Getting Acquainted With God

Thank God for wives who can find things! It seems the older we get the more we forget things!

Illus: Sometimes I feel like the woman who stood at the bottom of the staircase and she could not remember if she just came down or was going to go up.

I must also confess that there are days that I feel like I have lost God…that is, He does not seem to be ANYWHERE! But God is not an object that we can lose.

Illus: Sometimes we feel like the two young brothers who had terrorized their neighborhood with their pranks and thefts. The parents didn’t know what to do. They finally decided to bring the boys to their pastor, one at a time, and see if he could help straighten them out.

The younger brother, Billy, arrived and was ushered into the church office where he was offered a very large chair in front of the desk. The minister then sat down opposite the lad. He folded his hands in front of him and stared at the boy a few seconds then said, “Where is God?” Billy wasn’t sure what the question meant, so he just sat there quietly. The minister leaned over his desk, locked eyes and said in a much stronger voice, “Where…is…God?” Billy started to squirm. He had no idea why he was here and the minister kept asking the same question. The poor boy was really getting scared and snuggled back into the full chair. The minister, meanwhile, moved from behind his desk to stand directly in front of Billy and raised one hand upward to Heaven. “WHERE…IS…GOD?” he bellowed at the lad.

Poor Billy lost it. What could he do? Here was a man of God asking questions he didn’t understand and he was scared. So he jumped up out of the chair, ran from the office, down the church aisle, out onto the sidewalk, up the street into his house. Then he raced up the stairs and into his bedroom. “What’s wrong Billy?” his brother asked. “Oh, Johnny,” he said. “We’re in BIG trouble this time. God’s missing and they think we took Him.”

God is not an object that we can misplace in our life, but there are times we may feel we have lost Him. There are times in our life we can not help but wonder about THREE things -

I. DOES GOD EXIST?

Look at Heb. 11:6 again, we read, “But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that HE IS, and that HE IS A REWARDER of them that DILIGENTLY SEEK HIM.”

There are three things in this verse that teach us about God. The Bible tells us that the just shall live by faith. That is, we can not see, touch or hear God but we know that He is there. But there are times in our life that most of us will admit, we could not help but wonder IF THERE IS A GOD!

Does God exist?

• The atheist says he does not exist

• The agnostic says it is not possible to know if He exists

• The deist says God created the universe but has left it alone ever since

• The theist says God exists and is involved with creation

• The polytheist says there are many gods

• The pantheist says that God exists in and through everything in the universe, and is one with the universe

• The Believer says God exist and lives within our heart

We know that God exists, but proving the existence of God is not an easy thing to do.

• If we could see Him

• If we could touch Him

• If we could hear Him speak

If these were the things that God manifested about Himself it would not be difficult to prove the existence of God. But we can not see Him, touch Him, or hear Him speak, yet we BELIEVERS say, “I KNOW HE EXISTS.”

YOU SEE, JUST BECAUSE WE CAN NOT SEE SOMETHING DOES NOT MEAN IT DOES NOT EXIST.

Illus: A little boy was flying his kite one day and the kite was so high that you could not see it. Another little boy said, “What are you doing?” He said, “I am flying my kite.” He looked up and he did not see it and he said, “There is no kite up there!” The boy assured him there was and said, “I can prove it. Hold this string in your hands and even though you can not see it you can feel the tug of the kite as the wind blows against it.”

The same thing applies to us; we might not be able to SEE GOD, but every believer can feel the TUG OF GOD in their heart each day of their life. Just because we can not see something does not mean it does not exist.