Do we think of God as one
who likes to “haul sinners over the coals”?
Do we think of the Lord as one who likes to list our sins for us and force us
to “eat humble pie”? How we see God’s character will determine
how we reveal God to others, so what kind of a picture of God are we
communicating to people? Is “our God”
always angry, never truly satisfied, constantly carping and criticising, or is
he the gracious and amazingly merciful God? To bring this question down to the
daily reality of our lives: how do our children see God in us, and hear about
God from us? How do unbelievers in our workplace, school, or neighbourhood see
and hear about God through us? In our lives, are we communicating a portrait of
our heavenly Father as slave master?
This past year one of my
students shared in class a most painful story about his son putting a gun in
his own mouth and threatening to blow off his head. He said with tears that he
had failed as a father to communicate graciousness to his son in the demands he
made and in the way he treated him. Many fathers are like this. I will never
forget one of my sons saying this to me, “Dad,
what you have got against me?” His words shocked me deeply, and I said to
him with tears, ‘Son, I have nothing
against you. I love you!” I couldn’t believe I had made him feel that I was
unhappy with him, or dissatisfied with who he was. We need to remember that no one has ever seen God; what they know of
God’s love is what they see in us. So, again, what are people learning about
the character of God from our lives?
Jerram Barrs
Author of Learning Evangelism from Jesus
(Wheaton, IL: Crossway
Books, 2009), 123-124.
THINK BIG.
START SMALL. GO DEEP.
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