By Crystal St. Marie Lewis<\/a>
R3 Contributor<\/p>\n\u201cI AM what I AM\u2026\u201d (Exodus 3:14)<\/p>\n
\u201cI AM.\u201d And that\u2019s all?<\/p>\n
God\u2019s self-description seemed terribly incomplete to me when I read it in my Bible for the first time. In fact, I remember being fascinated that Moses didn\u2019t ask for more details. If I had been Moses, I would likely have retorted: \u201cYOU ARE what? What does that even mean?\u201d<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t until several years into my spiritual journey that, for reasons I don\u2019t remember, I spoke these words in second person and realized what they meant. Rather than \u201cI AM,\u201d I quietly whispered to myself: \u201cGod is.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGod is.\u201d Two simple words\u2013 A complete sentence that captures God\u2019s existence, and God\u2019s eternality\u2026 and God\u2019s transcendence, and God\u2019s ability to be a multitude of things to a multitude of people\u2026 Two words upon which God would later build an identity that could only be fully understood in light of experience. Only experience would give the Israelites the conviction to say \u201cGod is\u2013 the creator\u201d and \u201cGod is\u2013 the provider\u201d and \u201cGod is\u2013 present with us.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve come to understand that this is the way the relationship with God unfolds for a lot of people. God begins as the One who exists (or who is), whether we acknowledge such an existence or not. Before we even knew of a divine being, God was\u2026 and God will be long after we\u2019re gone.<\/p>\n
The God who is reveals himself to humankind experientially, and through those experiences, we develop language to explain our understanding of God\u2019s character. Many of us feel loved when we encounter God, so we say that \u201cGod is love.\u201d Others feel overwhelmed when encountering God, and consequently say that \u201cGod is powerful.\u201d
Read the rest here<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Crystal St. Marie LewisR3 Contributor \u201cI AM what I AM\u2026\u201d (Exodus 3:14) \u201cI AM.\u201d And that\u2019s all? God\u2019s self-description seemed terribly incomplete to me when I read it in my Bible for the first time. In fact, I remember being fascinated that Moses didn\u2019t ask for more details. If I had been Moses, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2251,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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