The lies we believe about God

We each have a picture of who God is in our minds. This picture may have been created through how others told us to perceive God, and not necessarily from any personal experience we’ve had with Him. As a result of these perceptions, some of us see God with a big stick looking at us, just waiting for something to go wrong so He can swoop in and punish us. This image of God affects the way we perceive His response to us in other ways.

It usually leads us to think that God is impatient when we fail Him and that every time we sin, whether it’s once or repeatedly, God is done with us and there’s no hope left for us. We think that God sees us as a lousy servant. The Scripture, however, says, “But you, O Lord, are a God of compassion and mercy, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness.” Psalms 86:15 (NLT). When we sin, God simply wants us to repent and turn back to Him in our weakness. The impatient perception of God pushes us away from Him. God is far from impatient; He’s in fact always very compassionate.

We may be also led to believe that God is never satisfied. Many people fall into the trap of thinking that they’ll never be enough for God. They plunge themselves into a vicious, joyless, unsustainable cycle of good works and become performance-driven Christians. Even though the Bible states that faith without works is dead, God doesn’t just want us because of what we can do for Him. In fact, the Scriptures tell us that the very best that we can do is like filthy rags in God’s eyes. God’s holiness is so unattainable and incomparable that it’s impossible for us, in our own strength, to do anything that will meet His level of achievement. When we believe in Jesus, God is satisfied with us because of His shed blood on the cross over 2,000 years ago. What God wants from us is to love Him with all our heart, soul, and mind; if we love God completely, our actions will be more likely to please Him as well.

Some of us believe that God is too busy for our problems. Not only is God impatient, but He has no time to hear about our little problems. Therefore, we have to figure out things for ourselves, we reason. This erodes any thoughts of God’s love for us. The fact is that God is GOD. He is omnipotent (all powerful), nothing is impossible with Him; God is omnipresent (He is present everywhere at the same time), and He is infinite (time has no effect on Him), but He hears us when we call to Him. He is concerned about every detail in our lives. He tells us that “The Lord hears His people when they call to Him for help. He rescues them from all their troubles. 18) The Lord is close to the broken-hearted; He rescues those whose spirits are crushed. 19) The righteous person faces many troubles, but the Lord comes to the rescue each time.” Psalms 34:17-19 (NLT).

What we believe about God matters. Our perception of who He is affects our ability to build a healthy relationship with Him, based on the truth of the Word. When we perceive Him incorrectly, it prevents us from experiencing His love and grace, and live in the peace and provision He has for us, and we cannot live a full and purposeful life outside of Him.