Nov 26th; I AM WHO I AM

How is your god doing these days?

I use "little g" god because I think that most of the time we worship a god of our own making. Even among Christians, the Christ we follow is often some kind of personal adaptation of the Jesus of the Bible. I imagine that the same is true for Muslims and Allah and their prophet Muhammad, or Jews as they follow the same God as the Christians, minus the Jesus as Messiah part.

When it comes to "big G" God, I don't think he needs our help in shaping his image. He doesn't need us to give him a more loving image, nor does he need us to give him a more judgmental and vindictive image. I know that we often think that he needs some kind of PR agent and so we decide what kind of god (little g) we want to promote (and worship ourselves) and build that god in our heads and hearts.
We surround ourselves with people that share a similar image of our god and even our jesus (little j to emphasize our jesus is not the Jesus) and call that a church. Down the road is another church with similar beliefs, but different enough that they have their own people gathering and teach a slightly different way of following their god, their jesus and their rules for getting to eternity in heaven.

Back in the Book of Exodus, Moses asked God for his name.
God responded by saying, "I AM WHO I AM. Tell them I AM sends you."

I think that God still says to us that HE IS WHO HE IS and he doesn't need our help in defining him. If we truly worship God, he only wants us to obey and follow him.
God doesn't need me (or you) to save others from hell -- which is good because I can't.
Neither does God need me (or you) to help condemn others to hell -- which is also good because I can't really do that either.

I do believe that God took on flesh and came to earth as Jesus to show us his character in a way that we can follow. I believe that Jesus' death was to fulfill the necessary punishment for sin and that through the death and resurrection of Jesus, we are given eternal life. I believe that when Jesus told us that we are to love God and love others and that all of The Law is based on those two, he was making it easy for us to understand. I don't know why we insist on making it harder than that.

I truly want others to know God.
I want you to know that God loves you.
I want you to know that Jesus died for you.
And I want you to know that I will do anything I can to help you figure that out.

But I have to say that I am glad that I don't have a kingdom or personal fiefdom to protect where heaven is concerned. There is no gatekeeper where my simple sharing of faith is concerned. You can choose if you want to listen, read, discuss, learn -- or move on. You can choose to come back for more or you can choose to reject my faith and continue your search for truth elsewhere. I am blessed with not having to make the decision about who is welcome and who is not.

I think God (my God) is doing well.
He wants you to know that he loves you.
And God would like it if you would love him, too.

John <><