Knowing God
Is God really there?
Let's start at a distance from religion and churches. Let's start with a really fundamental question about any kind of "religious" behaviour: is God really there? As a Christian, I can assure you that the Bible's answer is absolutely clear on the point - the Bible's answer is really quite obvious; the entire book is about God and his creation and redemption of his people. But the Bible states that its authorship is, ultimately, God's: the Bible really presupposes that God is. It would therefore seem illogical to find proof for God's existence in the Bible - although the very existence of such an amazing work is a strong clue to those who read it.
We are taught to accept God's existence as an article of faith. I think that the Bible's definition of faith is as good as any; Hebrews 11:1 says that "faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." Faith is incredibly difficult for human beings. Sure, it's easy enough for me to have "faith" that the sun will rise tomorrow, or that if I drop an object it will fall, or that if I don't get to the point soon, you'll go to another web page. These things I can have faith in because I've had direct experience of them so often before. So if we're asking "Is God really there?", before we can have our answer through faith, we need to have direct experience of Him ourselves. Such an experience would remove all doubt.
I'm going to be talking a lot about God and experiencing Him, but I want to start with the most obvious and visible experience of God: in His creation. I want you to read an excerpt from a poem ("Hymn Before Sunrise, in the Vale of Chamouni") by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Coleridge was not, apparently, a man of great piety or religion; he lived his adult life in a confused addiction to laudanum and opium. And yet, after a time spent watching creation in the pre-dawn, he came up with this:
Ye Ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain -
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!
Who made you glorious as the gates of Heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet? -
God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God!
God! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice!
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!
Listen also to David in Psalm 19 (verses 1 - 4):
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech or language
where their voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the end of the world.
God knew all along that we would find ourselves, now or whenever, wondering whether or not He exists, and so he built the universe as his answer. Go and smell the soil, drink the dew, feel the bark of a tree and hear its leaves, whispering: there is no question, is there? God exists. Nature declares his existence, and our souls long to be close to its creator.
Does God care about us?
So God is, and He created us. But does he care about us? I'm a software developer. Often, I'll create little programs or routines that'll hang around on a PC or a server somewhere doing things. I really don't worry about them; I don't care what they think or feel, as long as they do their assigned jobs. Is God like that?
The comparison of God to a software developer doesn't hold up for long. Computer programs are not exactly human, and programmers are hardly all-powerful beings. God created us with an ability to think and to wonder, and he reveals himself to us. He starts with the revelation of His creation, and when we can grasp Him through that, he moves on to the revelation of His detailed message to us: the Bible. We can deduce from the fact that God has gone to such trouble to tell us about himself that he must care about us. The Bible gives us a lot of detail on what that care involves.
The first way in which God cares about us is expressed in His commands. Following the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy, Moses says this (in Deuteronomy 6:1-3):
"These are the commands, decrees and laws the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, so that you may enjoy long life."
God cares about us enough to give us specific instructions about how we should live - for our own good! In this respect, God is like a concerned parent who sets rules designed to prevent children from hurting themselves.
More than that, God cares enough about us to be always with us. Matthew 28:19-20 says:
"Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
God's presence is not just passive; He actually protects and fights for us. Listen to David's words in 1 Chronicles 22:18:
"Is not the Lord your God with you? And has he not granted you rest on every side? For he has handed over the inhabitants of the land to me, and the land is subject to the Lord and to His people."
But God's protection and victory is not just limited to the physical realm. Romans 16:20 declares that
"the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet."
God's protection is visible to us in this world, but extends into the spiritual realm (where we would otherwise be helpless) as well.
More, even, than protecting us, God loves us. What can be as beautiful to hear as John 3:16?
For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.
God does care about us: he commands us, accompanies us, protects us and loves us more than we can understand.
Can we be with God?
We know that God lavishes his care and love on us. We know that he seeks to accompany and protect us - but can we be sure of being close to him? Can we, at will, enter the presence of God? In essence, can we be with God? The short answer to the question is no. Matthew 19:25-26 records the following:
When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, "Who then can be saved?" Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible."
As humans, we are bound to the physical world; our own strength, abilities and behaviour are nowhere near enough to secure us a place with God. But Jesus carries on:
"...but with God all things are possible."
We do things wrong; we are therefore are not compatible with God's perfection. Compare your lifestyle with some of the world's renowned spiritual leaders: are you as unselfish as Mother Theresa? As patient as Gandhi? If we full short of their human standards, how far short are we of God's standards? The tragic answer is that we fall so far short that we cannot hope to make it up; the penance would obliterate us completely.
This is why God sent His son, Jesus, to win us back. Because he was flawless, he was able to take our punishment - and he did so, deliberately and explicitly. Once we have accepted him as our saviour, we are clean in God's eyes - and we can indeed come right into God's presence. The full answer, therefore, is yes: we can be with God, because Jesus can take the punishment for our shortcomings, make us worthy in God's eyes. How can we know that Jesus is prepared to accept the consequences of our wrongdoing?
Thousands of years before Jesus was born, God made promises - faithfully recorded in the Bible - that Jesus would do this for our sake. So that there would be no doubt, these promises contain detailed descriptions of what Jesus would be like, and what he would do: things which Jesus' own life bore out.
To remove any trace of doubt, Jesus made it plain in his own words; for example, in John 14:5-6:
Thomas said, "Lord, we don't know where you are going. How can we know the way?" Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on, you know him, and have seen him."
The experiences told of by millions of Christians around the world confirm that this promise remains valid to this day.
What is being with God like?
If we can be with God, then, what is being with God like? Naturally enough, to answer that we need first to work out what God is like.
The Bible ascribes two fundamental characteristics to God: He is Holy, and He is love. By Holy, the Bible means that God is unique and distinct from creation; he is absolutely pure, perfect and untarnished. Remove God, and there is no creation left. Remove the entire universe, and God would remain unchanged. God's holiness implies standards of perfection and justice which far exceed our warped human understanding of goodness and morality.
Millard Erickson states that "in general, God's love may be thought of as his eternal giving or sharing of himself". Because God is infinite, there is no limit to his love - to his sharing of himself - it has always been and will always be, to eternity without fail.
To be with God is to be immersed in his love and holiness. Perhaps later, once we are gone from the world, we may begin to understand the fullness of God's love and holiness. Even now, though, through Jesus, we are able to come to God, and feel his love, and experience his flawlessness. Weighed against these, we are completely inadequate. It would be easy to expect that in approaching an almighty God, weak humans might be expected to fawn on him and abase ourselves like courtiers before a dictator – but that is not what God wants. Christ died for us; by accepting Christ we can enter into a relationship with God that is based on love: a relationship in which God looks on us as favoured children and heirs. As Christians, we find that the incomparable, sovereign author of creation seeks a friendship with us. We have the unbelievable privilege of talking with him, of sharing our problems with him and experiencing his counsel and his help. We also know that as we grow in our friendship with him, so will we grow in love and holiness until one day we are called to be with him in perfection and glory forevermore.
We've asked four questions on this page: "Is God really there?", "Does he care about us?", "Can we be with Him?" and "What is being with Him like?". Each of the questions is natural enough; each of the answers is astonishing in the depth of love it shows that our Creator has for us. If you've accepted Christ as your saviour, I encourage you to spend ever more time with him: reading the Bible, in prayer and meditation, and in searching out and doing His will. By spending time with Him we grow to know Him more and more, and through knowing Him we hope increasingly to see His perfection shining through our own lives.
If you haven't accepted Christ as your saviour, I can assure you that your life is completely empty compared to what it could be with him. God loves you; he sent His son to die for you - but he cares so much that he won't impose himself on you; the choice is yours. God made us, and he made us long for him in our heart of hearts - and only by accepting Jesus' sacrifice and giving him control over your life can you begin to understand what it really is to live. If you're ready to make that decision, or if you want to know more, don't hesitate. Come to our church, or to a church near you, or talk to someone you know who is a Christian - God has already made sure there's someone close to you who would be thrilled to share their experience of God with you.
