It’s God’s LOVE that HEALS Your Image of God

In the end, it’s always God’s love that heals you and me in any way, including your and my inadequate or skewed images of God.

That’s why it’s so important to soak in His healing love, especially when you’re going through tough times in your life!

Spending a few minutes each day in His presence, praying with your heart rather than with the usual words and thoughts, opens you up to the Lord’s love directly, firsthand, one-on-one, in a way that some other forms of prayer might not accomplish at a level that is as profound.

 

It Works Like Any Other Relationship

You see, when you repeatedly experience —firsthand, directly, one-on-one, for yourself —God’s love for you, you’ll want to get to know Him better.

And when you get to know Him better, you’ll want to be a close friend of His.

And when you become a close friend of His, you’ll trust Him more.

And when you trust Him more, you’ll want to hear Him speak to you.

You’ll feel confident enough to ask Him questions, and to present honestly your anxieties and problems to Him.

And you’ll have the confidence to EXPECT Him to answer you.

This will allow a lifelong, free-flowing, genuine, two-way conversation between you and the Lord to develop.

And you can’t have a conversation like this without getting to know each other much more intimately! 

And here’s the thing.

When you get this close to God, your image of Him can’t help but change.

It works exactly like any other relationship.

As you get to know a person better, your understanding —your ‘image’ —of that person changes at the same time!

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If this sounds like a hard, involved process, let me assure you it isn’t.

It takes place amidst the natural ebb and flow of your friendship with the Lord.

You see, God is never a wall you have to jump over or an elusive ‘problem’ that somehow you need to ‘solve’.

Neither do you need to ‘get it right’ or beat up on yourself in order to let God find you.

And even if you’re currently experiencing inner pain or trauma, you CAN open up yourself to the Lord’s healing love.

God lives, you see, right smack in the middle of each and every one of your life experiences, including the one currently facing you.

He lives inside both your happy and your horrendous experiences, not somewhere outside them!

He lives right inside your pain or crisis.

So … whether you’re in a good space right now or in a tough space, start soaking in the Lord’s LOVE.

As you do, you might find that your current image of Him begins to change even a tiny bit.

This could mean that the Lord wants to invite you to experience a fresh image of Him.

 

Persons Whose Image of God

Was Clouded or Downright Inaccurate

Here are some examples of folks whose image of God was clouded or inaccurate.

The first example is from current times. The other two are found in the New Testament scriptures.

Example 1:      A Contemporary Example

This story relates how a man of mixed race set out one day to find a church where he could worship his King and Lord.

The only church available was a ‘white’ church.

The white people, however, refused to let him in because of the color of his skin.

Returning home on the bus in great despondency, the man expressed his anguish to the Lord about the rejection he’d just experienced.

‘I wanted so much to worship You, Lord, but the church folk would not let me in.’

‘I understand, son,’ the Lord replied, ‘they have not let Me in either.’

 

Example 2:       The Man Born Blind

John 9:1-41

After Jesus had healed the man who had been born blind, the man went to the synagogue to worship his Healer and King.

But the religious folks threw him out of the temple.

Who threw him out?

The religious folks.

Why?

Because their image of God was limited, skewed and inaccurate.

Who else did they throw out?

They threw out God too.

Why?

Because they had greater faith in their skewed image of Him than they did in the real God Himself.

Sometimes your inaccurate image of God can set up a barrier between God and you.

We all do this at some point in our journey with God.

Don’t worry. This doesn’t surprise the Lord.

He knows you far better than you know yourself (Psalm 139; Jeremiah 1:5).

But don’t be surprised if He uses your pain (often made worse, or even caused, by your inaccurate image) to invite you to a NEW understanding of who He is and to a NEW appreciation of how much he loves you.

Always, always, God longs for you to know how LOVED, how cherished you are.

Just like the man of mixed race and the man born blind, in times of pain and trauma you might have to look for God in unfamiliar places, places outside the familiar walls of church and temple.

When you do, God will reveal to you who He is in a brand-new way!

Example 3:    The Samaritan Woman

And The Part She Played in God’s

Fresh Revelation of Himself to Me

Twenty-two years ago, I was dealing with the horrific pain caused me by the institutional Roman Catholic Church’s annulment of our God-ordained, 26-year-old marriage.

I asked the Lord to reveal to me His perspective on the matter.

He pointed me to the story of His meeting with the Samaritan woman.

This story was a huge factor in bringing me the healing I needed.

The Lord used this story to underscore for me the absolute need to search for God, and find Him, outside my accustomed and familiar spiritual environment, outside my current image of Him.

The Lord wanted me to know that there are times in our lives when we might have to look for Him in new places, outside the familiar walls of our church congregations.

Naturally, this can be unsettling.

But I learned that these times can be the best thing that can happen to us.

They force us to stumble onto a stunning and freeing truth that we might not have been able to grasp otherwise.

In the case of the Samaritan woman, God radically changed her current image of who He was from top to toe!

He explained to her:

 …The time is coming –it has, in fact, come –when …where you worship will not matter.

It’s who you are and the way you live that count before God.

Those who worship Him must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves…Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth.

 John 4:23-24    The Message, p. 192

(My emphasis)

Christ had not uttered these words casually, but with unusual passion and directness.

He wanted this woman to understand that the One who had addressed these words to her was the Anointed One himself!

He wanted to reveal Himself to this woman as He really was.

He knew that this woman needed a new revelation of God if her spiritual walk going forward was going to be based on truth, fully alive, trusting, and meaningful.

In doing this, He shattered the woman’s image of God.

See also this scripture meditation on the Samaritan woman’s meeting with Jesus 

How Prayer of the Heart Helps You

Prayer of the heart  is a spiritual midwife who keeps bringing to birth the image and likeness of God within you.

When you regularly encounter/pray with your heart, your whole being, in the presence of the living Lord, God gently and gradually transforms you into His own image (Romans 8:29, 2 Corinthians 3:18).

Prayer of the heart is a spiritual midwife who
keeps bringing to birth the image and
likeness of God within you

 

 

Read Part 1 of this article here 

 

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