messes, too. Another aspect of self-control is that God is an inviter. He invites us to intimacy, but he doesn’t force or manipulate it, though he easily could.

This is just a short summary of a much deeper study we need to do of who God reveals himself to be.

The really important question for us to ask ourselves, as we meditate on all this is what God do I perceive? What version of God do I have? What do I believe God is like? Does it actually agree with how he reveals himself in his Word?

I started this journey when I was really young. I grew up in a Christian home and went to church regularly. At some point in my elementary years I decided I was going to start reading the Bible from beginning to end by myself. It was a long journey, but as I was on it, reading and thinking about what I was reading, I found myself telling God, “The way you are in the Bible is not the way you are represented to me by church and family.” It began a journey of me walking with God and learning what he is really like rather than what other people model him to me to be. I have so much farther to go, as I am realizing there are still a lot of subconscious beliefs that have not gotten challenged yet. The journey continues. As I read every passage, I need to ask questions of how this passage shows God to be loving or kind, joyful etc.

Sometimes you don’t even need to ask, sometimes he will show you what he wants you to see. For instance, in a recent season, God kept highlighting to me how he loves to reward us. How he wants us to get our rewards, how he doesn’t want us to lose them. The verses just kept being highlighted. I love it when he does that.

Have you ever listened to the audio version on Bible apps? I have tried several different translations. When I get to the parts where God or Jesus are speaking, I always realize that the people doing the reading have a different perspective on what God must be like than I do, because I would be reading it way differently. As we each continue on this journey, we will, I am convinced of it, continue to pause as we get new levels of revelations of what he is like and say, “Is he really that amazing?”

As I pointed out earlier, my conscious beliefs about God may be there already, but my subconscious beliefs may be less accurate and can be discerned by looking at what aspect of the fruit of the Spirit is visible in my life and what isn’t. For instance, if I am afraid of making mistakes, then I probably feel like God is not patient with me, that he is not as forgiving and gracious as he really is.

If you have done the self-awareness exercises at the beginning of this series, you will understand what you can do now. You can become self-aware of how you see God by making a list just like you did when you tried to find out what you believed about your life, your future, your finances, your relationships etc. Except this time it’s about what you believe about God.

I have already discovered that I don’t believe God is playful. Because for the life of me I have a hard time finding things to think of that would be playful. I don’t even have a verse I can think of that would show me that this is what he is like. Yet I sense it. I sense him telling me that I need to learn how to play. What does my God do for fun? The only thing close I can come to is look at our two cute kitties and realize, in order for God to have been able to make such cute and playful creatures, he must be playful one way or another himself.

What aspects of God do you have that you realize you need to change?

I encourage you to take some time to think about how you treat yourself and what that reflects about your subconscious beliefs about God. 

How do you perceive God? Does how you perceive him line up with what he reveals about himself in the Bible?

For a longer project, start a journal and keep notes, every day as you read the Bible, of how God is revealed in that particular passage. It’s easy to get focused on the commands and the instructions and lessons to be learned, as we read, so, keeping a separate place just to record how God is revealed as we study, will be a very worthwhile journey to take.