S01E09: What If God Isn’t Who You Think He Is?

Ben Bennett discusses the lies we commonly believe about who God is. Sometimes we view God as angry, distant, or uptight. Believing these lies takes us away from the thriving life we were created to experience. Ben explores what the Bible actually says about who God is as a loving father. Learn practical ways to restore your view of God, and thrive in your relationship with Him.

Visit the Resolution Movement website: resolutionmovement.org

Follow us on Instagram @resolutionmovement

Transcript

Welcome to Resolution, an initiative of Josh McDowell Ministry. Here we equip you to help youth overcome hurts and struggles and start thriving in life with Christ and others. I am your host, Ben Bennett. Welcome to season one.

Hey, Ben Bennett here and thanks for tuning into this episode of the Resolution Podcast. If you’ve caught the previous episodes, you will remember that we talked about part one and part two of the wholeness apologetic model, what it looks like to fulfill our purpose, what it feels like to experience satisfaction and thrive. And then we experience hurt. We get stuck in struggles and those things rewire our brains causing us to feel stuck and to stay stuck. If you missed those previous episodes, specifically episodes 4 through 8, I highly encourage you to check them out because those will lay the foundation of what we will be talking about today. And today we are getting into part three of the wholeness apologetic model. And this is all about healing; how we begin to grow in wholeness and experience once again the life we were created to live. 

So to set this up, let me just remind us that thriving in life primarily happens when we have healthy relationships with God, knowing Him for who he is as our loving father, ourselves, having a positive view of ourselves and knowing our value, and then others, loving others and being fully known and fully loved by them.

So, it is no wonder that our greatest hurts, our greatest struggles center around these relationships and the way we view God, the way we view ourselves and the way we other people. Satan is called the father of lies in the Bible so its no wonder that one of his primary methods to take us away from a life of wholeness is to wreak havoc in our relationship with God, with ourselves and with other people by getting us to believe lies. But the foundation of healing and growing in wholeness is moving toward healthy relationships with God, with ourselves and others and choosing wholeness. So, we will be exploring that in the next few episodes, what it looks like to choose wholeness in those relational categories. 

Today we will put laser focus on exploring who God actually is, not who you heard God is, not who the person holding up the sign about God’s  wrath on the side of the street says God is, not even who you perceive God to be, but who God says he is in his Word. And it is key for us to address this because the way to experience the deepest fulfillment of our longings, overcoming unwanted behaviors and thriving in life is to understand an experience God for who he truly is, as an engaged loving father who wants to satisfy our deepest longings in healthy ways. While we need other people to meet our longings, God is the primary source. Yes, he meets our longings through other people, but he also does so through our personal relationship with him. When others fail; he doesn’t. He is always there. He wants to engage us, to accept us to talk to us, to engage our heart longings an he’s always there for us. He is always with us. 

I want to start with a story today as we get going on this episode. Two summers ago, I received a text out of the blue from my friend, Teddy, about one of our mutual friends, Alex. Alex had been fighting an aggressive form of brain cancer for several years. And the text said that “he doesn’t have much time to live. The best thing you can do is come and see him”. The next day I was on a plane flying across the country to see Alex, who had been one of my closest friends for years. And Alex had been through rounds chemo and radiation and he had been in remission a few years before. But the cancer had come back. His body wasn’t responding well to the treatment. It was leaving him with internal bleeding and brain swelling. So, he had to cease chemo. I got to Virginia and saw Alex and his energy was drained. He could hardly sit up but that first night he could have a conversation with me. But over the next several days I saw Alex slip away right before my eyes. Losing his ability to sit up, to eat, to talk and each day was flooded with grief. Reality set in within a week of that initial text from Teddy, Alex had passed to eternity with Christ. Alex was only 29. He left behind his wife of only a couple of years, a son of only four months. And it made no sense to me. It was tragic; it was heartbreaking. It seemed unreal. Of all people, of all ages, of all life stages, why, how.

Over the following weeks, past conversations, old jokes and key memories came up again and again. And songs… Alex and I used to listen to came on in my car and I would move to text Alex before remembering reality. I frequently teared up. It was so painful to have lost one of my close friends. 

Over the following months, subtle anger at God grew inside of me and I continued to experience more difficulty, further loss and pain, struggles with direction in life, sudden loss of a coworker. Eventually anger inhibited my daily functioning. I had trouble thinking clearly and enjoying things I normally enjoy. I wrestled with God. I was honest with him. I shared my feelings with him and with others, so  as to not bear this burden alone. In my dialogue with God about my anger towards him, he reminded me of how I had learned to overcome anger and deal with it and work through it in the past. And throughout my life, anger had been a way of dealing with fear; fear of rejection, of not feeling safe, …of being hurt. He reminded me that fear and anger are two sides of the same coin. Much of the time, anger is a way to protect ourselves when we are afraid. Anger had been a way for me to try to regain control and to try to keep others at a distance. I began processing the fear behind my anger towards God. 

8:04

And I soon realized that I fearing that God wasn’t actually who I thought him to be. I feared that he wasn’t safe, that he didn’t have good in store for me, that he was going to hurt me like others had in my past. As I began to process those lies, I remembered God’s past faithfulness and goodness to me. I asked him to forgive me for my anger towards him. Then anger began to dissipate as I remembered what was true about God and experiences, I had had in the past with him. A few days later I was sharing my anger and fears with my therapist and mentor, Dr. Ted Roberts. He smiled and chuckled in our conversation and said, “if that is what God is like, then we are all hosed, there is no hope for anybody.” He was so right. Over the years I have grown in my understanding and deep belief about who God actually is and it is love for me.

This reminder took me back several years when I struggled much more to believe deeply who God truly was. See, deep within me, for years I viewed God as angry, as obsessed with rules and distant. Intellectually of course I knew God loved me but on a deep emotional level, I believed lies about God that were overflowing into the way I viewed myself and the way I treated other people, the way I lived my life. I had bought into this false narrative about who God actually is.

So maybe you, or the young people in your life have struggled to see God for who he actually is. Maybe like me you have had negative core beliefs or perceptions about who God is. Maybe you know intellectually at least that God is loving and forgiving and always there for you but deep down you struggle to really believe that. Maybe deep down you think that God is always angry with you; walking around with a cosmic two by four just waiting for you to mess up. Maybe you think that God hates fun, that he is this cosmic killjoy that gave humanity a bunch of pointless and impossible to follow rules. Maybe you see God as someone who created the world then stepped away. Someone who is disengaged from his creation, generally unconcerned with you pain and with your suffering.

As Josh McDowell have been traveling the world, meeting people and ministering to them, we found that many have found the wrong God. They don’t see him for who he truly is. They harbor wrong assumptions and core beliefs about his character. Deep down they believe that he is angry, obsessed with rules and distant. And so often, these views about God come from assumptions we make of him based on our hurt, the suffering we see in the world, or our experiences with those in authority. Maybe you have had experiences of growing up in a church that community or family that emphasized rules over relationships. Maybe when you didn’t perform as expected or meet other’s standards, you were judged, shamed or punished. Maybe you had negative experiences with your earthly father. Maybe he was distant, disengaged or quick to angry or just didn’t speak many words of love or approval of you. 

See, when a parent and particularly a father has been absent, hurtful or disengaged, our seven longings significantly go unmet. We can’t help but feel those unmet longings and develop something called a father wound. 

God is referred to as our father all throughout scripture. So often our view of God is filtered by the lens of our earthly father. I once heard William Paul Young say, “It took me more that 50 years to wipe the face of my father completely off the face of God. Some of us like him may see an angry, disapproving face every time we think about God. How we learn to navigate our of our relationships in life is drawn from our primary and foundational relationships with key figures like our fathers. For better or for worse, our foundational relationships chart for other relationships including our relationship with God. 

These incorrect views about God are toxic to our wellbeing. They prevent us from thriving and experiencing a life of wholeness. But here’s the reality, we all have daddy issues. We all struggle to see and experience God for who he actually is. 

So what is God actually like? So, people have all kinds of different opinions about who God is. For example, pantheists say that god is everything, polytheists believe in multiple gods and goddesses, deists believe in a supreme being who created everything but isn’t involved with creation. Even some Christians will teach things about God that don’t line up with what is revealed about God in the Bible. Which why I want to reexamine today what God has revealed about who he is in his Word. 

There are many aspects of God that we can’t explore today, so I want to center on a couple that many of us struggle to believe as a result of our hurt, our unmet longing and our past experiences with authority. And I believe that if we start to believe these things deep down about who God is, we will make great strides in experiencing a thriving life. 

So first, God is not angry with you. He loves you and is pleased. John 17:23b, “ May they experience such perfect unity that the world and that you love them as much as you love me.” God the father loves you as much as he loves Jesus! That’s incredible news for us today. On top of that, we see how God relates to Jesus in his baptism. In Matthew 3:17, where he says, “this is my son, whom I love. With him, I am well pleased.” See, if you are in Christ, he says the same thing to you today. This is my son, this is my daughter, with whom I love, with him or with her, I am well pleased. Do you see God that way? Do you thinks that he relates to you that way? That he loves you and that he is pleased with you? 

Not too long ago, my friend Zack was having lunch with his wife and two daughters and his oldest daughter was about age 2 at the time. She was going through the phase they call “the terrible twos”.  So he kept trying over and over again, asking her to eat her lunch, but she just didn’t want to eat it. He would ask her then she would go off to talk to somebody else. She would come back, and he would ask her again and she would not want to eat anything. She would go play and come back and he would ask her again. He would have a little bit of conversation with her and they would talk about other things. As he kept asking, she eventually began to eat her lunch. And despite her behavior, he loved her because she was his daughter. He was pleased with who she was. Of course, there was a little internal frustration that he was dealing with, but he didn’t let it manifest. He regulated his emotions and what was going on and reminded himself of the truth. While there are imperfections in his life as a father, it reminded me significantly of how God treats us. That no matter our behavior, he is pleased with us. He loves us; he delights in us. 

Second, God is not obsessed with rules or uptight. He is gracious and forgiving. Psalm 145:8, “The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love.” 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” No ifs, ands or buts. No exceptions. No small thoughts or disclaimers. If you confess your wrongs to God, no matter what it is God will forgive you. And I have heard so many say, “I could never forgive myself for this or for that.” But God is not like that. He operates in a different forgiveness economy. 

17.52

No matter what you have done, you cannot out-sin his forgiveness. He is the God of second chances without end. 

Third, God is not distant. He is present and personal. God speaking, he says, “Can anyone hide out in a corner where I can’t see him? Am I not present everywhere? Whether seen or unseen, God is omnipresent. Meaning that he is all places at all times. He is with you when you are suffering. He is with you when you are anxious or depressed. He is even with you when you go back to that unwanted sexual behavior that you promised yourself that you would never return to. He is always with you; you can’t outrun God. You can’t escape his goodness and you can’t cause him to walk away or turn his back on you. This is who our God is. Romans 8:15 says, “The spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by Him we cry, “Abba, Father”. He is a kind father who invites us to address him as “Abba”, the Aramaic equivalent of daddy or dada. Think about that. The God of the universe wants you to know him so closely that you can use a word like daddy or dada. He wants you to know him personally. He wants to know you personally and for you to know him rightly as he truly is. He needs nothing yet he invites us to know him. He desires to have a personal, intimate relationship with you and me. Through a personal relationship with God, we find our greatest source of wholeness that results in joy and true happiness. One thing that’s amazing about God, that he loved us first.   

20.01

He didn’t wait for us to clean up our act. He didn’t wait for us to meet his expectations. He didn’t wait for us to make him proud. He simply loved us. God is not the kind of father who has trouble hugging his child or saying “I love you”. He’s not the kind of father that has “more important things to do”. He’s not the kind of father who, who treats you differently when you mess up or you don’t do what he says to do. He is a father who loves you and is pleased with you no matter what. As author Sally Loyd Jones put it, “God loves us with a never stopping, never giving up, never breaking, always and forever love.” 

Have you ever witnessed a father like this? While no human being can come close to loving us perfectly, I have seen so much of this modeled in the life of my friend Brian. He is one of the most loving and engaging fathers that I know. He cherishes his son and daughter. He laughs with them. He gives time to activities and hobby’s they enjoy. He has a relationship with them where no topic is off limits. He is not just their dad, he is their good friend. It has been so incredible for me to witness. And I remember being blown away at witnessing how he interacted with his kids, specifically over rules. As a family, they came up with family guidelines together. The kids had input and a say on what they had to commit to and what they would do and not do. For example, they all agreed, both kids and parents, that if one person did something to another person out of anger that they would apologize. But also lose privilege like using the internet for the evening. Yes, both parents and kids would lose that privilege if they did something wrong to one another. Brian modeled to me a father who was not obsessed with authority, rules and his kid’s obedience. He modeled a father who was gracious and loving. 

Do you know who your heavenly father is? Do you grasp how much he loves you and all the ways he is seeking you personally throughout each day? The subtle surprises, the good gift that you receive everyday that you may not always recognize as the affections of your father. See God is lavishing his love on us day in and day out, though we are often unaware of it. Those times you find a new delicious type of food or drink. When you are able to fall asleep and wake up rested. The songs you hear that bring life into your soul. The happiness you experience from simple pleasures in life. Or connecting with friends or laughing. These are all ways, all experiences of God showing us who he is and how much he loves you. So no matter what you have experienced, believed or been taught about the character of God, he desires to restore your view of him. He want you to experience him as your true, loving, heavenly father who is personal and engaging. And he has done that in my own life. Because after years of experiencing hurts and feeling like I could not meet the expectations of teachers, older family members, of police and other people in authority. I struggled to view God as loving, as a God who delights in me, wants to spend time with and who is  proud of me. But in recent years after having many mentors and spiritual mothers and fathers, people who cared about me, who delighted in me and invested in me, who showed they were proud of how I was. I had new experiences again and again that helped me start to see who God actually is.

And in addition to that, in my relationship with God, with sitting with him, with reading the scriptures, with praying, with visualizing him as my heavenly father, I have had many more experiences encountering God and seeing rightly. Now when I mess up or when I sin, I don’t envision God as angry but as compassionate and moving towards me. When disappointment happens in my life, I don’t blame God or get angry at him like I used to. When I spend time with him, I view him as close. I view him as present. I view him as interested in my life and the concerns of my heart. 

We have a greater father who can heal our father wounds. We have a greater daddy that can overcome our daddy issues. We have a God who promises to meet all of our needs, all of our desires and all of our longings. Do you see God as he truly is? Do you experience his fatherly love and nearness? He desires to meet your desires. He desires to know you at a deep personal level and to bring about satisfaction and wholeness through a close relationship with him. Do you know him personally? Have you given your life to him? You can start a relationship with him today by believing that Jesus, God died on the cross for your wrongs, rose from the dead and now freely offers you forgiveness for all of the things you have done wrong. Just ask him for forgiveness and tell him that you believe that he is God and wants to forgive you and to know you.  That’s it. You can begin that relationship today. But wherever you or the young people in your life are at, here’s some steps that God has used to help both Josh McDowell and I grow in seeing and experiencing God and who he truly is. So consider implementing these steps.

1. Regularly remember what God has done in your life. Think about what he did last week, last year, the ways he has provided for you and the good gifts he has given you. Whether it’s a job or a good grade that you got, the good things, the provisions that God has done in your life.
2. Thank him daily for a couple of things you saw him do yesterday. Or a couple of things that happened that were good because that is God speaking his love and his delight into your life. Maybe you had a good day yesterday… you had fun with friends, you went out for a meal. Maybe you had some Chic Filet and it was just awesome. What were the good things that God did yesterday? Experience gratitude for those things. 
3. Read the Bible through the lens of who he truly is, as a loving an engaging father. I can’t stress this enough. When you read about God, when you read about Jesus in the Bible, meditate on who he is as a good and loving father. And run the examples you see,  the stories you see in the Bible through that lens. 
4. Get to know and observe loving fathers who are engaging with their kids. I have learned so much from getting around fathers who spend time with their kids, who invest in hobbies and activities with their kids, and just hanging out with all of them together. I have learned so much about who God is by witnessing his character revealed in the life of fathers. 

Lastly, I want to encourage you and the young people in your life to think about. First, what negative core belief might you have about God. Is it that he is angry, obsessed with rules and distant like we talked about today? What core beliefs do you have about who God is. I am not talking intellectually, but if you look at the reality of your life with the areas where you might struggle to trust God. What do you actually believe about God? 

Second, what unmet longings or past relationships with authority figures might have contributed to these beliefs? A teacher who was ridged or strict or a parent who was physically absent or distant? Negative experiences with others in authority like babysitters or police or professors? Who in your life might have negatively impacted the way you view God? 

By identifying the lies that we believe about God, understanding their source and taking steps to renew our minds and experience our God for who he truly is, we can make great strides forward in healing and wholeness and return to the life that we were created to live.