What's God like?

At the beach retreat, Rachel challenged us with this: "We are influenced by our parents, our churches, our experiences, our culture… each of these adds to, or takes away from who we come to believe God to be. Take a moment and think about this. What are the first words that come to your mind when you think about God? Perhaps a better question is, what are the second words? Behind the “Sunday school answers”, the things we profess to believe about God to fit in with the church crowd, what face does God have in your mind? Is He just waiting for you to fall one more time, and that’s it? Is he tired of you asking for the same thing, over and over? Is he withholding from you the desires of your heart until you ‘get it right’? Is he scary? Is he remote? Does he confuse you? "
Y'all I think she's right. Many of us have been trained to give the pat answer for the question. It's a knee-jerk reaction: God=Love, God=Father, God=Provider, and on and on. But what does our mind say in difficult situation? When God seems quiet? When things don't go as we expected? When life is hard?

"Yeah, that's what I thought would happen." "No, I didn't think so." "I guess I didn't really expect it to work." "If You really wanted to, You would have."

Does this paint a truer picture of who you believe God to be deep, deep, deep down in your heart? I'll be honest if you will. These thoughts have passed through my mind before.
They paint a picture of a God who isn't really for us, who can't really be depended on, who doesn't really love us. The Israelites did this in Deut 1:27 when things were tough in the dessert: "You murmured and complained in your tents and said, 'The Lord must hate us, bringing us here from Egypt to be slaughtered…"
I realized at the beach, that pieces of my image of God need to be restored. He and I have been working on it, don't worry. But it's made me wonder who else is missing out on God's complete, abundant, life (John 10:10) because deep, deep, deep in their hearts they don’t believe God could love them. Or they don't believe God is for them. Or they think God is mad at them for _____________.
It's kind of like the story of Mephibosheth in 2 Samuel 9. King David is looking for anyone who is related to Jonathan because he wants to poor out his love on him. He'd made a covenant with Jonathan and promised he's care for his family. Well, the only descendant left was his son Mephibosheth, living in Lo-debar. And when the servants find him and bring him before the king, he falls down trembling in fear, afraid of what will happen next. All he's thinking about is, "My granddaddy Saul was so rotten to David and tried to take the throne from him, that now he's out to get me!" He had no idea the blessings available to him because the king had a covenant with his own father. Even when David explains things, he still doesn't get it. "Should the king show such kindness to a dead dog like me?" (Vs. 8)
What blessing, am I, - are you- missing out on because we've believed these lies about God? I recognized that for every lie I've fallen for, I needed to find a scripture telling the truth of God's character to hide in my heart. That way, the next time I heard this same lie, I could dispute it with the truth of God.

John 3:16: God so loved the world that He gave his only son…
Romans 8:31: If God is for us, who can ever be against us?
Numbers 10:9: The Lord will remember you and rescue you from your enemies
Jer. 31:34 I will forgive their wickedness and nevermore remember their sins.
Ex 34:6: I am the LORD, the merciful and gracious God. I am slow to anger and rich in unfailing love and faithfulness.

Got 'em? Okay, now just for good measure look back through my archives and find Is A Nickle Enough? (June 2005) Those ideas have been speaking to me lately, and instead of re-publishing it, I can just send you there to read it. :0)