"As He Is"

"As He Is"

    God originally made the human race in His image.  "So God created man in His own image" (Genesis 1:27).  However, the entrance of sin and its darkness into humanity means that we now tend to create God - in our hearts and minds - into a false image comfortable to our flesh.

   "But unto the wicked, God saith... thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thyself" (Psalm 50:16; 21).

    We project our human sensibilities and traits onto our notions of God until we come to know the Lord Jesus Christ.  Thereafter our Heavenly Father works to restore and even enhance His image in us as He conforms us to the spiritual and moral likeness of the Lord Jesus.  By His Word, His Spirit, and fellow believers, we grow in perceiving God as He actually is, particularly as He delivers us from our fleshly propensity to think of Him in human rather than Divine terms.  "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are My ways are your ways" (Isaiah 55:8).  This being true, it behooves us to realize our fleshly delusions and their inevitable distortions of the living and true God.  We must seek our Lord in His Word to discover His true character, nature, and way.  He thereby enables us to worship Him "in spirit and in truth," and He also "changes us into the same image," the image of Christ (John 4:24; II Corinthians 3:18).

    What does God really think?  What are His attitudes?  His responses?  His perception of us and others?  We cannot know by direct contact in our present existence.  The correct answers to these vital questions do not come naturally to us.  Left to ourselves, we will create or perpetuate a God in our own image rather than receiving by faith the reality of our true and living Lord.  This furthermore leads to errors regarding the perception of ourselves, others, and the realities of our earthly lives.  We do well to remember our need to rightly know God, and our fleshly propensity to wrongly know Him.  Creating God in our image, or holding on to false notions already existing in our hearts and minds, leads to weakness in our walk with the Lord.  We must know Him as He is in order to love, trust, and obey Him in accordance with truth and reality.  An   open Bible, a prayerful heart, and consistent fellowship with like hearted brothers and sisters in Christ unveils the face of God and the facts of His Word.  Thereby we know the Creator as He is rather than create Him in our minds as our flesh wants Him to be.

"For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

(II Corinthians 4:6)

Weekly Memory Verse

    "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.  For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light."

(Matthew 11:28-30)