Who is He?

"…but the people that do know their God shall be strong,…"

Daniel 11:32

I love taking walks. I think it is so romantic just to take a walk. Imagine walking hand in hand with the one you love down a tree-lined path, his hand warm in yours.

Now imagine you don’t know the guy! Yikes! We have a relationship with someone based on a knowledge of that person. That seems simple and obvious doesn’t it?

I believe the primary reason we struggle in our relationship with God is that we don’t know Him. Far too often, we base our Christianity on how we “measure up” to the Christians around us, especially those Christians we feel are more spiritual.

Then we are left feeling empty and disillusioned when one day, we find out our measuring stick—that so-called spiritual person—isn’t who or what we thought she was.

Our emptiness and disappointment comes from the fact that we were trying to find fulfillment in the practice of the religion and not in the Person of the relationship.

So, who is God? Why does He care about me? And how do I get to know Him?

For thousands of years, philosophers and theologians have pondered and debated the concept of God. Go to the philosophy or religion section of any bookstore and there will be shelves full of man’s musings on the person of God.

When I first met my husband, I heard others talk about him­—some good, some terrible. But I didn’t get to know him based on the opinion of others. When we started dating and were engaged, he began writing to me and I read those letters over and over. We would sit and talk for hours about nothing. (Now we think that if we get 10 minutes alone to talk we have had a special treat!) I got to know him and his heart through his words.

It’s the same with God. We get to know Him through His Word. God has personality, attributes, and feelings and He conveys all that to us through His Word.

When I think of God, one of the first things I think of is His Holiness. The other thing I think of is how much He must love me.

I took a doctrine class in Bible College and it was b-o-r-i-n-g. It seemed so mechanical to memorize:
God is holy.
God is omnipotent (all powerful).
God is omniscient (all knowing).
God is omnipresent (everywhere at one and the same time).
God is immutable (never changing), etc.

However, that boring class gave me a starting point from which I could take my Bible and get to know God.

What does it mean that He is holy and how does that effect me? One of my girls was taking doctrine in her homeschooling and I gave her an assignment that she found difficult at first. She had just read about the attributes of God and I asked her to write me a one-page essay on the subject of “How one of God’s Attributes effects me.” She had never thought about how the person of God had anything to do with her. When I made the assignment, it seemed like a no-brainer to me. But, I’ve been saved for 42 years and I’ve been through some minor fires and I’ve had to get a glimpse of who God was and what that meant to me.

All of that was an introduction to what will be a series of articles on who God is.