God is Sufficient
Today I’m starting a new series of blogs called, “A Fresh Vision of God.” Each post will focus on understanding the true and distinct character and nature of God. This includes his desire for you and me to experience a spiritual transformation that allows us to know him deeply. Our creator God wants nothing more than for you to personally relate to him, love him and look to him for direction in life. However, too many people today are fashioning their own (uninformed) version of God. Instead, we need to join with God on his terms, consistent with his nature and character. Hopefully, this series of blogs will create within you A Fresh Vision of God.
KNOW THE REAL GOD
A.W. Tozer wrote: “Our culture will be as “pure or corrupt” as we “entertain high or low thoughts of God.” Let me ask you, What comes to your mind when you think about God? If A.W. Tozer was right, then your answer to that question is the most important thing about you. The truth is, we do our religion and politics, parenting and working, hating or loving out of our ideas about God. Our beliefs about God tend to run us or ruin us. It’s so important that what we have in our mind and heart about God truly reflect accurate knowledge and ideas about him. Maybe that’s why Moses recorded the words of God we find in Deuteronomy 6:4-9…
4 “Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.5 And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. 6 And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. 7 Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. 8 Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. 9 Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
God’s grand design was for people to know and love him. He revealed himself to humanity so that their knowledge and love for him would also ensure their worship and obedience to him (his will and ways marked their lives). Parents were to repeat God’s truths again and again to their children—to talk about them when at home and on the road, and going to bed and getting up. It seems to me that God wants to be central to our thoughts and actions. He wants our children to be instructed in the most natural way—in the course of daily events, so they know who he is. If it’s true that what you think about God forms your reality as an adult, you need to know him yourself and then teach your kids about the true nature of God. In the absence of that, you and your family will make up your own version of God instead of knowing the real God.
THE SUFFICIENCY OF GOD
When I was a kid, maybe 9 or 10 years old, I would sometimes find myself in my bed staring up at the ceiling and contemplating the BIG question: “Where did God come from? Who created God? I was born into the world, but how did God come to be?” It just boggled my mind. But what I didn’t know was that I was struggling with the idea of the sufficiency of God—he always was and always will be. He had no beginning and he has no end. God didn’t need to be born or created because he always was. A mystery? Yes! One that needs to be accepted by faith. However, if God is really the creator God of the universe, doesn't it make sense that he has no beginning and no end? I don’t want a created god, I desire the creator God! Jesus said in Revelation 1:8…
“I am the Alpha and the Omega—the beginning and the end,” says the Lord God. “I am the one who is, who always was, and who is still to come—the Almighty One.”
The God of the Bible is unlimited, unbounded, unconfined, unsearchable, immeasurable, and beyond ultimate comprehension. He’s omnipotent (all powerful), omniscient (all knowledgeable), omnipresent (all and ever-present), Omnisapient (all wise). God had no beginning and has no end. Because that’s true, God in and of himself is sufficient. He doesn’t need you and me to complete him. We need him to complete us! I want to take you back to an event in Acts 17 where the Apostle Paul met people in Athens, Greece who had a completely wrong picture of who God is. The Athenians had erected shrines and spiritual symbols on almost every street corner. They’d made a business out of god; all kinds of gods—more gods than Apple has iPhones! And to make sure they covered all the god bases, they’d even put up an altar with this inscription: “To an Unknown God.” We read this in Acts 17:16-23…
16 While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was deeply troubled by all the idols he saw everywhere in the city. 17 He went to the synagogue to reason with the Jews and the God-fearing Gentiles, and he spoke daily in the public square to all who happened to be there. 18 He also had a debate with some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. When he told them about Jesus and his resurrection, they said, “What’s this babbler trying to say with these strange ideas he’s picked up?” Others said, “He seems to be preaching about some foreign gods.” 19 Then they took him to the high council of the city. “Come and tell us about this new teaching,” they said. 20 “You are saying some rather strange things, and we want to know what it’s all about.” 21 (It should be explained that all the Athenians, as well as the foreigners in Athens, seemed to spend all their time discussing the latest ideas.) 22 So Paul, standing before the council, addressed them as follows: “Men of Athens, I notice that you are very religious in every way, 23 for as I was walking along I saw your many shrines. And one of your altars had this inscription on it: ‘To an Unknown God.’ This God, whom you worship without knowing, is the one I’m telling you about.
These Athenians were experts in the art of creating gods, but Paul wanted to plant a new thought in their minds—vv. 24-25…
24 “He is the God who made the world and everything in it. Since he is Lord of heaven and earth, he doesn’t live in man-made temples, 25 and human hands can’t serve his needs—for he has no needs. He himself gives life and breath to everything, and he satisfies every need.”
Paul told them “I know who your unknown God is, he is the one true God who wants to know you and wants you to know him.” The message of the Bible is that God doesn’t need anything from us. He doesn’t need our service, our church buildings, our religious ceremonies, or our declarations of his worth. God doesn’t need our nation or political parties; he doesn’t need our dress codes or the times and places for meeting him. He doesn’t need us to figure him out nor does he feel any obligation to account for himself to us—Psalm 90:2…
2 …before you gave birth to the earth and the world, from beginning to end, you are God.
Before the universe or anything we see came into being, God already was and always will be. We need to understand that God was happy, content, fulfilled, completely at peace and joyful with simply being himself—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in perfect harmony and fellowship. God wasn’t lonely. He didn’t need humanity to complete him. He didn’t need us as a project to keep him busy. God is self-existing, self-perpetuating, and self-satisfying, not in any egotistical way, he just is. God is utterly and perfectly sufficient in and of himself. But there’s more…
GOD DESIRES TO LOVE AND FULFILL YOU
If God is perfectly content in himself and has no need for us to fulfill anything that would benefit him, why did he create people to begin with? God wanted to share his character, his love, perfect truth and grace with people. He desired relationships and fellowship. Back in Acts 17, Paul is standing before the Athenian religious/philosophy council and he proceeded to tell them who the real creator God is—vv. 26-28…
26 From one man he created all the nations throughout the whole earth. He decided beforehand when they should rise and fall, and he determined their boundaries. 27 His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him—though he is not far from any one of us.
The key here is that God created you and me to be in a deep and knowing relationship with him. He desires that out of our own free will we would seek after him (“to feel our way toward him and find him”), which is totally possible—why? Because “he is not far from any one of us.” God is at work guiding us to himself. In the big picture, Jesus Christ is God’s ultimate way of helping people to feel their way toward him. God came close to us in the person of Jesus. Jesus is the exact representation of God. Because we’re born with souls infected with sin, we’re spiritually separated from God. We enter this life feeling our way along and looking for something to complete us. We have a hole in our heart, a vacuum in our lives and we’re groping our way in the dark, looking, looking, looking. What we need is the light of God’s truth. What we need is a Savior. God provided Jesus Christ as our Savior. He's how God becomes real to us. When we receive Jesus by faith, only then will we understand that we live and move and have our being in and through God.
NEXT STEP
1. If you’re in a place right now where you’re all too aware of your weaknesses and needs, turn all your troubles and burdens over to God. Stop trying to fix them yourself. Open yourself fully to this all powerful, all knowledgeable, all wise, all and ever-present God. Drink deeply of his sufficiency. He will give you life.
2. Maybe you’ve been feeling that God has failed you or he isn’t sufficient for you—maybe you’ve been looking toward other things (gods) to fulfill you. Instead, be patient with God. The work God does in you while you wait on him may be greater than the answers you're looking for.
