Understanding God: Self-Appraisal And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. – Genesis 1:4 As we continue to explore the personality…
Understanding God: Self-Appraisal
And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. – Genesis 1:4
As we continue to explore the personality of God, one of His unique attributes that we are introduced to early in the Bible is self-appraisal. He is a God who appraises Himself and His works. This theme runs through the history of creation as documented in Genesis chapter 1. We see excerpts such as “And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas. And God saw that it was good…” (vs. 10); “And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good…” (vs. 12); “So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good…” (vs. 21).
Now, God was not reporting to anybody, and He did not need to impress anyone in His creation. But because He has such high standards, He took time to evaluate every single one of His works and did not just wave them on. This shows His meticulous nature. He is attentive to detail and does not leave anything to chance. Rather He checks that everything is as He envisioned it to be.
This practice did not just ensure that God came up with a masterpiece in His output, it also helped Him to see the potential for more in some of the things He had created. That was why He could create light out of darkness (2-3); separated day and night from the light (vs. 5-6); created a firmament (Heaven) to separate the waters above and below (vs. 7-8); created the Earth by gathering the waters below the firmament to one side so that hard surface might emerge (vs. 9-10); made sea creatures from the water body below (vs. 21); and brought forth grass, herb, and fruit trees from the new hard surface He created (vs. 11-13). And this went on and on until He formed humans from the same ground.
This tells us that God is inventive and imaginative. He would not have been able to create anything if He wasn’t. He does not rest on His soars and does not bask in yesterday’s glory. He is a forward-thinking God who is always looking out for an opportunity to do more, make more and get more as the evolution of His creation aptly demonstrated to us.
The good news is that He created you just like Him, with the same mindset, capacities and power to think, function and operate like Him. The question is how are you making use of these endowments?
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. – Habakkuk 2:14
Understanding God: He is Inventive God said, “It’s not good for the Man to be alone; I’ll make him a helper, a companion.” So God formed from the dirt of…
Understanding God: He is Inventive
God said, “It’s not good for the Man to be alone; I’ll make him a helper, a companion.” So God formed from the dirt of the ground all the animals of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the Man to see what he would name them. Whatever the Man called each living creature, that was its name. The Man named the cattle, named the birds of the air, named the wild animals; but he didn’t find a suitable companion. God put the Man into a deep sleep. As he slept he removed one of his ribs and replaced it with flesh. God then used the rib that he had taken from the Man to make Woman and presented her to the Man. The Man said, “Finally! Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh!” – Genesis 2:18-23 (The Message)
In continuation of our meditation on the nature of God, today we will be focusing on His inventive attributes. He is the God of inventions and innovations.
For the benefit of those who may be alarmed at the fact we are using seemingly human attributes to describe God, here is an explanation. All the attributes we have read so far since we started this series and all we will also read in subsequent digest are originally God’s. Not human’s (2 Corinthians 3:5). But because He had created humans just like Him, that is how humans have come by those attributes as well.
Humans through their creative and other genius attributes are only exhibiting the divine nature embedded in their DNA from birth as offspring of God. Therefore, by spotlighting those unique aspects of God that appear to be in the domains of humans, we are only helping the readers to see what they can be if they channel the God in them to work. We hope this offers a context to those concerned.
Back to our focus for today. The passage above helps us to see the inventive nature of God. It so happened that after deploying different methods to make His creatures, God needed to provide a partner for His ultimate creature, man. However, the man for whom the partner was meant seemed not to be impressed by any of the creatures God brought to him to see if he would find one suitable for himself among them.
This led God to try again and channel His creative nous to come up with yet another creature using an entirely different method from the ones He used in the past to create the other creatures. This time, God had to undertake a medical procedure to achieve this. He carried out an anesthesia on Adam by inducing him to sleep and then performed a surgery on Adam, the first of its kind in recorded history, by removing a rib from the side of Adam and replacing the space created with flesh.
In case this does not sink in, let’s go over it again. In order to create the woman, God did three notable things. Firstly, He performed an anesthesia on Adam; secondly, He completed a surgical procedure by cutting open his flesh to remove a rib; and finally, God used the rib He removed to produce a new human creature. This is called reproductive cloning. So God also performed the first cloning known to man.
And guess what? The creature He produced through this whole procedure turned out to be His finest. Woman was God’s last throw of the dice at creation, and she remains the finest of them all. Moreso, she came into being because of the inventive nature of God in trying other means and exploring other solutions when the previous attempts did not work or produce the desired result.
The good news is that we are all created in His likeness. The main question is how inventive are you, and how are you putting your divine DNA to use?
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. – Habakkuk 2:14
Understanding God: The God Who Sustains All Things
…In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, before any plant of the field was in the earth and before any herb of the field had grown. For the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground; but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. – Genesis 2:4-6
Today, as we continue our exploration of the personality and nature of God, another of His attributes that we shall dwell on today is sustenance. He is a God of sustenance. He sustains everything and everyone.
From the passage above, we see that before rain started to fall on the earth God had a system in place that would sustain the earth. Even with all the civilizations we have around today, imagine what the earth would have been like without rain, not to talk of the prehistoric times when the earth had not been broken and domesticated by humans. It would have been impossible for life to survive on a parched and unstructured earth. Worse, the earth itself would have caved in and self-destruct without something to keep it moistened.
However, God being ever so thoughtful, methodical in His ways, and with such immense foresight, knew that He needed to have an organism in place to keep the earth wet, and thereby keep it sustained. What did He do? He caused the earth to generate mist from itself in order to wet itself. As simplistic as that sounds, it is an awesome thing to do and another testament to the omniscient power of God.
In other words, God while creating the earth also created the capacity for the earth to sustain itself. The same way He made plants and other living creatures “whose seed is in itself according to its kind” (Genesis 1:11-12) to be self-sustaining. The same way He also made we humans. Our capacity for sustenance however is not because of a random or unexplainable biological configuration. It is God who made us so. He is the One who wired us, an intricate unity, to be self-sustaining.
The Bible says, “the desire of every living thing” is satisfied by God (Psalm 145:16) and He “gives food to all flesh” (Psalm 136:25). That means whatever capacity we have to work for means of livelihood is an endowment from God. Therefore, it is “not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, who also made us sufficient…” (2 Corinthians 3:5-6).
God is the sustainer of all. Sustenance is one of the social pacts He is sworn by duty to all His creatures, man and beast, believer and non-believer, old and young.
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. – Habakkuk 2:14
Understanding God: He is NOT Omnipresent Then the Lord appeared to him by the terebinth trees of Mamre, as he was sitting in the tent door in the heat of…
Understanding God: He is NOT Omnipresent
Then the Lord appeared to him by the terebinth trees of Mamre, as he was sitting in the tent door in the heat of the day. So he lifted his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing by him; and when he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them, and bowed himself to the ground… And the Lord said, “Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grave, I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry against it that has come to Me; and if not, I will know.” – Genesis 18:1-2,20-21
God is not omnipresent. That sounds heretical, doesn’t it? Particularly as it also challenges thousands of years of theology and the long-held beliefs of an innumerable number of people, both dead and alive.
Omnipresence is a myth, one of the fictional attributes we ascribe to God in awe and worship. And He indeed deserves our awe and worship because of His gargantuan stature and the indispensable role He plays in our lives and our universe. However, there is no passage in the Bible where God describes Himself as omnipresent. Now, we need to draw a line between what God Himself says He is in a direct address and what the various writers of the books in the Bible describe Him to be. If you draw this line, you will realize that all the biblical passages that are being used to justify the omnipresence of God are not His own direct account of Himself. They are more of what the scribes, the prophets, the apostles and other writers of the books attribute to Him.
For context, this writer has also held and described God as omnipresent all his life. And it was not until recently that his attention was drawn to the myth that humanity has held for Aeon about the omnipresence of God. This piece will also be followed by several series drawn from and supported by scripture, to demonstrate that omniscience is a myth and does not accurately represent God.
The idea of omnipresence also highlights our ignorance of the sheer magnitude of God’s creations. The realms and the works of the LORD are so vast and humongous that they beat the wildest imaginations. We primarily focus our attention on the earth and use it to aid our understanding of God. But then this earth, as huge as it is to us, with billions of people living on it, is indeed a very tiny entity among the creations and the realms of God.
The planet Earth is part of the Milky Way galaxy. Now, in terms of size, the Earth is incredibly tiny in that galaxy. The Earth’s size is so small compared to the Milky Way that if the Milky Way were the size of a football field, Earth would be smaller than a tiny grain of sand! Even though the Earth seems huge to us, it is super, super tiny in the vast galaxy we live in! To drive that home, Earth’s size is about 0.00000000013% (1.3 trillionths of the total size) of the Milky Way!
Now, let’s take a closer look at the Milky Way itself, where the Earth and its billions of people are just like a grain of sand. There are estimated to be 100 billion to 200 billion galaxies in the universe. Some studies even suggest there might be more, possibly up to two trillion galaxies. The Milky Way is just one of these, and in terms of size, it is average-sized compared to the other galaxies in the universe of God’s creations. There are other galaxies, numbering in the billions, that are much larger than our Milky Way. Each galaxy has its own stars, its own planets (just like the Earth is one of the planets in the Milky Way), and its own structures. Let’s still not forget that the Earth, through which we understand and relate to God, is just like a tiny speck in its own parent galaxy.
Now, to our reference scripture today, the Bible tells us that God appeared to Abraham “by the terebinth trees of Mamre”. He was not there before that time. In fact, from Genesis 2, when God began relating to humans (we will still conduct a blow-by-blow analysis of biblical references from Genesis 3 onwards on the myth of omniscience), God was always either coming or appearing. He was not always present there either physically or spiritually.
Location-wise, God is in heaven (Psalm 11:4, Psalm 115:3, Ecclesiastes 5:2, Matthew 6:9, Matthew 7:11, Matthew 10:33, Matthew 16:17, Matthew 18:10, Matthew 18:14, Matthew 23:9). Positionally, He is seated on His throne in glory and majesty, and He is being fawned over and worshipped by an innumerable company of angels in the highest where He is (Isaiah 6, Revelation 4).
Inasmuch as God is not omnipresent or everywhere, He nonetheless has the ability to be wherever He wants to be at any time. He can also be in multiple places at the same time as He desires. But that does not mean that He is presently present everywhere at the same time as we have long believed Him to be. No, that is a myth.
God did not communicate Himself to us in this way. The only thing He claimed to be is the Almighty, or Omnipotent (Genesis 17:1). As for Him being omnipresent, that is a myth.
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. – Habakkuk 2:14
Understanding God: He is Omnipotent When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am Almighty God; walk before Me and be blameless….
Understanding God: He is Omnipotent
When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am Almighty God; walk before Me and be blameless. – Genesis 17:1
The attribute of God for our meditation today shall be His omnipotence. From our reference passage, we see God introducing Himself to Abraham by saying He is the Almighty God. Another word for almighty is omnipotent. In other words, the God of all might and power who has the ability to do and to undo.
It is pertinent for us to note this attribute of God, particularly as a grounded conviction in it would serve as a guardrail to help us successfully navigate the intricate terrains of life and living. God is the Almighty. He has all might, all power and all abilities. Nothing is beyond Him.
Knowing that one has an ally in God who has this facility should therefore make life’s issues more bearable for anyone who has a relationship with God. Knowing that God is on your side is one of the best antidotes for pressures of any kind, and life will throw all manner of pressure at you. However, those who know God are well-equipped to cope with whatever life may throw at them.
A passage in the Bible states, “The people who know their God shall be strong, and carry out great exploits” (Daniel 11:32). This illustrates the dual advantage of knowing God: it offers the benefit of strength, another manifestation of omnipotence, and exploits, yet another derivation from the omnipotent power of God, who devolves power and abilities to those He trusts.
Therefore, if you desire to make something of your life in a just and clean way, the God’s way, that is devoid of scheming or manipulation, then you need to have a good relationship with God, as that avails you the needed energy and facility to make it happen.
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. – Habakkuk 2:14
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