Does God Look Like God Or Like Me?

​I have pondered this question a lot lately: In my world, does God look like God or does God look like me? In other words, have I used my life to let God shape me, or have I used my life to shape God into something safer, smaller and more predictable?

The former suits God - the latter suits me.

I have lived enough life now to have experienced a God who has not always responded the way I had hoped he would. But is that reality? Or is it possible that what I've really experienced is a me who hasn't responded quite the way God had hoped I would. And in response to that, have I gone about shaping God into someone more accepting of my flaws without challenging me to be better than those flaws?

I have quite often failed at love in my life. Maybe more than what that has done to shape how I see me it has shaped how I see God. It has made me wonder at times if God can heal broken love. It has made me wonder if God can provide love when love has been lost in so many other places.

I have been stuck at times in my life. Stuck in the patterns of my past. Stuck in unhealthy habits. Stuck in shame. Stuck in depression. When we stay stuck for too long, we can come to see God as the image of someone who can not move. We can come to imagine what God in his power can overcome based on what we've been able to overcome.

It is true, the longer I have walked with God the more tempted I become to believe I have figured God out. The more tempted I become to believe I can predict God's next move in my life. Or God's next move in the world.

The longer I walk with God, the more tempted I can become to imagine God in the image of my denomination, in the image of my pastor, in the image of my political party, in the image of my race or my culture. I am tempted to do this because it's easier to manage a God I have so completely figured out.

But here's the truth - at least my truth - the moment I think I have God figured out, that's the moment I am no longer serving my God. Timothy Keller once said, "If your God never disagrees with you, you might just be worshipping an idealized version of yourself."

There is much about the world that discourages me these days. But the truth is that discouragement is rooted entirely in my inability to make sense of it all, in my inability to know what I can do about any of it. It's rooted in my inability to understand where it all goes from here.

It is all so unpredictable.

But that is the story of my life, quite honestly. A life discouraged because I have had no idea how this is going to work out. And yet, it is also the story of my life that God has continued to show up in surprising and quite unpredictable ways to make a sense of things I could never have made.

God has showed up over and over to reminded me that God is God and I am me. It is when I confuse that truth that life gets most challenging. It is when I confuse that truth that overcoming challenges in life is limited to what I can personally do with challenges.

Six decades of living has taught me that I am pretty daggone good at overcoming challenges, but my best day of overcoming is a mere whisper compared to the thunderous miracles God is working in my life every moment of every day.

In the beginning, God created us in his image. If you've lost your way in the world, if you have lost hope, maybe you like me have started to limit what God can do based on what you've been able to do.

God can do much more than we can ever imagine. In many ways that really sucks - I really need to imagine all outcomes. But in the most beautiful and hopeful of ways, I am really thankful I can not. For in that is found the beauty of faith.

In that is found the image of God.