Why Do We Need God?
As someone who has grown passionate about who God is, it is easy for me to answer the question on the surface. Why do we need God? We need Him because He is the one and only Source of life. I get it, though. To someone (like my past self) who only sees a horrific, violent and hateful world surrounding us, it seems like He is distant or worse, doesn’t care. Some would say He doesn’t even exist. He created humankind in His way and for His purposes. And His purposes include eternity – not just what we see around us in the present.
Truths in Scripture
God does exist and is real. The scriptures proclaim it. I have personal revelation of it. If we truly believe He is real and true, we are overcome with reverence and humility.
The enemy is also real and his goal is to “steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10)”. We’re choosing to look his way instead of God’s way. We allow our own human pain to keep us from the only One who can comfort us.
It's not about me and it doesn't matter what I think. My own thoughts, opinions and feelings are skewed as a flawed human being.
My Creator created me, therefore loves me, so I can trust His ways even if I do not understand them. And at times, I surely don’t. He understands.
His love is perfect. My love is not. His love is perfect because He IS love (1 John 4:16).
God is the Father and Jesus is His Son, who are part of the Godhead of Father, Son and Holy Spirit forming the Holy Trinity.
If we choose to be, we are in the family of God and eternity with Him is secured.
Servitude
If I love God, I want to serve Him and obey Him because I know He knows all and what is best. (Again, even if I don’t understand, I obey anyway.) Should we trust man more than this?
Because of God, I try to show it in my praise, obedience, prayer, humility, forgiveness of others and love. Note these are all actions. Many base their feelings for God on some who profess to be “Christian”. If a Christian acts outside of the scriptures (and we all do at times), they are not acting in accordance with God’s will. He wants us to mirror Him – who is love. If I don’t do so, I must repent. Yes, I do so daily as I sin daily. We all do.
Pride is a deadly sin. When we focus on and glorify ourselves, we are in danger of opening ourselves up to evil. Satan has a way of making things look and feel good in this world, twisting God’s holy word into something heinous and we end up killing ourselves – literally and certainly spiritually. Just read the scriptures (and social media). They are full of examples!
A-B-Cs of the Gospel
I listened to my dad’s final sermon today as he is retiring at the young age of 85! He summed up the Gospel (good news) and what it means to be saved (forgiven) in an easy-to-understand outline. I will paraphrase it and share it here:
Admit
In order to be a part of God’s forever family into eternity, we must simply admit to Him with humility that we are sinners and in need of a Savior. We repent and ask for His forgiveness.
Believe
Then we believe that God is who He says He is. Through prayer and reading scripture, we understand who God is. It’s not enough to just believe IN Him. We must believe that He can save us. Even Satan believes in God.
True salvation means we want to be with Him who is the ONLY light - forever. My dad says “love is an action word”, not a feeling. Obedience is also an action word, not a “whatever works for me” option. It’s not enough to just “be a good person”, but we commit to obey the God of the universe, even if we do not understand!! This is faith. This revelation should bring us to our knees!
Commit
And we commit. Just like when we marry, we commit to being true and loyal to that person – even if we have a bad day and argue; say things that are mean and terrible. We choose to love – even if we don’t feel it. We also ask for and offer one another forgiveness. This is the outline for how we commit to God. We remain true to Him – even if we don’t feel it. We talk to Him through prayer. He talks to us through the Scripture. (Sometimes He talks to us in other ways too, but that’s for another discussion!) For now, His word is true – and enough. He is enough - and everything!
Tonya Noren
April 16, 2023
*Besides the Holy Scriptures and a good, solid church family support, there are two books I highly recommend for a greater understanding.
The Book of John. Yes, it is in the Bible, but it’s a book written for the everyday person. John was a disciple and later, was given the ultimate visions in Revelation. John was one to preach it like it is summing up the scriptures as a whole in this one book. This is a good place to start.
A modern-day book I recommend is Lee Strobel’s “The Case for Christ”. There is a movie too by the same name. Lee Strobel was an investigative journalist and an atheist. He did not believe God existed. He decided to put Christianity through the “investigative” testing methods he applied in his work and became a devout believer. God uses all of us! Sometimes in our darkest places.
Whether we admit it or not, I think we are all searching – for purpose, for acceptance and love. Funny how we fight the simple act of looking to the only One who can freely give us these things! In fact, He came to earth as a man to suffer and die for us so that we could have access to the very throne of the Creator! That is the greatest love of all!