Part 6 – Who is God, Really?
Hope for unsteady times · Part 6
Who Is God, Really?
Letting go of false pictures and meeting the God who is actually there
Close your eyes for a moment and picture God. What do you see?
For some people, it’s a stern judge, arms folded, waiting for them to slip up. For others, it’s a distant figure who set the world spinning and walked away. Some picture a disappointed parent who’s never quite satisfied. Others imagine a kind of cosmic vending machine: pray the right words, get the right result.
Most of us didn’t choose these pictures. We picked them up along the way, from our own fathers, from church experiences good and bad, from films and jokes, and from the hard things that happened when we expected God to step in.
Why it matters
The writer A.W. Tozer once suggested that what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. He was right.
Our picture of God shapes everything. If we see him as harsh, we’ll hide from him when we fail. If we see him as distant, we won’t bother bringing him our worries. If we see him as weak, we’ll panic when the storms come. And if we see him as soft and harmless, we’ll treat sin lightly and wonder why our lives feel so empty.
In the last post, we looked at who God says you are. But that identity only feels secure when we know the one who gave it. So let’s look at what God has shown us about himself.
He is holy
When the prophet Isaiah caught a glimpse of God, he saw angels calling to one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!”
Isaiah 6:3 · NKJV
Holy means unique, radically distinguished from all creation and other gods, and set apart from everything broken and corrupt. His character is entirely good and completely without evil.
That can feel intimidating, and Isaiah’s first reaction was to realise how far short he fell. But God’s holiness is also deeply good news. It means God doesn’t shrug at evil. He isn’t indifferent to children being exploited, to the powerful crushing the weak, or to the lies that tear lives apart. A holy God will one day put every wrong right.
It also means he won’t play games with sin in our own lives. He loves us too much to leave us as we are.
He is love
The same Bible that calls God holy also says something astonishing:
“He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”
1 John 4:8 · NKJV
God doesn’t just feel loving on good days. Love is who he is. Everything he does flows from it, including his discipline, his patience, and his refusal to give up on us.
So how can a holy God and sinful people ever come together? That’s where his holiness and his love meet, at the cross.
“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Romans 5:8 · NKJV
God didn’t wait for us to clean ourselves up. The God of the Christian faith is the only one who came to get us from our sin and death. All others expect us to be good enough for their favour, on a never ending treadmill of trying to gain approval and acceptance. The God of Heaven is completely opposite to this. He knows that because of the sin that invades our very nature, we can never be good enough to come into his presence. So he made a way through his own son. There was no other way to bring us back into relationship with him.
He couldn’t lower his standards for holiness, because that would have made him a liar. Instead, Jesus carried the cost of our sin himself, so that we could be forgiven and welcomed home.
Holiness and love aren’t in competition. At the cross, they embrace.
He is powerful and faithful
The God we’re getting to know isn’t small or fragile. Jeremiah prayed:
“Ah, Lord GOD! Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and outstretched arm. There is nothing too hard for You.”
Jeremiah 32:17 · NKJV
Nothing in your life, and nothing in this unsteady world, is too hard for him. And that power has already been used on our behalf. When Jesus died and rose again, he broke the hold of every dark power over God’s people:
“Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.”
Colossians 2:15 · NKJV
The enemy is real, but he is a defeated enemy. He is still struggling to keep as many of us away from the love of God as possible. He hates God’s created beings. He works to keep us from truth and freedom offered to us by our Father God. Evil has been overcome, but we must resist it and choose to live another way. Only then is its power over us disarmed and forfeit.
God’s power is matched by his faithfulness. He doesn’t change his mind about us or run out of patience. Even in the middle of grief, Jeremiah could write:
“Through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.”
Lamentations 3:22–23 · NKJV
If you want to see God, look at Jesus
When one of his disciples asked Jesus to show them the Father, he answered:
“He who has seen Me has seen the Father.”
John 14:9 · NKJV
If you want to know what God is really like, look at Jesus. Watch him touch people no one else would touch. Watch him welcome children when others pushed them away. See him honour women in a society that devalued them. Watch him weep at a friend’s grave, forgive the people who nailed him to a cross, and overturn the tables of those who exploited the poor in God’s name.
That’s God.
Strong and gentle.
Holy and approachable.
Fierce against evil and tender with the broken.
Any picture of God that doesn’t look like Jesus needs to be let go.
Knowing him, not just about him
It’s possible to know a lot of facts about God without really knowing him. You can know everything about a person from a biography and still never have shared a meal with them.
God invites us into the second kind of knowing. A real relationship, where we talk, listen, trust, and grow closer over time. And he promises that the search won’t be wasted:
“And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.”
Jeremiah 29:13 · NKJV
“Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.”
James 4:8 · NKJV
We get to know him the way we get to know anyone we love: by spending time with him. Reading his words, especially the Gospels, where we see Jesus up close. Talking to him honestly in prayer, including our doubts. Worshipping him. Obeying what he shows us, even in small things. And walking alongside other believers who are seeking him too.
The more we know him, the less the world’s chaos can shake us. And the more confidently we can stand as his sons and daughters.
This week: meet him in the Gospels
Read one chapter of the Gospel of Mark each day this week. It’s the shortest Gospel and moves quickly. As you read, ask two questions: What does this show me about who God is? and Is there anything in my picture of God that needs to change?
Write down what you notice. By the end of the week, you may find the God you’ve been imagining looks quite different from the God who is actually there, and far more beautiful.
You could pray something like this:
A prayer for today
Father, I want to know you as you really are, not as I’ve imagined you. Clear away every false picture I’ve carried. Show me your holiness, your love, your power, and your faithfulness. Draw me close, and help me draw near to you. As I come to know you, make me strong and secure in you. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Next time, we’ll explore what it means for God’s children to stand firm when darkness pushes back. Not just riding out the storm, but standing in it with the authority he gives.
You were never meant just to know about God.
You were made to know him.
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