Part the reason for confession was a fear of pursuing a misguided love. I didn't want to be ignorant in my love. I didn't want to love the "idea of God," or allow a false love to make me proud and selfish. I've been in those places before. I've allowed my false piety to make me "holier than thou." I've allowed a false view of God's love to make me feel entitled and self absorbed. I've even used "God's love" to create false hope; believing that God would give me anything I want. As a new dad, though, I realize that these things are not love, and I don't want to continue living ignorantly.
So after work that day, I began to think of ways that I could grow in true love. I could studying all the places that the word "love" is found in the bible, I could read a book about love, I could focus on how Jesus loved the disciples, I could meditate on specific passage, or journal my feelings to God. As I continued to go through my the week, I decided to begin by listen to theological podcasts at biblicaltraining.org. Although it felt like a small step, I quickly discovered that this was the direction God wanted to use to grow my love for Him.
During one of the online lectures, the professor addressed my initial fear head on. He explained that our sinful nature wants to build a false notion of God instead of letting God reveal His true nature to us. It's like saying, "I believe God is like..." and then filling in the blank with something we don't find in scripture. As I look back on life, I can clearly see times when I have done this.
I used to believe that God was not active in the lives of Christian, and therefore, He was not bothered by immorality. Later I believed that God was angry at my enemies, but never angry at me. As I continued to listen to the professor, I realized that these false notions were not unique to me. In fact, a very famous group in history use to hold these same notions.
As the professor continued, he explained that the reason Jesus was rejected by the religious leaders of His time was because they had built a false notion of God. They didn't want God on His terms, they wanted God on theirs. They wanted a god they could control, and in essence, made themselves their own god. Wow, my false notions of God can cause me to reject who He truly is. So this generates a very important question: how do we combat our false notions?
I found a verse that I believe puts us on the right direction. Jeremiah 29:13 offers this promise: "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." Therefore, the "secret" to combating false notions of God is by committing to seek Him with all your heart (through prayer, reading the bible and joining a community of believers), and then trusting Him to reveal Himself.
This is an important idea, so I want to repeat it for clarity. Our job is to fervently and intentionally seek after the God of the bible. His job is to remain true to His promise and reveal Himself to us. Over these years I have learned one thing: God keeps His promise. The question then becomes: will we seek with all our hearts?
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