Healing our God Image…

²² that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old (False) self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, ²³ and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, ²⁴ and put on the new self, which in the has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.  Ephesians 4:22-24

Pastor Tony talked this weekend about who God is, and who we perceive Him to be.  He said, “You will never rise above your image of God.”   That really struck me.

Scripture tells us that we are God’s workmanship, made in His likeness and image, and that we are being conformed once again to His image by the Holy Spirit through all of the circumstances that come our way in this life…which is full of hope and comfort, if you know who God is.

But what if our image of God was formed by less-than-perfect people and circumstances in our early childhood?  The truth is that almost without exception, the “image of God” that we carry in our hearts is conformed to the image of our parents and early caregivers that was stamped on our hearts from the moment we were born.  For better or worse, our parents have a HUGE influence on how we see God!  And further, it is OUR PERCEPTION of our parents that forms our image of God.

Perhaps your mother was a stay-at-home Mom who loved you dearly, but had physical and emotional challenges of her own to deal with that made her less able to love you perfectly?  Or suppose your father had a very demanding profession that kept him away much of the time and exhausted when he was home, even though he loved you with all his heart… Your perception might be that Dad didn’t have time or energy for you, and so you see God as a distant, disconnected, mildly benevolent presence, but not one with which you can have a close relationship.

Some parents truly are disconnected from their children, emotionally and physically, and may even be abusive in any of a number of ways.  Other parents are overly-connected, oppressively projecting their own needs onto their children.  The truth is that most parents are doing the best they can to love and provide for their children, but not one of them is perfect.  Whether you are a parent, a child, or both, you will easily see that this is true. 

Nothing operates the way it was designed to operate in this broken world.

And so, we cope.  Either we try to become the person our parents want us to be, or we rebel against that model and become someone else, both developing a “false self” with which we cover up the “true self” that God gave us to be.  It’s all a result of sin—our sin, the sin of others, sin that was committed against us.  We repress the parts of us that our parents didn’t like, and develop new characteristics that were applauded.  The pieces of our true self, the image of God that is hidden, create problems for us.  They build up steam without our even knowing it, and burst forth at the most inappropriate times, leaking out of our Hidden Heart, sabotaging our attempts to live righteously in our own power.  Have you ever asked yourself, “Why did I say that?” or “Why did I behave like that? That’s not like ‘me’!”?  Well…. that’s why.  We don’t like to see that part of ourselves, so we are likely to sweep it under the rug, stuff it back down, and go back to believing the false image of ourselves which we have so carefully constructed.  Let me encourage you to take those surprises to the Cross, and sit with Jesus while He ministers healing and grace to you, rather than stuffing them back into the dark so that they can surprise you again.

We were never meant to live in our own power.  We were meant to live in the power of the Holy Spirit, who was meant to live in the depths of our hearts, producing fruit for the Kingdom of God.  But most of us find  ourselves trying, striving to be that person our parents wanted us to be.  Striving with God—our concept of God-- to be perfect…to keep the Law…to be righteous in our own strength.  And we actually think that is what God wants us to do!  We spend our lives trying to get God to applaud the False Self, when He is in the business of “restoring our souls” to His original design—one that is free, open to the Spirit, not afraid of being seen, forgiven and clothed in Christ’s righteousness.

The image of God that most of us hold is too small.  It’s demanding, condemning, restrictive, Law-based.  We need to have that healed in our hearts.  This is the basis of all Transformation.

A good place to start with this redressing of our God-image is with Scripture to cognitively re-frame our knowledge of who He is.  As we read Scripture, the Holy Spirit attends, or “illuminates”, our reading in a very real way.  This is why the writer of Hebrews can say:

¹² For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.  Hebrews 4:12

We need to pray earnestly for the Spirit of God to begin to heal the broken image of God that is hidden in our hearts.  Sometimes we don’t even know it is broken until we become aware of how loving He really is.  Actually, He has already begun this process in our hearts, if we have given our lives to Him.  The book of Colossians has wonderful things to say about the nature of God—it might be a good place to start your search for a new God-Image.

Also, because we are His workmanship, the members of His Body, and indwelt by the Holy Spirit Himself, we will find pieces to the puzzle of who God really is in our church family.  Look around you for people who are good examples of God’s loving nature and spend time with them.  Get into a small group with them.  “Catch” some of who God is in their lives.  That’s why God gave us each other.  No one is a “perfect” image of God, of course.  Jesus was the only perfect image of God.  But God’s nature is tangible in godly people.   So look for a mentor, someone older in the faith than yourself, who has had more time to be conformed to His image.  God can do amazing things when your heart is open.

I pray this prayer ,with Paul, for all of us:

¹⁸ I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints (that’s US!), ¹⁹ and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe.  Ephesians 1:18-19