A small group I attend is working through a booklet. This week one of the questions we had to answer is “What do you believe about God?”. Well, I believe a lot about God, but I’ve never taken the time to write it down, I thought with would be a great opportunity to do just that. So here it goes, my confession of who I believe God is.
I believe that God is, “The God who is and causes everything to be!”, YWH is his name. He is the creator of everything (Gen 1:1). He spoke out of nothing and created everything (Gen 1), then he formed humankind out of the dust of the ground (Gen 2:7) making them in His image to care for the rest of His creation (Gen 1:26). Because God loved humankind so much He gave choice to them (Gen 2:17), to choose to serve Him or choose to serve themselves. Though they chose to serve themselves He chose to stay faithful to them, but things would never be the same (Gen 3:8-24). Throughout our broken history and poor choices, He has remained the same, He has remained “El-roi” (Gen 16:13) the God who sees us, the God who sees me. God chose a family to be His people (Gen 12) and would be their God. He would protect them (2 Thes 3:3) and they would be His proclamation to the world and He would use them to bring restoration to the broken world (Gen 12:3). When this family was enslaved and cried out to Him, He did what He always did, he rescued them (Exodus). To remind them that He is rescuer He used a broken old man to lead them (Exodus 3). Through the man, He performed many miraculous signs (Ex 7-11) so that His family would know that He was with them. After their rescue, He gave them a land that, if cared for, would always provide for them. He gave them rules to live by that would give them life if they followed them (Ex 20). But they were not faithful to Him, even so, He was faithful to them. He gave them judges to guide them, but far too often even the judges were not faithful to God. His family rejected Him and asked for a king, God gave them a king as they wanted (1 Sam). The king did not lead the people as he should have so God gave them a new king (2 Sam), and through this king’s family He would bring about the ultimate rescue from the brokenness that humankind had brought on itself. Many kings would come and go (1 and 2 Kings), some were good and followed God’s rules to live by, but most only tried to build up themselves and used made up gods to do it. Because God’s family rejected Him over and over their poor choices caught up with them. Their enemies were able to overtake them, and they were defeated over and over. Their once great nation was torn in two, they were made slaves, but whenever they would call out to Him, He would rescue them again. He always was faithful.
After many, many years of choosing themselves over God and His rules to live by, God decided it was time to expand His beaten and broken family to the whole world. God sent His Son and to save the whole world and named him Ye’shuah, YWH Saves. His Son, who had been with Him from the beginning (John 1:1), and by Him everything that is was created (John 1:10), would become a man (John 14) and yet still fully be God (Matt 1:22-23). This Son would live a sinless life and point people to His father. would be punished to the point of death for every person who had lived, was living, and who would ever live. He would die for humanity’s sickness, our pains both physical and emotional, and for our selfish wrongdoings (Is 53:5-6). It seemed for a while that death had won and had taken the rescuer from us, the grave could not hold Him in (Matt 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, John 20). He had defeated death and sin and wanted to send His followers to announce to the world that God’s family wanted to adopt them (Matt 28:19, Mark 16:15-18). And even though He went back to His Father, our Father (Acts 1:9), He wasn’t done yet. He sent a Helper to His family, the very Spirit of God (Acts 2:1-4) to dwell with them. Today the Son is sitting next to His Father, our Father as a constant reminder that our sins are covered by His blood (Roman 8:34).
So there it is, what I believe about God. I don’t think this is the end though, something tells me that there will be many edits and additions.
What Brian is reading:
Brian Valois 