The Gravest Question Before The Church

Ponder these questions: What are your thoughts about God? What do you conceive God to be like?

Whatever we may (or may not) think of God, it will fully dictate and determine the way we live and think.

If we think little or nothing of God, then we ourselves become the measure of all things, based entirely and subjectively on our own ideas, thoughts, speculations, pride, self-confidence, experiences, culture, traditions, expectations, prejudices, "wisdom," etc.

If we think that God or others "owe" me for being good, or that God should do for me what I want, it will surely affect the way we live in the world and interact with others.

So, what do you really think about God? About your church?

Perhaps, A.W. Tozer says it best in the first chapter of his book, Knowledge of the Holy:

”The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man’s spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God. Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God.

For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God. This is true not only of the individual Christian, but of the company of Christians that composes the Church. Always the most revealing thing about the Church is her idea of God, just as her most significant message is what she says about Him or leaves unsaid, for her silence is often more eloquent than her speech. She can never escape the self-disclosure of her witness concerning God.”

I would propose that whatever we may think about God, it likely needs constant assessment and reappraisal, not because God changes, but because our own hearts always default to deceitfulness (Jer 17:9). Isa 55:8-9 say, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."