What We Make God Look Like

We care about what we believe, what we say, and how we live. We want our faith to mean something. We want it to be credible. We want it to make sense to the people who know us best — our families, our coworkers, our children, our neighbors.

And yet, if we’re honest, many of us live with a quiet concern we don’t often name out loud.

It’s not that we doubt God.

It’s not that we’ve abandoned truth.

It’s not even that we don’t care.

It’s this: What if the way I live sometimes makes God harder to believe?

Not because of what I confess — but because of how I react.

Not because of what I defend — but because of the tone I use while defending it.

Not because of what I say about grace — but because of how little grace shows up when I’m tired, frustrated, or challenged.

Most believers don’t struggle with belief as much as they struggle with representation.

--- A Sentence We Read Too Quickly

There is a short line in Peter’s letter that I read for years without really hearing it.

Peter writes, “Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts.”

I assumed I knew what that meant. I read it the same way I read every other call to holiness — as an instruction for personal purity, spiritual discipline, and inward devotion.

In other words, I heard it as: Let God sanctify me.

But that’s not what Peter says.

He says something far more unsettling.

He says you sanctify God.

That small reversal changes everything.

Because suddenly holiness is not only about my behavior — it’s about God’s reputation.

Not only about my growth — but about what people learn about God by watching me.

Peter is not suggesting that God lacks holiness or needs our help to become holy. God is holy in Himself. But Peter is saying that God’s holiness is either clarified or distorted in the hearts and minds of others by the way His people live.

--- Holiness as Representation

To sanctify something means to set it apart as sacred — to treat it as weighty, valuable, and true.

So when Peter tells believers to sanctify God in their hearts, he is saying this:

Let the picture of God formed in you — and shown through you — be an accurate one.

That’s a different way of thinking about witness.

It means the question is no longer only:

Am I right?

Am I faithful?

Am I obedient?

But also:

What picture of God am I giving right now?

Because whether we like it or not, people don’t meet God first through doctrine. They meet Him through demeanor. They don’t encounter theology first; they encounter tone. Long before they weigh our arguments, they absorb our spirit.

And that means our everyday reactions — the ordinary, unguarded moments of life — are quietly preaching sermons of their own.

--- The Controlling Question

This is the question that will sit underneath everything we talk about today:

What do we make God look like?

What does God look like when we are corrected?

What does God look like when we are tired?

What does God look like when we are misunderstood, challenged, inconvenienced, or disappointed?

What does God look like in our homes?

In our emails?

In our conversations when no one is trying to be impressive?

This is not a sermon about trying harder or becoming flawless.

It is not a sermon about religious performance.

It is a sermon about accuracy.

About whether the God people encounter through us resembles the God revealed in Scripture.

Holiness, in the biblical sense, is not about being intense.

It’s about being faithful to the truth of who God is.

If that’s true, then witness is not something we turn on when we speak

— it’s something we display in how we live.

--- Part 1: The Quiet Test of Our Faith

There is a version of faith we all know how to perform.

It’s the public version — the one that shows up in worship, in conversation, in moments where we’re conscious of being seen. In those spaces, most of us know the right words, the right tone, the right posture. We know how to sound gracious. We know how to speak about truth. We know how to behave when faith is visible.

But Peter is not talking about that version of faith.

When he says, “Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts,” he is pointing us toward a quieter place — the internal, unguarded place where no one is watching and no one is impressed.

That is where representation is actually formed.

Faith is not proved on the platform but in the pause.

Not in the statement, but in the reaction.

Not in what we say publicly, but in how we respond privately.