Deceived By Your Own Making

Do not be deceived by your own making.  When I was a little boy I made my dad up.  Sure I had a real dad who had a real job, a real family; he had very real limitations like every other dad.  But like most other boys I made my dad up.  For whatever reason most boys feel the need to make their dads out to be greater, stronger, smarter, more successful and more desired than any other man out there.  I would tell stories of how my dad could beat your dad up, my dad can fly, my dad makes 9887781 billion dollars a minute; and on and on with the stories.  So the truth was that I had two versions of the same dad.  My made up dad and the dad he really was. 

Most people believe in God or a god.  Like most boys, most people make up who their god is, even if the God they believe in is the one true God.  People still make up who God is by deciding for themselves what God desires and what He is like.  We allow culture, family tradition, pride, ego, sinful desires, misinterpretation, tolerance, relativism… and so much more to influence our hearts and minds into defining who God is.   This is nothing new; throughout history God’s chosen people have been guilty of it over and over again.

When I was little, my friends found out who my dad was by meeting him in person and getting to know him firsthand.  The more they spent time with him, the better they got to know him and the better they got to know him the more they realized how wrong they were because of my misrepresentation and lies.  Knowing who God is requires the same thing.  You cannot allow your outside influences, personal opinions, culture, family traditions, and so on to make up your view of who He is.  You must meet him firsthand, face to face if you ever want to know the real God. 

To meet God face to face and experience Him firsthand means that first you must enter into a covenant relationship with Him through His son Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior over your life.  Even then you still will not know God fully until you actively seek and pursue Him in active church attendance, purposeful reading of the bible, prayer, fellowship, discipleship, intentional and active worship, and selfless serving of others.  The bible is full of wisdom and instruction on how we can best experience God.

There are a lot of bad pastors out there and there are a lot of good ones as well.  No matter how good or bad, I always confirm their preaching and teaching with the direct word of God as it is written in the Holy Bible.  I must add; my pastor is one of the greats, I’ve always held his teachings up against the written word of God and he has never flawed it or failed.  Always, I repeat always use the written word of God to affirm and confirm your thoughts and beliefs of who God is.  No matter who or what your influences are, you always have a choice and an obligation to affirm the truth.  Never be foolish and become deceived by your own makings of who God is.  A god of our own makings is no true god at all. 

 

2 Chronicles 15: 1-3 The Spirit of God came and said… 2 “The LORD is with you when you are with Him, If you seek Him, He will be found by you, but if you forsake Him, He will forsake you. 3 For a long time Israel was without the true God…