But Moses protested, “If I go to the people of Israel and tell them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ they will ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what should I tell them?”   God replied to Moses, “I Am Who I Am.  Say this to the people of Israel: I Am has sent me to you.”  Exodus 3:13-14

When you really want to know who someone is, there is no better source for information than the individual in question. Moses illustrated this in the above Scripture by asking this question of God in anticipation that he would be asked the same thing. Even though God can never be fully captured in human terms, through my own relationship with Him, there are three characteristics in particular about Him that have helped me personally grasp His reality more.

A first given about God that must be known and accepted in order to begin to see Him is that He is invisible. I use the term “given” here because, just as certain other beliefs you accept in your life such as some scientific theories, have certain givens that must be known in order to correctly apply the theory, so to must it be accepted that God is invisible in order to begin to properly see His reality.

An everyday example of this would be the wind. Just as you cannot see it, but rather see it at work, so it is with God. Jesus, who will be further discussed in a later article, is described in Scripture such as Colossians 1:15 as the visible image of the invisible God. Once the given of God’s invisibility is accepted, you can then begin to see Him at work.

A second given about God is that He is eternal. This means that He always has, does, and will continue to exist forever as explained in Scripture such as Revelation 1:8. This concept is hard to grasp because you always think of everything and everyone you know as having come from somewhere or someone else. If you take time to follow this logic through, something or someone had to be the beginning. The Bible presents God as that beginning as described in Genesis 1.

An example through which to see this would be your family tree. Take your tree back as far as you can to the earliest ancestor possible. Even though your limited knowledge stops there, logic tells you that person came from someone as well. If you were able to trace this lineage back far enough, it would eventually take you to Adam and Eve who came from God as initially described in Genesis 1:26-27 and more specifically detailed beginning in Genesis 2 of the Bible.

A final, yet the most important, truth I have learned about God is that He made me, you, and everyone for no other reason than to love us and for us to love Him and one another in return. This is illustrated in the fact that Scripture such as 1 John 4:8 tells us God is love and Genesis 1:27 tells us He made us in His image. He loves when we express this love to Him and one another through unconditional acts of love to one another, but He made us first and foremost for Him to love and for us to love Him and one another in return, regardless of any acts or lack thereof.

In conclusion, once again this article is not intending to serve as an all-inclusive description of who God is, for there is not enough words in the human vocabulary to do that. His invisibility, eternalness, and unconditional love though, are just a few of His attributes that have helped me grow in my own personal relationship with Him.

Greetings all!  My name is Mike Howard and I was invited to begin contributing to this blog so will do so as time permits.  I have been married to my lovely wife Elisabeth for nearly 7 years and we have two truly tremendous boys, Christian and Elisha.  We currently reside in Columbus, but my wife graduated high school from Madison Plains and I from Waverly, Ohio.  We attend church at the Vineyard in Grove City.

I have a BA in Social Science from Shawnee State University and an MA in Pastoral Counseling from Liberty University.  I am essentially a full-time, independently ordained pastor, even though some of my calling to ministry is performed in the “secular” world with some in the more traditional “ministry” settings.  In sharing this description with my wife, she reminded me that Jesus was this way as well to remind me both that I am on a good path with the Lord and of why He blessed me with a wife like her.

With my calling being as such, the postings I share on here at times may be somewhat “sermonish” in format, but hopefully practical in nature.  My hope is that they are enjoyable and helpful towards serving Him and others trying to walk out life with Him.  God bless all!

In a review of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, C.S. Lewis wrote the following:

“it [The Lord of the Rings] rediscovers reality” by making of this world a myth; “the value of myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which had been hidden by the veil of familiarity.”

I was blown away when recently discussing this quote in a class I am taking. I believe it to be one of the best defenses ever made of fiction-writing. Lewis is pointing out that when an author creates a mythical world in his work of fiction, the reader is forced to abandon her own thoughts and presuppositions because the fictional world they are reading about is completely unfamiliar. I doubt this can be easily achieved by the writer. The veil of familiarity will rarely be lifted voluntarily by the reader, but rather needs to be forcefully removed by the author. Once the author manages to rip the veil away, he then inserts a little nugget of truth (say, the gospel) within the myth. The reader then examines the truth without filtering it through the veil of familiarity and it becomes something more exciting than they have ever known before.

What a noble mission should a writer choose to accept it! Can there be better gift than to help someone take a fresh look at the gospel? I think there are so many pre-conceived notions regarding Christianity and so many lies perpetuated by our culture that an author who succeeds in ripping away that veil is truly doing something magical. A writer of fiction has the potential to reach so many people who would otherwise not give Christ a good, honest consideration.

How awesome is that?