God is a Person

Do you ever find it difficult relating to God as a person? Is it even appropriate to think of God in this way? Keep Reading…

READ
Exodus 19:9 - The Lord said to Moses, “I am going to come to you in a dense cloud, so that the people will hear me speaking with you and will always put their trust in you.” Then Moses told the Lord what the people had said.

REFLECT
Would it have been possible for God to speak directly to Israel and lead them out of Egypt and into the Promised Land using only a cloud and a voice? Yes. Did God have to use Moses to lead and speak on his behalf? No. But he did. In fact, God most often works through people to reveal himself. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and others are testimonies of this fact.

On Mount Sinai, God was not hiding himself from the Israelites. Instead he was specifically communicating his personal nature. He wanted the people to know so clearly that he is a personal, relational God that he sent a man, Moses, to deliver his words. Why didn’t God speak face to face with the Israelites on his own? The answer is this: no man can see the face of God and live. Exodus 33:20 God did not want his beloved people to be destroyed, so he spoke through a man.

God most clearly shows us his personal nature in Jesus. The Word became flesh and lived among us. John 1:14 Jesus embodies the mountain-shaking God of Exodus 19. Why did Jesus come? He came to show us what God the Father is like. For “no one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.” John 1:18

RESPOND
Do you treat God as a person or an impersonal being? Do you relate with him as a spiritual force or as a real person who thinks, feels and longs for response? God reveals himself in the Bible as the personal God of relationship. Find a new personal way to relate with him. Perhaps speak out loud with him, take a walk with him, or sing a new song to him. He longs for your personal response of love.