A Fresh New View of God

Do you remember when you first fell in love? There was the excitement in your stomach as you thought of your new friend. The delightful anticipation of waiting to see them again was almost addicting. Impatience mounting as you had to wait to see each other between each visit. There were long, delayed good-byes and promises of love and mutual desire. Each day brought you new information about the one who had captured your heart. You looked forward to learning new and interesting things about them.

When you become a Christian, the same thing can happen. You fall in love. You just can’t believe the good news that God loves you! You want to talk to God often, you anticipate spending time together, and your picture and understanding of God is constantly growing.

Unfortunately, we often grow lazy in relationships and the spark and luster of our newfound love can grow a little dull. They are still the amazing person that we first met and fell in love with. But our passion for getting to know them has slowed. The busy-ness of life has taken over and we slide into a “comfortable” position of assuming we have learned all there is to learn.

Does your picture of God look the same this week as last week? How about the same as last month? If it does you have an outdated picture of who God is. God is so big, so dynamic, so awesome, and so unknowable that if your picture of God is no different today than yesterday, then you have a stale view of God and need a whole new perspective.

The reason many of us never update our picture of God is because we have taken the idea about God that says, “God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow” and assumed that our picture of God reflects who God really is. We have become comfortable and assumed we have learned all we need to know.

We have allowed our human tendency towards complacency and comfort to creep into our relationship with God. We have lost the luster and passion in our relationship that we felt when we first fell in love with God. As a result, our picture of Source is off the mark and we are missing out on a growing, dynamic relationship with our Creator.

It is foolish for us to ever believe that we understand all there is to know about God. When we are motivated by love, just like in a love relationship on earth, God becomes our Beloved. Spending time getting to know our Beloved is a joy. As the Psalmist wrote, “Satisfy us each morning with Your unfailing love.” Each day as we search the scriptures for pictures of our Beloved, as we open our hearts in meditation and prayer, our picture of God grows larger and more beautiful.

It is impossible to come into the presence of God and not gain a greater picture. This is why you start to embrace all of the qualities of God—the masculine, action oriented qualities and the feminine, nurturing qualities of God. God ceases to be thought of in the sense of gender. God is not a man. God is not a woman. God is the Source. The attributes of God are brought together as another Psalm says, “Righteousness and peace have kissed.”

If your picture of God has grown stale, I invite you to open the book of Psalms and meet God there every morning until you are once again dazzled with an amazing picture of the Beloved. We need of fresh new view of God every day. God’s compassion is new every morning. Renew your romance with God by opening your heart to discovering something new every day.