{"id":1796,"date":"2013-01-10T07:00:43","date_gmt":"2013-01-10T14:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/billintheblank\/?p=1796"},"modified":"2013-01-10T07:00:43","modified_gmt":"2013-01-10T14:00:43","slug":"how-to-stop-being-afraid-just-who-is-this-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithwalkers\/2013\/01\/how-to-stop-being-afraid-just-who-is-this-god\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Stop Being Afraid: Just Who Is this God?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Welcome to a series here at Patheos to follow up on my post How to Stop Being Afraid <\/a>with wisdom from Psalm 46.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After the last post (Want to Stop Being Afraid? Step 1: It All Starts with God<\/a>) focused on where we should start in overcoming fear, the next valid question might best be: Just who is this God?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We\u2019d be wrong to assume that everyone knows \u2014 or remembers. We are forgetful people. Even those of us who should know better. Maybe that\u2019s why the psalmist started with God\u2019s most common Hebrew name Elohim<\/em> to begin Psalm 46, the source of our series on How to Stop Being Afraid<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The prophet Jeremiah explains why it is so vital that we do know God. Speaking of his own people who had forgotten God, he said this:<\/p>\n

For they are all adulterers, a company of treacherous men. They bend their tongue like a bow; falsehood and not truth has grown strong in the land; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they do not know me, declares the LORD<\/strong>. Let everyone beware of his neighbor, and put no trust in any brother, for every brother is a deceiver, and every neighbor goes about as a slanderer. Everyone deceives his neighbor, and no one speaks the truth; they have taught their tongue to speak lies; they weary themselves committing iniquity. Heaping oppression upon oppression, and deceit upon deceit, they refuse to know me, declares the LORD<\/strong>. (Jeremiah 9:2-6)<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Some in the last few centuries of Christendom have even questioned whether God is at all knowable to us. After all, if \u201cHis ways are not our ways, and His thoughts not our thoughts\u201d how can we have any point of contact at all? Yet Jesus himself stated: \u201cThis is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.\u201d (John 17:3)<\/a><\/p>\n

Clearly God is knowable to some extent to us as creatures made in His image. Isaiah\u2019s point is clear in context: \u201cFor as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.\u201d <\/a>It\u2019s not that we can\u2019t understand Him at all. What would have been the point of revealing them to us in propositional statements via written language \u2014 and then punishing us for refusing to know Him?<\/p>\n

God\u2019s point is that there is a significantly huge gap between who He is and how he functions and who we are and how we function at every level of existence.<\/p>\n

Getting a God Perspective<\/h3>\n

Consider these four ways that God is definitely not us:<\/h4>\n