A Personal God

eDevotion

Encouragement for your daily walk with God 

Listen to people talk about God. It doesn’t take long to realize there are many, many ideas about Him. Some would argue that God doesn’t exist, that He is a figment peoples’ imaginations. They are called atheists. There are agnostics also. They claim neither faith nor disbelief in God. Then you have a lot of people who believe in God, some believing he is personal and some, impersonal. 

An impersonal God is Aristotle’s God, the Unmoved Mover. He creates things, but is not directly involved with what He created, like the preverbal clock maker who winds up the clock of creation, then sits back while it runs on its own. That God is passive, impersonal. 

Thankfully, the God of Scripture is different. The prophet Micah declares that God gets involved with His people. He used the phrase, “…the Lord is coming from His dwelling place…” to describe God’s participation in history. 

God isn’t disinterested or idle. He’s not idly watching the clock run down. He works. He moves. In fact, Scripture teaches that He comforts, encourages, confronts, instructs, and disciplines His children. 

Over my years of ministry, I’ve observed that some Christ followers have a dual-view of God. They have a theological belief in a personal God, but they don’t think or feel or act as if they do. They are, for all intents and purposes, practical atheists or agnostics. In other words, they live, at best, as if God is disinterested or uninvolved, or at worst, like He doesn’t exist at all.  

Make a quick assessment of your belief in God. I don't think I’m going out on a limb to say that you believe in a personal God and love Him. If so, it is incumbent on us to live in a way that glorifies Him and leads others to know Him too.  

Look! The LORD is coming from His dwelling place; He comes down and treads on the heights of the earth. The mountains melt beneath Him and the valleys split apart, like wax before the fire, like water rushing down a slope. Micah 1.3-4