How do you see God?
My dean has said that in life people look to God in one of three ways.
1. They see GOD as DEBTOR.
As if He is in debt to us. God owes me a good life, good health, lots of wealth or whatever. But Jesus says "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added unto thee."
2. They see THEMSELVES as incredible DEBTORS.
That we own God everything is a fact, you just can't get around. God made everything, it belongs to Him. We are just caretakers. If it weren't for God and his self-giving love, this world, which we take for granted, simply would not exist. So we are in debt to God, but here is the idea that I just think about my debt and not about God. I think that God hates me because of my debt that therefore I have to MAKE HIM LOVE ME. That I have to do something to make God take notice of me. Jesus again reminds us that every hair on our heads are numbered, that every detail of our lives does not go unnoticed. He calls us his friends, and the apple of his eye. Like a mother hen who gathers her chicks under her wings, so Jesus longs to have us close to his heart.
3. They see THEMSELVES somewhere BETWEEN these two extremes
And thats where we need to be. A road always has two ditches to either side. To walk the narrow path of faith we must isolate ourselves from the extremes and hold tight to the essencial. What would that be? 1. To look upon God as He really is -- a lover, a Father, a giver, a savior, a healer, a teacher. He is God, but a God who so loved his creation that he set aside his Godly powers and majesty to take on the simple life of carpenters son. God became man so that man could become divine, could be made holy and come into the very presence of God. They see God as a God of love. This is first and foremost. To see all that God does through this understanding, that He does in out of love, for He is love.
Second, we must understand that we cannot make God love us any more that He already does. He loves us more that we can imagine. Yes, we break his commandment day in and day out. But keeping the commandment completely won't make God love you more. God is infinite and his love is infinite. You can neither add to no take away from infinity. We must pray that we learn to love Him more, as the song says "Day by day, to see Thee more clearly, to love Thee more dearly." That is the christian's duty.
The following texts were written years ago when I was very enthusiastic about my faith. I still am, but the enthusiasm has gone to a deeper level. One could ask, why write such simple things about God. We want to go deeper into the mysteries of the faith. But the depths of faith can only be learned if we learn two things 1) To love Him more that life itself and 2) To love your neighbor as yourself. Once you have mastered these two commandments then you have reached perfection. Until that day, we must return again and again to the source of our Faith, to Christ and to His words as they are recorded in the Holy Scriptures.
We start off by looking at God's perfect standard, of what God calls good. And then we compare our lives, as against a mirror, to this God's perfect standard to see where we are strong and where we are weak and where we utterly fail. But don't stop there. Read onward about what God thinks about our sorry state.