Ep. 4 | The Big Mistake People Make about God (1 John 4:7b-8)

Episode 4: The Big Mistake People Make about God (1John 4:7b-8) - Why the way we think about God is wrong - the breakthrough everyone needs.

Many think that God is some cosmic ogre - always out to spoil our fun?

John makes two claims. First, God is love. Second, those who claim to know him should be characterized by love. This passage is like a literary sandwich. The two pieces of bread - “for love is from God”...and “God is love,” surround the middle - “he who loves is born of God and knows God…”

This episode explores the first claim that God’s defining attribute is love. The big mistake we make about God is this...We are not convinced that He loves us. There’s a gap between our heads and our hearts. We say we believe God is love, but few of us live as if this were true. If we did...our lives would be a lot different. Examples: struggle with fears, continuing guilt over past failures and overcoming temptations.

Why is this a problem?

We affirm the words of the Bible - “God is love,” but we’ve been subject to years of conditioning by parental role models and many other experiences. Over time these have embedded in us distorted images of God that resist change. Analogy: Anybody who has ever gone fishing knows that fishing line has memory. Off the spool the filament will curl up! It has memory. No fault of the line. It’s just been on the spool for so long it naturally reverts to the way it was stored. Like the fishing line we all have memory... there are twisted images of God that have been stored in all of us. This sabotages our efforts to think straight about God.

How can we get what we know in our heads to be a reality in our hearts?

First, Make the cross your primary point of reference when it comes to understanding God’s character. When we cannot see His love anywhere else, we can always find it there. “The moment when Jesus reaches the deepest point of his humiliation, at the cross, is the moment when he is glorified and most clearly seen for who he is...the deepest revelation of the very heart of God...Here is a glory no other God would want...On the cross Christ puts to death all false ideas of God; and as he cries out to his Father and offers himself up…breathing out his last, he reveals a God beyond our dreams.” Reeves

Second, Identify and label your distorted notions about God. In what ways is your God a twisted caricature of the real one? We must banish all our false notions of God.

Third, tell yourself the truth about God. God revealed Himself to Moses, “I am gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in loving-kindness.” This verse repeated more times than any other in the O.T. See also, Jeremiah 29:11; John 3:16; Rom. 8:38:39. Find some Scriptures that speak to your heart and commit them to memory. The truth will set you free!

Fourth, Pray for the love of God to break-through to your own heart. “The greatest distance in the world is the eighteen inches from your head to your heart.” There is a reason that Paul prayed: “... may you have the power to understand...how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is... (Eph. 3:14-19) This kind of heart-experience can only come as a gift from God.

It doesn’t matter how badly you have messed up your life. You have a Father who has not given up on you and will always be there to love you when you turn back to him.

Delighting in the Trinity, Michael Reeves - InterVarsity Press The Distinctive Ideas of the Old Testament, Norman H. Snaith - Schoken Bo