Humble Pie...We are the clay!

When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom. Proverbs 11:2

Pride is one very difficult thing to swallow. It has been called the source of all sin; it
certainly gets in the way of perceiving God correctly. A lot of folks want their turn
at the potter's wheel when it comes to fashioning God in the way they wish Him to 
be. They pick and choose attributes that fit their own perception of what their God
ought be like. "Well, my God is a God of _____."  How could your God allow that
to happen?" Where was God when this or that crisis occurred?"

The tough-to-swallow news is that "we" are the clay. We are part of a creation
spoken into existence by the almighty God. He is the artist, the greatest creator of
them all. We are the material He chose to fashion into human beings created in the
image of God with certain characteristics that reflect the very different being
called God.

For us to attempt to limit or to define Him as some sort of prerequisite to our
willingness to "accept" or "believe" in Him is very dangerous. We have a hard time
accepting ourselves as raw material, if you will. We want to be the master of our
existence and we are very willing to nudge a God in that fits our conception of what
he ought to do and be like. 

Accepting the gospel of salvation requires us to see our vast limitations. To make
any sort of commitment to Jesus, we have to see ourselves as the sinners we are;
we have to realize our need to be lifted up and changed by the presence of God in
our lives. We have to call on Him to continue to mold us from what we have been
to what only Jesus and the Holy Spirit of God can make us be.

Once one sees the truth in the mirror, or at least perceives a bit of that reality,
one can go on to submit to the glory and grace of God. He is the King of the
universe, worthy of our worship and praise! He is God, not the God we think He
ought to be, but the artist who created all there was, is or ever will be.

Praise Him!

A Relatively dumb position!

See now that I, even I, am he,
and there is no god beside me;
I kill and I make alive;
I wound and I heal;
and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.
(Deuteronomy 32:39)

My God is the God of ______. Fill in the blank if you are a proponent of relativism. It
is the idea that one belief, one set of truths, one set of morals, indeed anything, is no
better than another. No absolute truth, here! Nothing 'written in stone,' nothing to 'take
to the bank,' no standards to guide us. 

I can, under this type of philosophy, establish for myself what God is to be for me and
my life. In a sense, I, the created, will create or re-create God to fit into what I believe
He should be. The reason is that someone else's concept or belief in what God ought to
be is not better, at the end of the day, than is mine. I suppose that ought to be somehow
comforting...but it is NOT!

Scripture suggests that God is not really too thrilled when man, Job as an example, attempts
to define or limit Him. The Holiness of God makes Him different and unique from all
of His creation. For anyone to limit His qualities or abilities or power to do what is His
will is barking up the wrong tree. (This blog is full of cliche!)

God, through His word, revealed Himself to mankind in ways that he, man, could
begin to understand. I think it would be prideful to believe that we really can
understand Him...we have to take what he has revealed and try to learn as much
about Him as, basically, he has allowed us to learn. This does not suggest that we can
define Him, only that he has gracefully granted us a look at who He is.

The attributes of God are found in the scriptures. The glory of God is apparent in
His creation. He is many things: Holy, sovereign, majestic, omnipresent. omniscient,
loving... the list goes on. None of these is available for giving more weight than
another; we cannot choose one and define God as being that one characteristic.

I am not interested in making God what I would want Him to be. He already is
everything I want Him to be. He is my Lord and my God and it is my job to
glorify Him in what I do.

I'm just blessed that he reaches out to His creation and wishes to be in relationship
to it. 

Praise Him!