Stick figure god

Our natural ideas about God are miserably deficient. As a toddler’s first drawing of its mother – a ball with sticks for arms and legs – cannot be compared to the true complexity and beauty of her whole person; so to, many of our ideas about God are inadequate. And when we attempt to put our trust in a ‘stick figure god’, we find we cannot trust him with the whole weight of our lives. This is not because God really cannot bear us up, but because our god is too small! Many people reject a god who is not God. He is their own childish imagination of what God is like or one made up from the inventions and false stories that abound in the world. But it is not GOD!

If you are considering abandoning belief in God – first be certain that you have properly understood him.

If you still have your childish understanding of God – your stick figure outline – it is not surprising that many of your problems and needs are too complex for a make-believe God to handle. Isaiah had some very big world-shaping messages to pass on to Israel, many of which were about God’s judgement on entire nations, including Israel. If Isaiah’s understanding of God was restricted to the Temple rituals he would hardly have been equipped to speak of kingdoms rising and falling and teach about the Kingdom of God into which men and woman of all nations and many generations would be called. A big message requires faith in a big God.

Isaiah 6:1 In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory!”

If God remains on the outer edges of your understanding and you think about him only occasionally, it is no wonder that both the attractions and the denials of the world are much stronger than your faith. Your god is too small! Your eyes need to be opened to recognise the Lord towering above every circumstance to rule and overrule in sovereign wisdom and power.