SEEING GOD IN A NEW LIGHT

Seeing God in a New Light by Keith Giles
http://www.soulsurvivorusa.com/articles/foodforthought/seeing_god_in.html

Too many times we’ve heard the message that “God is Love”. The idea that God wants relationship and intimacy with us has been cheapened by overuse, rendering any actual understanding of this truth meaningless to the average person.

Most of the time I find myself contemplating the mysteries of God’s love and His boundless grace from my side of the fence. The end result of such scrutiny is more often than not an admission that the ability to fully understand these matters is too rich for me. I have learned to dismiss them as truths that, however glorious and profound, are simply beyond my finite ability to comprehend, and so, therefore, most of the time I don’t bother to tread this path of contemplation again.

However, just the other day I was suddenly taken aback by a picture of God’s nature that has taken over my imagination and revolutionized my relationship with The Almighty One. Beyond that, it has provided me with a powerful insight into God’s motivation for every single thing He’s ever done.

I’m almost too embarrassed to admit here how simple and outright obvious this revelation into the heart of God actually is. Perhaps I will only state something that nearly every Christian has come to fully understand and reveal my spiritual ignorance to the world in the process.
Still, for all of those out there who, like me, may have never quite understood the heart of God in quite this same way, I’ll do my best to share this truth in the hope that others might grasp it too.

What struck me so profoundly was simply the idea that God’s entire purpose and reason for setting all of creation in motion was that, without creation, God would never have known worship, pain or have the opportunity to share His perfect love with us.

He sat before the Creation of the Universe and considered the heavy price He Himself would have to pay, understood His own level of sacrifice, and yet counting this cost, He took a deep breath and said, “Let there be light..”

Suddenly, I saw God as a being who simply wanted to share true love. He wanted people to know Him for who He really was and then He wanted those people to love Him.

Is that so far from what you and I want? Everyone human being has an inner desire to be known and to be loved, sincerely loved, for who they are inside. This is the heart of God too. The entire Universe, the Galaxies, the Earth, the sky, the Oceans, the vast plethora of life on this planet, the design of the human body, the sunset that graces the sky each evening, all of it was created for just one purpose: To woo His bride.

Let me take a moment to clarify what I’m saying. God does not “need” love. He does not have any deficiency or lack that must be met by the creation. The words ‘need’ or ‘necessary’ are totally foreign to God. ‘Need’ applies only to creatures and not the Creator. If God could have a need, then there would be incompleteness in God’s being.

Maybe we’ll never know with any true certainty “why” God created the universe. But, I believe it’s possible to make quite an educated guess. Based on how the dynamic of creation affected God and revealed His nature, I believe it’s safe to assume that God’s motivation for all of this was to share His perfect love with someone outside of Himself.

No, God didn’t "need" to do this. But, He most certainly "wanted" to do this. So much so, that He took upon Himself the greatest sacrifice imaginable to make it happen.

God wants a sincere relationship with His creation. He wants to be loved by His creation as they discover who He really is. He wants a specific, personal, intimate conversation with you and with me that will last for all eternity.

As I ponder God’s heart in this moment of excruciating love, I am confounded and compelled to pause at the wonder of it. If I allow this simple, and yet utterly profound truth to seep into my consciousness, I find myself moved to tears. I’m astounded by how much this new picture of my Father resembles something I’ve already discovered about myself. It creates a connection between us that I never knew was there before. Discovering that God wants to be known and sincerely loved by me has drawn me ever closer to Him.

The sad thing to me is how the picture of God as one who loves us and desires intimacy with us could ever become something that our hearts would be hardened to.

I hope that I will always be captured by this image of God as one who stood in the vast nothingness of darkness and whispered my name before He let loose the very fabric of Space and Time and began creating wonder upon wonder to declare as loudly and skillfully as He possibly could the words, “I love you.”
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