For 50 years of my life, I believed a lot of things about God.  As I’ve learned more about who He really is, I’ve had to give up much of what I believed and accept things I once found rather unpleasant or puzzling:  His discipline, His requirement for strict obedience, how He will turn away from those who reject Him, His definition of sin, His one plan for salvation, how giving Him control of my life frees me, why He lets bad things happen.   Discovering who God really is has brought great comfort to me.  That surprises many who have decided the God they read and hear about is not someone they want to get to know.  When I first surrendered, I, too, was convinced God’s ways would not work!

When I picked the things I wanted to believe about God, I was often disappointed in Him.  Like most of the world today, I chose to believe in a God who was a combination Santa Claus/killjoy keeping track of all my transgressions and punishing me as payment for what I’d done.  He was there to give me a comfortable, happy life because I am basically a good person.  My life was made up of too many things that I knew I shouldn’t be doing, so I could not believe in a God that would discipline me or allow me to suffer consequences that resulted from living the way I did.  I feared the “wrath of God” I had heard about.  December, 2009, I opened that Bible:  I was surprised by His patience as I read Exodus; surprised at how His heart broke when people turned from Him in the book of Kings and Chronicles.  I came to understand His grace and mercy.  When God disciplines me or allows suffering in my life, I now see how He uses it to teach me things, to mold me into a person He can use to care for others.  He doesn’t require that I pay each time I sin.  He provided for payment of all my sins with one punishment – Jesus on the cross.  I don’t even have to suffer the punishment!  Knowing Him has freed me from overwhelming fear.

Every time I prayed to this God I had made up, my expectation was that He would change the situation.  When things didn’t change, it affirmed my belief that God really can’t be relied on to help us deal with day-to-day stuff.  Now that I know Him, I see how He works in my life every day.  Sometimes He changes a situation; sometimes He changes my attitude.  I can put things in better perspective, knowing He will use absolutely everything in my life to do good for me and those who love Him.  I know He allows only those things that will help me reach the goal He has set for me, not necessarily the goals I have set for myself.  I can rely on Him.  He does care about me in a very intimate way.  Knowing a personal God provides a shield against the world.  I can go to Him for the smallest troubles.  When I am hurting He shows me ways to use it to grow stronger.  Knowing Him helps me live in a cruel world because I know God’s plan. 

Most of my life I have experienced a deep yearning to “go home.”  Until recently, I didn’t understand why I felt this way, but I have never been able to shake this feeling.  As I came to understand God and His plan for this world, I realized I’m homesick to be with Him.  The world tells us to live opposite of what God tells us. When we understand how He wants us to live and why, being in this world is quite a challenge!  Once I realized that I feel out of place because I am out of place, I lost my pervasive sense of hopelessness.  This life isn’t all there is; there is something better to look forward to.  I may seem backwards and naïve to most people but the Bible describes Christians as aliens in this world – that describes my experience here pretty accurately!  I am an alien in a strange land.  I know there is another place, a better place, and I long to go there. 

About a year ago I had to undergo tests to determine whether or not I had cancer.  My symptoms were painful and I was convinced the doctors would find that it was terminal.  I began the process of accepting that cancer would be the way I would leave this world.  I felt overwhelming sadness at the thought of leaving my children and grandchildren.  As I waited for the results, I remember feeling fear only once – the night after the test, lying on my bed in the dark.  But as I thought about what I was going to experience, the reality of death, I had a strange reaction – relief!  Then it hit me: I’m going home!  I was going to be in God’s presence, to see Jesus sooner than I expected.  I decided whatever I was going to go through, I would use it to lead others to Him.  As the days went by waiting for the results, I welcomed the challenge of meeting this trial head on, eager to watch Him work in my life, a sense of wonder about actually being in His presence.  The test results were negative and I experienced a certain amount of disappointment as I let go of these thoughts. But I learned that I do not fear death and I look forward to what comes next.  Before I studied what God tells us about eternity, I could only hope that what I had decided to believe about it was true.  KNOWING what death holds has certainly given me a new attitude about it!

Fear, anxiety and depression no longer eat up extended periods of my life.  Chaos has disappeared.  I no longer feel life is just happening to me or that the world is out of control.  When I face a decision I’m not sure about, I see what God has to say about it and obey, even when I don’t understand (that comes AFTER I obey).  I did make the mistake of thinking that if I’m not joyful and peaceful all the time I haven’t fully turned my life over to Him.  Then I heard a sermon reminding me that this world will not be 100% peaceful or joyful, which helped me adjust that unrealistic expectation.  But I don’t stay in bad places very long.   I sit down with God (read His Word and pray) and find comfort as He reminds me and teaches me who He is.  He promises an abundant life and that’s exactly what I get when I live life the way He tells me to live, even when I don’t understand.  I know how this world is going to play out and that God is ultimately in control of it all.

Deuteronomy 4:29 says:  “…seek the Lord your God, you will find Him if you look for Him with all your heart and with all your soul.”  Before you accept things the world tells you about God, do your research.  Knowing Him will bring much more comfort than any set of beliefs you have decided upon. 

How did you come to your understanding of God? Take a moment and think about it. Did you just decide some things about Him because that’s how you hope He is? Did you read something that appealed to you so you adopted those ideas? Did something happen in your life that you attributed to Him or blamed Him for? Did somebody tell you about Him? Perhaps it was a combination of two or more of these. The question is do you know God or just believe stuff about Him?

God is as real as anything we can see in this world and we can’t change who He is simply because we hold a certain belief. In order to get to know God, we have to replace our beliefs with knowledge. The Bible is our source for getting to know who God really is.

We frequently read articles about controversial movies only to find out the person writing the article never saw the movie. Most of us won’t tell others what a book says until after we’ve read it. Yet, before they have read the Bible with any degree of seriousness or commitment, most people are more than willing to tell us what it says. “It’s full of contradictions.” (It’s not.) “The Bible supports slavery, genocide, anti-Semitism and degrades women.” (It doesn’t.) So I ask them, “Have you ever studied the Bible?” “Well, no, but….” Most of us prefer our beliefs about what the Bible says about God over the knowledge we gain from studying it.

I’ve never been to Hawaii. I know some stuff about it from books, movies, TV shows, and things people have told me about it. I’ve never studied Hawaii nor have I ever done any research. When I think about Hawaii, I fill in the things I don’t know with guesses or what I hope it is like. Some of the things I believe might be true. If I’m talking to somebody who has been there, they will certainly point out to me the things I believe that aren’t true. For example, I like to think that all the streets in Hawaii are winding, dirt roads with foliage all around blocking the hot sun and all the residents travel them on mopeds. I suppose the reality is that many of the streets are just like the ones where I live: endless slabs of concrete filled with honking cars spewing pollutants into the air. But that doesn’t fit my picture of Hawaii, so I reject that. My belief doesn’t change what the streets in Hawaii are really like and if I ever go there, I will see the concrete streets filled with cars and I will have to replace my belief with this knowledge. No matter what we believe about things, we can’t change what they really are. The same is true about God.

Don’t let someone or something tell you about God – open your Bible and read and study Him. Don’t hold so tightly to long-held beliefs that you don’t get to know who He really is. Begin with the understanding that God is good, “Be still,” and read a little bit every day. My tip for the week: Don’t read too quickly – God doesn’t use a lot of words to make His point. Small words and phrases often have deep meaning in the Bible. You might not notice this at first, but the longer you study, the more evident this will become. Here’s an example:

II Chronicles 20:30 says “Then the realm of Jehoshaphat was quiet, for his God gave him rest all around.” Read it again. Did you pick up on the “his God” part? Not THE God, not OUR God – “HIS God.” Here’s what God told me this morning about Himself: the Creator of the universe is personal – God cares about me and watches over me. “[He] GAVE him rest….” God wants to be in control of my life so He can make it good – only He can provide true rest from the things the world throws at me. Jehoshaphat allies himself with an evil king instead of relying on God, yet God granted him rest. God reminded me that He forgives me. No matter how hard I try, I will fail God, but He will never stop loving me as long as I love Him. This is at least the 4th time I’ve read that passage and I never noticed any of this before. Today God told me about His love, His personal interest in me, His forgiveness, and what His control over my life can mean in less than 10 words!

I find it amazing that God wants us to know Him. He tells us everything, too, not just the “nice” stuff. He tells us about His judgments, His wrath and anger, His ONE plan for people to get to eternity with Him, His hatred of even the smallest sin, how strict His requirement for obedience is. I often think He should have just told us about His great love and mercy, His unfailing forgiveness, His long-suffering patience, how He protects us. But He told us everything. Most people ignore or reject the unpleasant things about God, but we don’t get to pick and choose His attributes. Fashioning your own version of God is idolatry.

We aren’t going to understand everything about God and how He operates. He knew that, too, when He chose to reveal these things to us. What that tells me is that God is confident that I can come to an understanding of His goodness and that I can see His love in spite of the things I don’t like or understand about Him. I just have to keep studying and let Him speak to me, building my relationship with Him. I have to get to know Him, not just hold beliefs about Him.

Last week I talked about how we listen to God by reading His Word, the Bible.  I mentioned some of the things He has “told” me as I read and the fact that it isn’t always deep, theological truths.  I was thinking this morning how important those simple things have been to my Christian walk and how those things are brought to my mind to help me get through things much more often than the deeper things I am now learning.  In 1Corinthians 3:2 Paul talks about this:  (ESV) “I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it….”

God is refining us.  The Bible is God’s way of telling us the things He wants us to know.  One of the things I find so amazing about this Book is that it speaks to all of us.  It has been said that the Bible is so simple a child can understand it yet so deep a theologian can drown in it (author unknown).  God will speak to you no matter where you are in your understanding of Him.  Just “be still.”  Listen to what He is saying to you.

I find it amazing that, the first time I read through the Bible, God showed me things I could understand as a “new reader.” Now, as I read through for the 4th time, I marvel at the things I “missed.”  But God is speaking to me differently now.  I am maturing in my walk with Him and He is changing the way He speaks to me. 

Not only do we need to depend on the Bible to grow as a Christian, but we must learn to depend on it to get through difficult times (also to praise and thank God!).  During my struggles, my valleys, the last thing I want to do is open my Bible.  I tell myself the same thing I told myself that first night of surrender: “It won’t work….”  Sometimes I give in and don’t read God’s Word.  Sometimes I do.  And I can tell you that valleys are wider and deeper when I don’t.  And, again, I am amazed at how the “tone” of God’s word changes depending on what I’m going through. 

I want to share one of the things that has been so helpful to me. The 2nd time I read through the Bible, I used a chronological reading plan.  I wanted to see how all of what I had read the first time fit together.  I realized I was reading the same stories in different books so I couldn’t get a coherent picture of what God was doing in the world.  But as I read it chronologically, I saw patterns and a big picture.  I began to hear God telling me all kinds of things, but one of the more memorable ones was how He gave me a deeper understanding of the Psalms.  Reading chronologically, you read what David was going through when he wrote a particular book or verse.  Often when someone would point me to a Psalm for encouragement or to uplift me, it wouldn’t help me much.  I would get discouraged because I blamed myself for not seeing what I was supposed to be seeing.  Reading David’s thoughts as he hid from Saul brings the verses to life and highlights how leaning on God helped him get through some terrifying events in his life.  Reading his continual praise of God is such a good example for us to follow and increases our faith. 

Open that Bible!  Read it with the mindset that God is sitting right next to you telling you what He needs you to hear.