Restoring Our Perception of God
Our hearts, O God, ache as we think of how far we have fallen from Thy glory. We pray Thou wilt restore to us once again the glory of who Thou art. Forgive us for falling so far short of the glory that has established Thy name. Forgive us for allowing elements of the world to crush the glory that only belongs to Thee. Restore us to that place where once again we delight in Thee. Amen.
My major concern is not to focus on the negative aspects of the church today. Certainly, those things need to be pointed out with clarity, and we need to see the dire situation the church is in today. We dare not gloss over the spiritual losses if we are going to be honest and true to the Word of God.
“Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin” (James 4:17).
Of what value would a doctor be if when examining his patient he ignored some symptoms detrimental to his patient’s health? Because of his medical profession, he bears an obligation and responsibility to deal with the medical well-being of his patients. If he sees something wrong, he has an obligation to point it out and then recommend or prescribe a cure.
Read and Learn More Things That Delight The Heart Of God
That, then, is the purpose of this book: to be faithful to point out that the evangelical church today has some serious spiritual problems, the primary one being a loss of the perception of God that has been its hallmark since its inception.
I do not believe we can ever regain our lost perception of God until we are brought to consider once again the perfection of God. We must restore the biblical concept of God’s perfection made so clear to us.
I do not believe we can know everything about God. God is so vast that there is actually no way we can comprehend in its entirety the glory of our God. What we can do is fully comprehend those things He has revealed to us by the Holy Spirit through the Word of God.
The awesomeness beauty and perfection of our God need to be the focus of our evangelical churches today. All efforts need to be directed here. I know the temptation is to correlate the church with the world in our misguided attempt to reach the world.
But you cannot reach the world by becoming like the world. The only way to reach the world is to become something altogether other than the world. That is what we have in Christianity.
Once again we need to preach sermons in this regard. Songs need to be written and sung on this theme. We need once again to cultivate the inwardness of our Christianity and set that theme on fire in our generation.
Oh, for the fire of the Holy Spirit on our congregations once again, but not the artificial fire of human ingenuity. Sometimes we have the desire to see something happen, and we do everything within our human ability to make it happen. This is not the source of the fire needed in our churches today.
If we are to restore a holy perception of God, we need to do it in such a way that it honors God’s character and nature. We need to push and push in this direction until men and women are caught in this holy flame of desire for God.
Personally, I have a passion to turn people away from the externals of religion and help them experience the marvelous internals of our Christianity that God has established for us. I know the difficulty of this task.
My prayer is that God will raise up men and women who will be so aflame with the fire from the altar that nobody can put out the flame. Today’s church needs once again to see the glory of God.
I know that people today are interested in sermons on how to be better people get along in the world and be prosperous. Many preachers accommodate this thirst for the superficial, and rarely do you hear anyone simply preaching about God.
There are a few out there who are interested in this theme, but not enough preachers who are so committed to it as to stir up a movement in our generation in this direction. I pray that God would set the hearts of many preachers on fire for this one thing.
Let us forget all the other superficial stuff and press on to the perfection of our God and manifest Him in this generation.
I would like to see in the church today a restored perception of God in His majestic holiness.
Once again, we need to show God in His glory as it was in the days of Moses. It was a bold Moses who approached God: And he said, I beseech thee, show me thy glory. And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.
And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me and live. And the LORD said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock: And it shall come to pass, while my glory-passeth by, that I will put thee in a clip of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by: And I will take away my hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.
Exodus 33:18-23
I believe we need this kind of boldness today if we are ever going to have restored to us the awesomeness of the God we serve and worship. Where are those men and women who will step out on a limb, so to speak, and demand to see God’s face, those who will not give up until they encounter God in personal experience?
It will cost us to do this, and many are not willing to pay the price. As God is my witness, this is my prayer, not only for me but also for all those who would follow in His train. We need to get to the mountain of holiness and encounter God in the majesty of His perfection.
And as Moses was not the same when he encountered God, neither will we be the same when we come face-to-face with God.
If we are to recapture our perception of God, we need to comprehend His perfection. We need to pierce the Cloud of Unknowing and enter into the perfection of our God.
I have used the word perfection, and I need to define what I mean by this. Consult Webster’s dictionary and perfection means “the highest possible degree of excellence.” Perfection means that which lacks nothing it should have and has nothing it should not have. It is fullness, completeness, not lacking in anything, and not having anything it should not have.
That is what I mean when I use the word perfection.
The difficulty is that we define perfection from our perspective. Consequently, it does not give us a good view of God when we think of the perfection of God. We think of perfection in a relative sort of way.
If you have two things and one is better than the other, we assume the better one is to be the perfect one. In this regard, perfection means it is better than something else. And we use this all the time from a human perspective.
In music, for example, one singer is better than another, so we assume a state of perfection for the better singer. But you can always find another singer who sings better. Then their performance slides into second place. Perfection cannot go up or down when we think about God.
Parents believe that their baby is perfect. In their eyes she is. But how can everybody’s baby be perfect? There is a relative aspect when we use the word perfection. Our perfection is better, in our own eyes, than someone or something else.
In this regard, our use of perfection is focused on created things. Even singers whom we consider perfect, in a few years, may lose some of the perfect quality of their singing. As they get older, they lose some of that quality.
The baby who was born absolutely perfect will grow up to be a rather imperfect adult. Our idea of perfection has a “now” perspective to it.
When we come to God and the use of perfection with God, this does not stand. What applies to a creature can never apply to the Creator. A creature has ascending and descending levels of perfection. But when we come to the Creator, there are no ascending and descending levels of perfection. What God is at any one moment is what God is all the time.
As the Uncreated One, God has no degrees. With us, degrees are what identify us. One day we will be happy. The next day we are down in the dumps and do not know what we are going to do next. One day we have joy. The next day we have sadness. We are up and down and up and down all the time.
When we come to God, we cannot compare God with anything or anyone else. There are two categories: the Creator and the creation. What is true in one category is not true in the ‘ other.
“To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One” (Isaiah 40:25). What God is saying is that we cannot compare Him with anything or anyone. He is incomparable.
One of our difficulties is in trying to define God. I believe that in the Scriptures God gives us leeway in this area because there are no words to exactly describe and define God. He is beyond definition and description. Yet there is a desire on our part to know God and to follow after Him. What we know about God is really just a sliver of who God really is.
We have to try to organize what we know into little pigeon-holes. That is for our benefit, not God’s. You cannot put God in a pigeonhole. Whatever God is, He is all the time. When we think of the attributes of God, we study them individually, but with God, there is no dividing of one attribute from another.
Whatever God is, He is. When we talk about the unity of God and His attributes, we sometimes think of all of the parts of God working together harmoniously. That is an inadequate picture of God. God is not made up of parts. God is God.
A man of God wisely once said that God’s attributes are numberless. We can know a few of God’s attributes; and an attribute, as I have explained many times, is what God has revealed about himself to be true.
Our problem comes when we try to understand God. We work piece by piece, and then we try to put all the pieces together. Again, God gives us leeway in this area. He knows how limited we are. But as limited as we are, God is unlimited.
Take the human body, for example. Health for us is when all our parts are working together harmoniously. When one of our organs is out of alignment with our other organs, we have some physical issues. Everything must work together.
Yet some people are missing some internal organs and still live. There are some who have had heart transplants and are living because of that. Because we are made up of parts, we have health issues.
Our problem is when we take this human experience and place it on our understanding of God.
When we say that God is a God of love, what we mean many times is that God does not hate. Yet there are many Scriptures that tell us about the anger and hate of God toward sin and the sinner.
This does not mean that God’s love works at one time and then, changing gears, His hate works at another time. Changing gears may work in an automobile, but it does not work with God. God has no gears to change.
God is what He is in one harmonious unity of uncreation.
Now, because of the unity of God, there is no limit to whatever God is. For example, there is no limit to His mercy. God is as merciful to one person as He is to another. On the other hand, what about God’s grace? God’s grace is just as available to one person as it is to another person.
The fact that some people are not experiencing the mercy and grace of God in their personal experience is not God’s fault. God made a way for us to experience Him in all His fullness, and that way is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ, who said, “I am the way” (John 14:6).
There is no limit to the goodness of God. God is as good to one person as He is to another. Experiencing that goodness on a human level is our challenge. We can experience as much of God’s goodness as we are willing to experience.
God does not set a limit on how much of His goodness His grace His mercy or His love we can experience.
The more we delve into the beauty of God, the more we are surrounded by an unlimited sense of His beauty. God wants to declare this beauty upon our lives. God wants to pour into us the unlimitedness of all of His attributes nature and character.
Our problem is our limitation determines how much of God we can experience.
The thing that I have discovered is simply this: The more I experience God, the more my capacity to experience God grows. Each day as I walk with God and allow the Holy Spirit to reveal to me who God really is, the more my capacity grows in worshiping and adoring this God.
What this means is that my worship grows and grows as my perception of God grows. God cannot grow. My perception of God grows as I experience Him day after day. I should be more capable of worshiping God today than I was ten or twenty years ago.
As I move toward God, my capacity to understand God grows deeper and deeper.
Of course, the opposite is also true. As I move away from God, my capacity begins to shrink. How many Christians are experiencing a shrinking capacity to worship God? Perhaps that is the reason why our music today is so superficial.
Zion, On the Holy Hills
Zion, on the holy hills,
God, thy Maker, loves thee well;
All thy courts His presence fills,
He delights in thee to dwell.
Wondrous shall thy glory be,
City blest of God, the Lord;
Nations shall be born in thee,
Unto life from death restored.
When the Lord the names shall write
Of thy sons, a countless throng,
God Most High will thee requite,
He himself will make thee strong.
Then in song and joyful mirth
Shall thy ransomed sons agree?
Singing forth throughout the earth,
“All my fountains are in thee. ” –The Psalter