What We Believe About God Shapes Our Daily Lives

“Your anxiety decreases as your understanding of your father increases.”

Max Lucado, Anxious for Nothing

              I am 20 weeks pregnant with our first as of yesterday and it seems that all the things pregnant women might experience are happening to me. My emotions are all over the place, I have very strong food aversions, I have crazy dreams, my acne has gotten worse, I even have bleeding gums. I seem to have backtracked on many of the emotional and spiritual issues I worked through over the past 15 years. Worst of all: anxiety. The most ridiculous things keep me up at night and takeover my thoughts throughout the day. I never thought I would say this, but a few days ago I started on anxiety medication. There’s just something about the thought of how this overwhelming anxiety might affect the child in me that pushed me to try something. However, I know this medication is not a cure-all. I know that I will still have to fight the anxious thoughts that come my way.

A.W. Tozer says that “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” I am a firm believer that our understanding of who God is and what He is like is one of the most significant things in our life. What we believe about Him and His attributes, His thoughts toward us, and His character impact our daily lives. When we face a challenging situation with a friend, does God care? When we see injustice in the world, is God angry about it too? When we are brought to our knees in an overwhelming moment, does God hear us? Is He there holding us? And what about when we mess up? How does He feel toward us in that moment? Is He a harsh dictator? Will He forgive? Will He hold it over us for years to come?

How do we learn about God’s character? How do we gain knowledge of God? I believe our understanding of God will grow over our lifetimes. As we read scripture, as we face situations day to day, as we pray and as we walk through trials in life, our understanding of God changes and grows. The Holy Spirit and scripture help to inform us of God’s character.

One of my favorite passages that encompasses many attributes of God is Exodus 34:6-7. Moses is on Mount Sinai, where the Lord meets with him. This is after the Lord has brought His people out of Egypt and so far, they have been very difficult people to deal with. They don’t really trust God, even after he brought them through so many incredible situations. While Moses is on the mountain, the Lord makes a statement about himself to Moses:

“⁶ The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, ⁷ keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

Exodus 34: 6-7 (ESV)

This passage contains so many incredible truths about who God is! Important truths that we must remember and constantly remind ourselves of. God is merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, abounding in faithfulness. He keeps steadfast love for thousands, he forgives iniquity and transgression and sin, and He is also perfectly just.

              These attributes of God are a great starting point in our understanding of who God is. First of all, He is good! Merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love! He forgives and He is faithful! And then, He is just. He is righteous. Often when I read scripture, I find myself asking, “What am I supposed to do with that information? What does that really mean?” I thought that when I initially read this passage. We want and need God to be just. Otherwise he would be like us – tossed to and fro by our emotions. His actions and decisions would have no anchor. However, Him being perfectly just, perfectly righteous, means that we are separated from him by our sin. So how can God be merciful and gracious and forgiving, but also perfectly just? This is answered in a person: the person of Christ Jesus. We see a display of God’s mercy, grace, love, and faithfulness when He sends His son to die on the cross for us. Christ’s death on the cross covers our sins so that God is not unjust when he withholds his wrath from sinners. Romans 3:21-26 gives the clearest understanding of this:

²¹ But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— ²² the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: ²³ for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴ and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, ²⁵ whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. ²⁶ It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Romans 3:21-26 (ESV)

I find it so incredible that what God says about himself in Exodus is fully manifested thousands of years later when we see Jesus on the cross. We see his justice, his mercy, his grace, his love, his faithfulness, and his forgiveness all in one amazing and heart-wrenching moment.

              Let this be what shapes your thoughts of God today. Let this be the foundation from which your beliefs about God continue to grow. There are many, many more attributes of God that we will explore. But today we start here. We start with an incredible display of God’s character in the death of Christ on the cross. I hope and pray that this encourages you today!