My daughter is a young adult. She is going to university, enjoying it and doing many of the subjects I did when I studied sociology, politics and philosophy. When she asks me to scan a letter she has written to a past teacher or a friend I notice, with satisfaction, that she writes in pretty much the style that I do. So does my niece, so does my brother and so did my father.
As persons we are potentially like our Father in heaven. More accurately we are like what we conceive our Father in heaven to be. Father has been generous. He sent us an image of Himself: Jesus. Yet many of us succeed in imposing our image of God on Jesus and attempting to live out of that. Consequently we can end up twisted and twisting those we love. There are families who are crippled in soul and spirit because of their view of God is distorted.
There are Christian cultures in which people are diminished by God distortions. Adherents are smaller and more wooden as well as deaf and blind. To such people Jesus shouts
‘Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you’ Isa 60.1 NIV.
The Son of God has come with healing in His wings. He is here today and speaks resurrection and life to those who live in the shadows of death.
There are people who do not desire more of Jesus. They have forgotten God and forgotten who they are. Hiding in religion that is largely man made, they do not hear God speak and do not see Him in the flesh of those God has sent to draw them into His Presence. Coming revelation in the power of the Spirit will shake and jolt such people into reality. But the choice is theirs. They either receive Jesus or they turn their faces away to live in the non-life they have substituted for a life in Jesus.
‘For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive’ 1 Cor 15.22 NIV.
Jesus declared that real life is to know God and Jesus Christ whom the Father sent. We ‘know’ Jesus through the Holy Spirit. We cannot know God accurately through Bible study alone. Unless Jesus is our eye and the Spirit is our interpreter we will distort what we read. The Bible will become a book from which we continue in the knowledge of good and evil rather than a book that enhances our life in God’s Son.
‘But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come’ John 16.13 NIV.
Some are severely crippled by their view of God. They have spent their lives in work for God. But spiritually they live in a wheel chair – not because they are bad people but because they still live in Adam rather than in Jesus.
‘But every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world’ 1 John 4.3 NIV.
Many of us are somewhat benumbed, partially limited or rendered semi- impotent by what we conceive God to be. Should we see the Father as chiefly interested in our performance we will become good draft horses but never eagles. We will be weight lifters and excel as workers but we will not live in the Spirit to bear the authority of sons. Should we see God as the chief guardian of propriety we will be good at conformist religion. But we will be poor at perceiving Jesus in radically different departures from Christian orthodoxy. So blinded, we will not believe Jesus has come in the flesh.
Many people worship Orthodoxy and think it God. In his small book, Dear Peanut an author observes that when certain people are attempting to teach about God, they are really talking about themselves. This is sad because some of them are severe, pompous, people without imagination and sometimes without God. It takes a sense of self that we get from knowing we are a daughter or a son in whom the Father delights to step out from the pack.
You can have a less complicated life if you choose to multiply religion rather than the Kingdom of God with signs following. Some who claim to speak for God get the most uptight when people start to heal like Jesus healed. But these people are not our example. Jesus told us to ‘Heal the sick, raise the dead and cast out demons.’ Show people that the King of love is here and that He is deeply concerned about them PERSONALLY.
There are things that stand out about God from His witness in the Word.
The first is that He is a Person and His essence is Personal.
The second is that He is love, and love is the essence of who He is.
The third, flowing from the fact that He is love, is that He loves relationship and seeks to draw all of us into His arms.
The fourth is that you are a delight to Him and He delights in you.
The fifth is that only Jesus has the power to forgive sin and drive it out of our lives.
The sixth is that you are complete in Jesus, on account of His life not yours.
A person who sees God as primarily the Law-Giver will be a far smaller person than one who lives from the God who is love.
‘And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him’ 1 John 4.16 NIV.
Keith Allen
Daring Adventist.com 
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