The God of the Bible

What we think about God is the most important thing in our lives. James tells us in 2:19 that even the demons believe that there is One God, and that they tremble because of Him.

My father was a master sergeant in the U.S. Army and served in for about four years in WWII. In a serious discussion of things about God, he once told my mother that in combat, there were no atheists. He said that all men ended up calling upon God, from his personal experience. I don't know how close my father's opinion was to the case overall, but I imagine it's pretty close.

In the deepest part of their hearts, I believe that all people know on some level that God is. It isn't enough though for one to say that they follow "god." In the minds of many people, the word "god" has become a generic term for so many different things that it has come to represent almost nothing to them.

If one tries to come up with something in one's own mind about who or what God is, one runs the risk of creating an idol, a false notion of God. Jesus came though, to reveal the true God, the God of the Bible, and He is revealed there. If one veers off from the Word of God and looks for insight into who He is from worldly sources and builds a god from those, one will end up with a contrived notion of "a god."

God should be praised for who He is, most especially in prayer, when one is alone with Him. The Psalms give very good examples of that. I've been guilty of praising God a little, for His love and maybe for His forgiveness and then concentrating the rest of my prayer time on asking for what I wanted. I trusted little that the God of the universe and Creator of all that is good might have a little clue as to what was best for me. I had to guide Him a little. I didn't stop to think about what His personal attributes were saying to me about Him.

I was talking to the all-wise God Whose decisions and Whose ways Paul explains are impossible for us to understand completely. See Romans 11:33.
I was talking to the Infinite God Who has no boundaries, because He is without measure.
I was talking to the God Whose supreme holiness sets Him apart from all other beings.
I was talking to a triune God, Who has revealed Himself in three persons Whose Oneness cannot be divided.
I was talking to the Omniscient God because He possesses perfect knowledge and knows everything.
I was talking to the faithful God Whose every promise will come to pass.
I was talking to the Almighty God, Whose infiniteness means He has infinite power.
I was talking to the I AM, the self-existent God Who has no beginning or end.
I was talking to the self-sufficient God, the God John 5:26 tells us has life in Himself.
I was talking to the just God, Whose very character defines what being just actually amounts to. I was talking to the immutable God, Whom Hebrews 13:8 tells us never changes.
I was talking to the merciful God Who shows compassion on undeserving mankind.
I was talking to the eternal God Who dwells in the eternal "present."
I was talking to the God Whose goodness brings men and women to repentance.
I was talking to the gracious God Who does for people what they cannot do for themselves, even when they don't deserve it.
I was talking to the God Whose compassionate love for us knew no limits as He gave up His only begotten, sinless Son to take our place and pay the penalty for our sins.
I was talking to the God of Whom John wrote, "God is love," and Who holds the well-being of His creation, mankind, as His first concern.

This is a description of the God of the Bible and He is Sovereign, meaning, He rules His entire creation, and in short, I was trusting Him less than I should and I certainly wasn’t giving Him praise for all that He is, not really. I’m still not. I have to strive to praise Him more and more, and I have to pray for the ability.

His all-powerfulness and His infinite wisdom are where He applies His perfect judgment and freedom to do what He knows is best. A man asked me the other day, why God didn't just make it so we wouldn't sin. I told him that God didn't want us to be spiritual robots but that He created us to be compatible with Him for fellowship and to worship Him, and that He loved us enough to give us a choice to serve and worship Him or not.

We need to know and praise the God of the Bible. Any notions of God apart from the Bible are from the imagination of mankind, and they're false. If that sounds harsh, it isn't. As I said before, God should be praised for Who He is, and as believers, we should all seek to know His attributes, and how they affect our lives. There's a saying that for a lot of us has been worn to death, "It's all good." If we changed that to, "He's all good," it will never wear out.