Yahweh is Beautious

It was different today going to church. There was a theme going about the names of God and how we treat him.

They were discussing about the names of God…Elohim, which means God as all powerful, omnipotent, and creator of the universe, and Yahweh, which is the personal name of God, showing that He wants to have relationship with us, love on us, and teach us…and how we need to treat God as both our father and as omnipotent. This I agree on. Yes, we need to have respect for God. Yes, we need to have father and daughter/son relationship with our God. But after that my views differ…I do NOT think we need to put God on a pedestal and keep him there untouched! 

They were talking about achieving a balance between having God distant and yet close. It was weird to hear the other students at church talk about how we have to have a balance with keeping God on a pedestal of sorts, keeping him distant enough that we have respect for him, but yet also having a balanced relationship with him. That sounds so OFF to me!! So unbiblical. I want to pour my life out for God so much that he is in every area of my life!! Why try to balance what God can be in or not? 

That just doesn't make sense to me. 

I love God far far too much to ever intentionally exclude him from a part of my life. And if He is so distant to us, why the personal name of God? Why is the name Yahweh used 6,519 x’s and Elohim only 2,602 x’s in the Old Testament? That just doesn’t make sense to me why you would not view God as your father first, and all powerful second. Or maybe I am viewing it wrong. Maybe we DO need to view God as both and possessing equal qualities of both! I want to sort this out…

It is hard for me sometimes to imagine God as my personal father who cares for me and loves me. Most people relate it to their own father here on earth, but I find that hard to do. You see, I LOVE my dad!  It is just that growing up he was always working and very distant from me. It was rare for him to come home in time for family dinners, and our family was rather separated in that respect. During our family's yearly fishing trip I would get to spend time with him; he taught me a lot through those quiet times on the lake. My last year as a senior in high school I also got to spend time with him as he drove me to the senior meetings, and we talked as I or he drove. Even bonding in the quiet moments in the car was super cool. Yet, other than those times, Dad has been rather absent in my life. I always know that he loves me and cares for me and our family. After all, that is why he is working so often and so hard! So he can provide for us. On Sunday when we went to church there would be times of rifts and arguments, and times of showing love. But those were just a twice a week at most!

So it is hard for me sometimes to imagine how God is like our father.  My relationship with my dad is not necessarily broken, but it isn't a strong bond between us. 

How God WANTS to be involved in our life, and acts on that sincere desire, is beauteous. God truly wants you to feel loved! For you to tell Him EVERYTHING! I love to just ramble to Jesus about the diverse happenings in my day. I never remember feeling guilty for disobeying my earthly father, or disappointed that I did not live up to his standards. Yet somehow God has placed in me a way to understand HIM as my father! That is amazing to me. J Sometimes it is hard for me to apologize. To admit that I did something wrong. It makes me cry to think that I hurt or let my father down. I know though that God is always here to comfort me. That is another neat thing, God will not leave you alone. Earthly people fail us, but God never does. He is our true father who has “got our back.”

The other students argued that if we are super close and buddy-buddy to God, that causes us to loose respect for his omnipotent and awesomeness.

Have you ever had a relationship with friends where the more you get to know them, the more you realize their character just stinks and you don't really want to be friends with them anymore? You lose some respect for them after hearing what they have done that is bad and stuff. Well, that is what I was thinking of when they said this. I feel like that is not even remotely possible with God though!! He is perfect! So we shall never ever lose respect for God in that way, since all that He does is good. But is it possible to be so super close to Him that we forget Jesus knows all and sees all? I think not. Cause if we are tight with God, we shall be telling him everything anyways. So why would that matter?  Why would we lose respect for His omnipotent awesomeness by getting closer to Him? I would think this would make us respect and honor Him more.

Now think of a friend who is just so amazingly awesome you want to spend all your free time with them. You feel like you may pester them a lot because you want to spend every waking moment with them. (EVERY moment may be a bit of an exaggeration, but sometimes I feel like this towards a friend) They lift you up. Encourage you. Inspire you! This is what God wants us to feel towards Him. He wants us to see Him in the light of being so incredibly awesome that we just want to cling to Him at ALL times.

I want to remain thinking of him as beauteous. I don’t want to get too “buddy-buddy” with God that I should forget that He is also my father as well as my friend. I am not an expert on this matter, but I do know that when I get closer to people, it is more often than not that my respect for them grows.

My RA has said several times to me, “A relationship gets stale if all you never do anything different.” She gives the example that if all you and your friend ever do is go out to Caribou for coffee, that relationship will get stale and old. You need to do different things to keep the relationship growing and keep learning about one another. So then, since I never did all that much with my dad, the relationship kinda got stale.

(Tangent!  That got me to thinking, if all we ever do is pray and sing to God, is that causing the relationship to get stale? I mean, how can you ever learn more about God if all you are doing is the same stuff with Him day in and out? Will we really get to know how powerful and amazing He is if we do all the talking? NO! We need to listen.)

However, our God is our friend and our father! When you have a friend that is really really close, you still respect them, don’t you? I do. Especially with my family. Like, when my friend asks me to get them a glass of water or hand them something, don’t you still do it? I do! Because I have respect for them. And I do obey my father. When he asks me to take out the trash or something, I still do it because I know you need to be obedient. Being super close to a person I shouldn’t think would hinder our respect for them or our obedience to them (if they are higher than us in authority as a father would be). 

I don’t have proof on this matter, this is just what I have observed. What do you think? I welcome opinions on the matter. Thank you for reading through my rambles! It means a lot to me. 

Galatians 4:6-7

"Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir."