What is God like?

Red Sky at Morning

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I have to thank some of the contributors on this forum for the (back handed) encouragement to look into the question of "who" God is. Sometimes people talk about God as though we have the same conception of His (or hers/its according to others) nature and character. I listened to a few teachings many years ago on what the Bible, and even common sense reveals on the character and attributes of God and I might just go through again as they changed my outlook so much.

23 Thus says the Lord:

“Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom,
Let not the mighty man glory in hismight,
Nor let the rich man glory in his riches;
24 But let him who glories glory in this,
That he understands and knows Me,

That I am the Lord, exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth.
For in these I delight,” says the Lord."

So often in this forum I see people becoming experts in evil, knowing the symbols, agendas, mythologies and techniques, yet deepening our knowledge of the good sometimes gets forgotten.

Before that question even arises, the first step surely has to be to ask "Does God Exist?".


*Please don't expect graphics and fancy effects on this talk as it was recorded on tape years ago, before Windows were anything other than things you looked out of ;-)
 
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Karlysymon

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Great thread!

I think i'll go with these;

"God is love." 1 John 4:16. His nature, His law, is love. It ever has been; it ever will be. "The high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity," whose "ways are everlasting," changeth not. With Him "is no
variableness, neither shadow of turning." Isaiah 57:15;
Habakkuk 3:6; James 1:17. Every manifestation of creative
power is an expression of
infinite love. The sovereignty of
God involves fullness of blessing to all created beings.


I think Scripture speaks more about God's character than His attributes because it defines or determines our relationship with Him. Its been said that you become the God you worship, a by-beholding-we-become-changed kind of thing.

I call Love the mother of all goodness. Its from love that kindness, justice etc spring. But love is also inherently self-sacrificial. Thus, in our little acts of kindness, we are reflecting a little bit of God....character not attributes.

So if God is Love, how does He display the self-sacrificial aspect if He isn't "permitted" at all, to denude Himself of His grandeur?

Are you familiar with this story?

Are you God's Wife?

One cold winter’s day a 10-year-old boy was standing barefoot in front of a shoe store, peering through the window, and shivering with cold. A lady approached the boy and asked him what he was doing. “I was asking God to give me a pair of shoes,” the boy replied. The lady took him by the hand and went into the store, and asked the clerk to get a half dozen pairs of socks for the boy. She then asked if he could give her a basin of water and a towel. He quickly brought them to her. She took the boy to the back part of the store, knelt down, washed his little feet, and dried them with a towel. By this time the clerk had
returned with the socks.Placing a pair upon the boy’s feet, she then purchased him a pair of shoes, and tying up the remaining pairs of socks, gave them to him. She patted him on the head and said, “No doubt, my little fellow, you feel more comfortable now?” As she turned to go, the astonished lad caught her by the hand, and looking up in her face, with tears in his eyes, answered the question with these words: “Are you God’s wife?”
 

Diamond

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Surah Ikhlas, Chapter 112 Quran

1. “Say: He, Allah, is One,"
2. “Allah, the Eternal,"
3. “He begets not, nor is He begotten,"
4. “And there is none like unto Him.”
 

Red Sky at Morning

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God - who is He?

When I was in Florida a couple of weeks ago there I ate at the "Hard Rock Cafe". Above the bar, rotating in such a way as they would have had to pay me extra to work there (!) was a pink 1950s open top car. On the number plate it said:

LP-253__30022.1431008251.380.380.jpg

This all sounds very cosy, but does it really reflect the experience of God discribe by Isaiah, Jeremiah, Paul, John etc?

In this second study, Roger Price considers the big picture question - if there is a God, who is He? It might sound like a question so broad and unanswerable that you might as well not even ask, but having listened through it again the speaker makes some very worthwhile points...

 
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#1 - God - who is He?

When I was in Florida a couple of weeks ago there I ate at the "Hard Rock Cafe". Above the bar, rotating in such a way as they would have had to pay me extra to work there (!) was a pink 1950s open top car. On the number plate it said:



This all sounds very cosy, but does it really reflect the experience of God discribe by Isaiah, Jeremiah, Paul, John etc?
Hi RSM, God should be our pilot....not our Co-Pilot. Who is God...What does He look like? The Scriptures answer that Question. He looks like Jesus. God is Spirit and He is to be worshiped in Spirit and Truth (John 4:4-24). Christ said, "I and the Father are one," "If you have seen me, you have seen the Father (John 12:43-50). Christ is the exact representation of the Father and the express image of His person. (Heb. 1:1-3). All that Christ is and has done, and the love mercy and Grace from Christ is the same as the Fathers. Christ is God visible.
 

Red Sky at Morning

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@Douglas Summers

"Hi RSM, God should be our pilot....not our Co-Pilot."


That is exactly how I felt when I read it. The way some people talk, they are at the wheel and God is in the passenger seat holding the map! It is a whole other level of scary to pull over and let Him take the wheel. I guess that's what it actually means to be a disciple though?
 
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TokiEl

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God is like a thousand volcanos waiting to erupt into an all consuming fire of fury. How long He will hold i do not know... but i am thoroughly impressed with His will power to abstain already... His face must be red with righteous rage by now. How long God til You arise and stain Your holy rainments ?



Isaiah 63
2
Why is Your apparel red,
And Your garments like one who treads in the winepress?

3
“I have trodden the winepress alone,
And from the peoples no one was with Me.
For I have trodden them in My anger,
And trampled them in My fury;
Their blood is sprinkled upon My garments,
And I have stained all My robes.
4
For the day of vengeance is in My heart,
And the year of My redeemed has come.
5
I looked, but there was no one to help,
And I wondered
That there was no one to uphold;
Therefore My own arm brought salvation for Me;
And My own fury, it sustained Me.
6
I have trodden down the peoples in My anger,
Made them drunk in My fury,
And brought down their strength to the earth.”

 

Maes17

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My personalization of what God is like:
Powerful, watchful, can be loving, can be disappointed and causes unfortunate circumstances. I see the strong minded able to overcome such circumstances even if it takes time and that is a blessing.
 

Futility

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I always though he would look like that pollution monster from Fern Gully.
 

phipps

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God is love.

Ephesians 2:4-5


But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,

Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)
 

Red Sky at Morning

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Got must be like endless calm and content.

Psalm 8

1O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens.

2Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.

3When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;

4What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?


5For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.

6Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet:

7All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field;

8The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.

9O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!
 
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