This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. – 1 John 1:5
Have you ever wondered what God is like? You can ask 100 different people and get a 100 different answers on what God is like based on their personal beliefs, their families beliefs, their past experiences, culture opinion, their own religion and spirituality. But how do we really know who is right? At this moment, August 13th 2010, at 16:33 UTC (EST+5) according to the U.S. Census Bureau website, the world population is 6, 862,125,939 and counting. Each person will at sometime in their lives make a decision about God, either acknowledging his existence and his authority over their lives or rejecting his existence and his authority over their lives. Or a combination of both, acknowledging his existence but rejecting his authority over their lives which is where a vast majority of us land. Once we acknowledge God’s existence, we are forced to begin wrestling with the question, “What is God like then?”
Some belief you just can’t know and leave it at that. They understand that God is outside of ourselves. Outside our world but because he is, we can’t see him or know him. They settle for the “Unknown God.” They seem to be comfortable in the world of ideas and possibilities, but never with the reality of God Himself. Everyone is subject to a personal opinion of what God is like, everyone has the possibility of being right and because of this no one is wrong. The only person who has the authority to shed light on who is right and who is wrong is God himself, but they don’t recognize him, because he has no definition. No clearly defined boundaries and lines of who he is and who he is not. To this group of people God is just a spirit, a blob, a giant cloud, that we can all just see various pictures in you but never see entirely.
According to God’s revelation of himself in the bible, they are right to a degree. We will never know or see God fully in this life. But he has chosen to reveal himself to us. There are certain attributes that we can know about God that give him clear definition to us and enable us to recognize him when he walks among us, speaks to us and confronts us. We can know God. can re AWe all have the confrontation of the idea of God, but
There are Are you ready? Here it is. Here is the message the apostles heard from Jesus and are now proclaiming to us.
“God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.”
This is the message that Jesus taught about God the Father.
It is through Jesus, the Son of God that God the Father chooses to reveal himself to us and communicate to us. Jesus is the Word of God and the exact image of God. 2 Cor.4:4, Col 1:15, John 1:1 If we want to know what God is like all we have to do is look at Jesus,
Jesus came to reveal God the Father to us, to tell us what he is like. The first thing we need to understand about God the Father is that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.
Why is this so important for us to understand that God is light and no darkness exists in him, no, no darkness at all?
Because if you want to know God, then this is what he is like. You must know he is light. What is the main function of light? To reveal.
God is self-revealing to those who seek him. This really destroys the notion of “hidden exclusive knowledge” of God that religious mystics, fanatics and prideful teachers like to promote. God is light. God reveals. There is nothing hidden about God. Anyone can know God if they seek him with all their heart. Everything I know, everyone else has full access too, full confirmation of through the Bible God’s word. It’s open access, the veil leading into the inner sanctuary and concealing God the Father from us has been torn in two by the death and resurrection of Jesus. We can know God. Anyone can know God. God is not partial to those who seek to know him.
Unlike God’s knowledge of us, we can only know him partially because we are temporary and finite beings. But one day we will know him fully even as he knows us. Right now we see him as through a steam filled mirror. We catch glimpses. His image is shadowy and blurry to us, some parts seem to be clear and crisp, but much of God is still blurred and we must squint our eyes hard to try and understand and take him in. Our eyes and our minds are unable to see and comprehend the depths of God that never end. They can only take baby bites.
But how sweet and intoxicating those small bites are to us. How badly we want to reveal him to others but our greatest attempts are but scribbles and blotches of us his majesty. No image of ours can portray him fully. He knows no boundaries. As preachers and teachers we have the most frustrating of all jobs trying to translate, trying to communicate, trace and paint the glory of God for others to see, comprehend and enjoy. Our greatest attempts are but scribbles of his reality.
As an artist myself, I want to throw down my sketchbook in frustration, but his beauty keeps drawing my eyes back to Himself and I am captivated and try to capture him. Every moment is new and fresh as he moves and I see him in different perspectives. I have been ruined from attempting to draw anything else because all other beauty my eyes have seen pales in comparison to his. I want to reveal his beauty to the world. I want to remember and glorify him by capturing something of him on paper to share with others how majestic he is.
But I am attempting the impossible and my best efforts are but shadows and scribbles and partial drawings that are never complete. I pray for him to guide my hands, guide my pen, help me to trace to give at the very least an accurate shadow sketch of his love because I have learned that although my drawings and sketches are not always 100% accurate, and I am forced to leave out a lot, even the shadows and rough sketches and scribbles have some value and give others some idea of what he is like and not like by their rendering. That is all anyone has to offer. Some may be able to sketch it a little better then me but in the end it is all scribbles in comparison to his reality and true glory and we can only beg you to come and see for yourself. Come look behind the veil for your self. Come up the mountain. Dive into the depths of God’s word and see for yourself and then try to describe him.
You will not see anything new. We are looking at the same God, our descriptions will always be very similar. There is no such thing as a new truth, only old truths that are made new to you or clarified. You will never see anything that has never been seen before. But you may be able through God’s grace to communicate and sketch him a little more clearly in an area for others to understand and see and add some clarity to what has already been seen and what already is. There is nothing new to be seen only to be fully understood.
I get frustrated when others portray him inaccurately. God is not a great big blob. His image is not so fuzzy like a cloud that we can all see different pictures as we stare at him and all be correct. God’s eternal and endless nature may make it seem so, but this is not true. The truth is, God is not known through images nor can he be made known through images. God is spirit. God is light. Physical images can not define him. He is not physical or a material being like us. In a similar way it is true with us. We can not be known through physical images of us. Seeing a picture of a person tells me nothing about the person. I can not know anything about the person by staring at his or her picture. But I can know a person without ever having seen them. You can say you know me through reading my blog or letters that I write even though you have never met me. You know what I like what I don’t like, you know what I am for and what I am against. You know me in part, partially as everyone else knows me partially. You may even know me more partially then those who have seen me physically but have never read any of my writings. You can live beside me, work with me, or even live with me for 10-20 years and never know me fully.
However, knowing God is easier then it is to know me or any another person because of our temporary nature. You can only know me as I am in any given point of time. Just because you knew me yesterday doesn’t mean you know me today. We change. I have changed over the years. Some for the better and some for the worst. By Gods grace I pray I will continue to change. And even in the areas that I haven’t changed much in, I am inconsistent. I’m a particular way most of the time, but not all the time. Outside circumstance or inner moods, sometimes make me act differently then I normally do and so I am inconsistent and unpredictable at times. As Christians, we are all being changed into the image of Christ. There is clear definition in God. Clear lines between who he is and who he isn’t as defined by the bible not our imagination. He has his own personality. His own likes and dislikes. God defines himself. He is not defined by outside
What do we mean when we say we know someone? We mean we interact with them. We haven’t just seen their picture, read them or read about them, we interact with them in the present time, not the past or we use to know them. We may not be with them in every moment or every day but we know where to find them, we visit them, we interact with them, we experience them. We experience their graces in our life, their love, their kindness, their wisdom, or their lack of it…
So how do we interact with God? We can’t interact with God physically, God isn’t a physical being like us. God is spirit and he is light. We can interact with God by interacting with his spirit. We interact with God’s spirit by reading his words, the bible. In the same way my spirit interacts with you through your reading of my own writing or in the same way if you were to read something of Jonathan Edwards or Spurgeon and are stirred by their writings. Even though they have passed away you can know their spirit still, their minds, their heart, their wills, in part by their writings. If you want to know what David Bainard thought about God go read his journals and if he wrote about this particular topic you can know what he thought. In the same way, if you want to know what God thinks, go read his word, the bible and in it are recorded the thoughts of God, his mind, his heart, his will towards you and this entire world.
In addition to his written word, we can also interact with God through talking to him as we talk to the person next to us. To interact with God through speech is simply called prayer. God calls us to pray, to pour out our hearts to him, our worries and our concerns. He listens and even responds and acts on our behalf. Prayer can take many forms, just as all communication can take many forms. It can be softly spoken, whispered, cried out through tears, shouted, it can be a long intimate conversation, it can be a brief mention, glance upwards, it can be handwritten in journals or letters, it can be general chit chat throughout the day, it can be sang, it can be recited and it even can be wordless glance upward towards God, We have a tendency to make too much of how to pray and over complicate its simplicity and try to over spiritualize or mystify it. We don’t need candles, we don’t need music, we don’t need to be in the right mood. We just need to speak, to pour our our hearts to God.
Because we interact with God in spirit, we must be careful of false spirits that attempt to be identity theives and attempt to impersonate him to steal our obedience and worship. As John is going to teach us there are many false spirits have gone out into the world. John is going to teach us in this book how to know God by recognizing the spirit of God and the spirit of the antichrist who imitates Him.
