Misunderstood God – Part IElderly Care Ministry

Misunderstood God Series – Part I: Aloof & Absent

Text: Psalm 139:1-4, Jeremiah 29:11, Romans 8:32

What is your view of God? What do you think God is like?

Growing up, I didn’t know if god even existed. I could not see any evidence of his existence. I seemed like wherever I looked there were problems and tragedies in the world that God should not allow to happen if He did exist. When I attended church as a child, I thought if God exists, there must be some evidence of it in the church. I don’t even know what I was looking for, but unfortunately, I did not see anything in the church that was different from the rest of the world that make me think God exists. I asked myself, “Even if He did exist, what difference does He make? He surely doesn’t seem to care what goes on here. He never shows himself, and he never intervenes in any helpful way.”

Perhaps some of us here feel that way about God – that He is absent or aloof. Perhaps, some of us have asked, “Does he care about what I am going through? Does he even notice? Does he know me at all? He seems to be indifferent.”
The other thing we often feel is, if God is present, and he exists, then why doesn't God just show up then? But I want to ask, do we want God's presence to be glaring and real, 24-7 every day? God is not some kind of nice gentle grandfather. He is holy, He is an all-powerful God, who created everything including you and me, and has power over everything. Do we want Him to be present 24-7 every day? I don't think so. Do we want God to be so present in our lives? In reality, that would be very frightening.
Take, for example, the President of the United States. I would like to meet him some day. But what if he said, “Come to the White House, and come live with me.” I don't think I would want that! I don't want President Obama to be there with me 24-7, I don't want that pressure. It would be suffocating to have someone like President Obama around. I would have to watch what I say, eat, wear, and do! I would have to be very careful.
So then, the question is, how do we get to know God? Sometimes, we want God to be there, because we feel He is distant; and at other times, we don't want him to be there. I think the best way is how God has already arranged, through the Bible. The Bible is there.
How do you get to know someone? You spend time together, you want to listen to this person, and learn what he thinks about you, what he thinks about other things in life, see how one reacts under pressure, how one live his life. You want to see how one responds to stress and other things. You want to do this over period of time. We get to know each other through life stories and circumstance.

That's what the Bible is all about. The bible tells plainly how God sees us, what he thinks about us. It also has many stories of how God relates to people, how he talks to so and so, and how he responds to so and so.
I want to talk about some things that are plainly evident in the Bible about who God is. One thing we know about God from the Bible is that He knows us.

If you look in your program, you will find Psalm 139:1-4. Let me read those for you.

1 O LORD, you have searched me
and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue
you know it completely, O LORD.

It can be a frightening experience to be known by someone one you don’t know. Sometimes when I am working on the computer, and suddenly it says, “Hello [name]”, I suspiciously think, “How does it know my name? I didn’t tell it.” Or when I am walking on the street, and someone calls my name, if I don’t recognize the voice, I immediately think, “Who is this person? How does this person know me? Am I in trouble?”

God knows us because he loves. He is interested in what we think, he is interested in how we do things, he is interested in how we feel. It’s so comforting to know that God knows us and is interested in us because he loves us and wants to relate to us.
Not only does God know us, he wants the best for us.

Jeremiah 29:11 reads,

For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

God knows we can be full of fears, and even full of doubts about whether God can be trusted. He knows that sometimes we fear being harmed if we trust in him. So He tells us plainly, that his plan for us is not to harm us, but to prosper us. He wants to give us what we all long for – hope and a future.

Let me also read for you Romans 8:32:

He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

He gave us his own son Jesus to pay for our sins, because our greatest need is to be forgiven and reconciled to God. We will talk more about this in the coming weeks. He's already given us the best, why would he hold anything back from us. That's the picture of God in the Bible.

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