Understanding God: He Keeps in Touch Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of…
Understanding God: He Keeps in Touch
Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. – Genesis 3:8 (New International Version)
In continuation of our exploration of the nature and personality of God, another insight derived from our reference passage is that He keeps in touch. He does not just set up and leave or commission and then go awol. No, He maintains contact and relationship with His creatures.
The passage we are meditating on today shows us how God sought out Adam and Eve by visiting them in the garden in the cool of the day. There is something about this scenario that suggests that the visit was neither a one-off thing nor an extraordinary one. God must have been regularly visiting the couple before to fellowship with them, since that was one of the reasons He created them in the first place (Revelation 4:11).
This aspect of God should help us to better appreciate the fact that He is even closer to us than we can imagine. The fact that Adam and Eve erred and that created a vacuum between them and God does not mean that God then isolated Himself totally from them or from their descendants after them. If He did, we would not have read about His various encounters and interactions with other individuals and peoples in the Bible. That is one reason.
Therefore, even when humans fell and kept failing Him, God did not abandon them altogether. He was always scouting the length and breadth of the earth to see who He could relate with, offer help to and come through for (2 Chronicles 16:9). The secret to connecting Him when He passes by is to have a pure heart, as that is what He is always scanning to know those ready to house Him.
Secondly, the fact that God later sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to come to the earth to complete the project of reconciling humanity to Himself, this time on a very large scale, shows how much God values connecting with humans and relating with them.
Now, isn’t it interesting to know that God truly values a relationship with us? The fact that we may not see Him in physical form does not negate His existence, reduce His ubiquity or lessen the intensity of His desire to connect.
Indeed, the scriptures and history are replete with the accounts of those who have been able access and form a bond with Him. Those whom He Himself personally called because He had special needs for them, or those who really desired a relationship with Him and paid the price for having it through personal devotion and their life choices. Those to whom His invitation that “you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13) meant more than mere words to. The question is, are you one of them?
Understanding God: He Respects Wishes God said, “It’s not good for the Man to be alone; I’ll make him a helper, a companion.” So God formed from the dirt of…
Understanding God: He Respects Wishes
God said, “It’s not good for the Man to be alone; I’ll make him a helper, a companion.” So God formed from the dirt of the ground all the animals of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the Man to see what he would name them. Whatever the Man called each living creature, that was its name. The Man named the cattle, named the birds of the air, named the wild animals; but he didn’t find a suitable companion. God put the Man into a deep sleep. As he slept he removed one of his ribs and replaced it with flesh. God then used the rib that he had taken from the Man to make Woman and presented her to the Man. The Man said, “Finally! Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh!” – Genesis 2:18-23 (The Message)
In continuation of our meditation on the nature of God, another attribute of His we shall meditate on today is his gentle nature. He respects human’s choices and wishes. Having created humans as a free moral agent, He usually does not force anything on anyone, except in extraordinary circumstances.
The first indication of this attribute of God we are availed in the Bible is the scenario of seeking a partner for Adam. Having publicly expressed His concern about Adam being alone as well as His plan to find him a suitable helper, God brought all manners of creature to Adam to see if he would find anyone suitable among them. We can only imagine how many hundreds of thousands or even millions these creatures were. Their number thus tells us the number of times God tried to matchmake Adam with a potential partner.
However, Adam refused them all in their numbers. Therefore, the number of creatures that God brought to him that Adam named differently represented the number of times he said ‘no’ to God. Meanwhile, God did not take offense at this or reprimand Adam for being too choosy. Afterall, He was God. On the contrary, He respected Adam’s wishes. And guess what, He tried again!
God tried again and again!
He kept bringing more and more creatures to Adam to see if he would find a worthy mate among them. But Adam did not see the need to do eye service for God by meeting Him halfway and accepting one of the creatures brought to him as partner. They must have been so close as to enjoy that kind of liberty.
Finally, after He had exhausted his picks and there was no other creature to present to Adam, God decided to try another method to solve the problem of finding a partner for the man. This latest method seemed to work because immediately Adam saw the creature that was formed from his rib he proclaimed her the one:
The Man said,
“Finally! Bone of my bone,
flesh of my flesh!
Name her Woman
for she was made from Man.” (Genesis 2:23)
The scenario leading to this proclamation throws an insight into the temperate nature of God. He did not impose on Adam or use His authority to subdue or manipulate him into capitulation. He did not castigate Adam for wasting His time either. Rather, He kept bringing more and more creatures to Adam and He did not stop trying until Adam finally found and labelled his own partner.
Understanding God: He is Inventive God said, “It’s not good for the Man to be alone; I’ll make him a helper, a companion.” So God formed from the dirt of…
Understanding God: He is Inventive
God said, “It’s not good for the Man to be alone; I’ll make him a helper, a companion.” So God formed from the dirt of the ground all the animals of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the Man to see what he would name them. Whatever the Man called each living creature, that was its name. The Man named the cattle, named the birds of the air, named the wild animals; but he didn’t find a suitable companion. God put the Man into a deep sleep. As he slept he removed one of his ribs and replaced it with flesh. God then used the rib that he had taken from the Man to make Woman and presented her to the Man. The Man said, “Finally! Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh!” – Genesis 2:18-23 (The Message)
In continuation of our meditation on the nature of God, today we will be focusing on His inventive attributes. He is the God of inventions and innovations.
For the benefit of those who may be alarmed at the fact we are using seemingly human attributes to describe God, here is an explanation. All the attributes we have read so far since we started this series and all we will also read in subsequent digest are originally God’s. Not human’s (2 Corinthians 3:5). But because He had created humans just like Him, that is how humans have come by those attributes as well.
Humans through their creative and other genius attributes are only exhibiting the divine nature embedded in their DNA from birth as offspring of God. Therefore, by spotlighting those unique aspects of God that appear to be in the domains of humans, we are only helping the readers to see what they can be if they channel the God in them to work. We hope this offers a context to those concerned.
Back to our focus for today. The passage above helps us to see the inventive nature of God. It so happened that after deploying different methods to make His creatures, God needed to provide a partner for His ultimate creature, man. However, the man for whom the partner was meant seemed not to be impressed by any of the creatures God brought to him to see if he would find one suitable for himself among them.
This led God to try again and channel His creative nous to come up with yet another creature using an entirely different method from the ones He used in the past to create the other creatures. This time, God had to undertake a medical procedure to achieve this. He carried out an anesthesia on Adam by inducing him to sleep and then performed a surgery on Adam, the first of its kind in recorded history, by removing a rib from the side of Adam and replacing the space created with flesh.
In case this does not sink in, let’s go over it again. In order to create the woman, God did three notable things. Firstly, He performed an anesthesia on Adam; secondly, He completed a surgical procedure by cutting open his flesh to remove a rib; and finally, God used the rib He removed to produce a new human creature. This is called reproductive cloning. So God also performed the first cloning known to man.
And guess what? The creature He produced through this whole procedure turned out to be His finest. Woman was God’s last throw of the dice at creation, and she remains the finest of them all. Moreso, she came into being because of the inventive nature of God in trying other means and exploring other solutions when the previous attempts did not work or produce the desired result.
The good news is that we are all created in His likeness. The main question is how inventive are you, and how are you putting your divine DNA to use?
Understanding God: God of Sustenance …In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, before any plant of the field was in the earth and before…
Understanding God: God of Sustenance
…In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, before any plant of the field was in the earth and before any herb of the field had grown. For the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground; but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. – Genesis 2:4-6
Today, as we continue our exploration of the personality and nature of God, another of His attributes that we shall dwell on today is sustenance. He is a God of sustenance. He sustains everything and everyone.
From the passage above, we see that before rain started to fall on the earth God had a system in place that would sustain the earth. Even with all the civilizations we have around today, imagine what the earth would have been like without rain, not to talk of the prehistoric times when the earth had not been broken and domesticated by humans. It would have been impossible for life to survive on a parched and unstructured earth. Worse, the earth itself would have caved in and self-destruct without something to keep it moistened.
However, God being ever so thoughtful, methodical in His ways, and with such immense foresight, knew that He needed to have an organism in place to keep the earth wet, and thereby keep it sustained. What did He do? He caused the earth to generate mist from itself in order to wet itself. As simplistic as that sounds, it is an awesome thing to do and another testament to the omniscient power of God.
In other words, God while creating the earth also created the capacity for the earth to sustain itself. The same way He made plants and other living creatures “whose seed is in itself according to its kind” (Genesis 1:11-12) to be self-sustaining. The same way He also made we humans. Our capacity for sustenance however is not because of a random or unexplainable biological configuration. It is God who made us so. He is the One who wired us, an intricate unity, to be self-sustaining.
The Bible says, “the desire of every living thing” is satisfied by God (Psalm 145:16) and He “gives food to all flesh” (Psalm 136:25). That means whatever capacity we have to work for means of livelihood is an endowment from God. Therefore, it is “not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, who also made us sufficient…” (2 Corinthians 3:5-6).
God is the sustainer of all. Sustenance is one of the social pacts He is sworn by duty to all His creatures, man and beast, believer and non-believer, old and young.
Understanding God: He is NOT Omnipresent Then the Lord appeared to him by the terebinth trees of Mamre, as he was sitting in the tent door in the heat of…
Understanding God: He is NOT Omnipresent
Then the Lord appeared to him by the terebinth trees of Mamre, as he was sitting in the tent door in the heat of the day. So he lifted his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing by him; and when he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them, and bowed himself to the ground… And the Lord said, “Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grave, I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry against it that has come to Me; and if not, I will know.” – Genesis 18:1-2,20-21
God is not omnipresent. That sounds heretical, doesn’t it? Particularly as it also challenges thousands of years of theology and the long-held beliefs of an innumerable number of people, both dead and alive.
Omnipresence is a myth, one of the fictional attributes we ascribe to God in awe and worship. And He indeed deserves our awe and worship because of His gargantuan stature and the indispensable role He plays in our lives and our universe. However, there is no passage in the Bible where God describes Himself as omnipresent. Now, we need to draw a line between what God Himself says He is in a direct address and what the various writers of the books in the Bible describe Him to be. If you draw this line, you will realize that all the biblical passages that are being used to justify the omnipresence of God are not His own direct account of Himself. They are more of what the scribes, the prophets, the apostles and other writers of the books attribute to Him.
For context, this writer has also held and described God as omnipresent all his life. And it was not until recently that his attention was drawn to the myth that humanity has held for Aeon about the omnipresence of God. This piece will also be followed by several series drawn from and supported by scripture, to demonstrate that omniscience is a myth and does not accurately represent God.
The idea of omnipresence also highlights our ignorance of the sheer magnitude of God’s creations. The realms and the works of the LORD are so vast and humongous that they beat the wildest imaginations. We primarily focus our attention on the earth and use it to aid our understanding of God. But then this earth, as huge as it is to us, with billions of people living on it, is indeed a very tiny entity among the creations and the realms of God.
The planet Earth is part of the Milky Way galaxy. Now, in terms of size, the Earth is incredibly tiny in that galaxy. The Earth’s size is so small compared to the Milky Way that if the Milky Way were the size of a football field, Earth would be smaller than a tiny grain of sand! Even though the Earth seems huge to us, it is super, super tiny in the vast galaxy we live in! To drive that home, Earth’s size is about 0.00000000013% (1.3 trillionths of the total size) of the Milky Way!
Now, let’s take a closer look at the Milky Way itself, where the Earth and its billions of people are just like a grain of sand. There are estimated to be 100 billion to 200 billion galaxies in the universe. Some studies even suggest there might be more, possibly up to two trillion galaxies. The Milky Way is just one of these, and in terms of size, it is average-sized compared to the other galaxies in the universe of God’s creations. There are other galaxies, numbering in the billions, that are much larger than our Milky Way. Each galaxy has its own stars, its own planets (just like the Earth is one of the planets in the Milky Way), and its own structures. Let’s still not forget that the Earth, through which we understand and relate to God, is just like a tiny speck in its own parent galaxy.
Now, to our reference scripture today, the Bible tells us that God appeared to Abraham “by the terebinth trees of Mamre”. He was not there before that time. In fact, from Genesis 2, when God began relating to humans (we will still conduct a blow-by-blow analysis of biblical references from Genesis 3 onwards on the myth of omniscience), God was always either coming or appearing. He was not always present there either physically or spiritually.
Location-wise, God is in heaven (Psalm 11:4, Psalm 115:3, Ecclesiastes 5:2, Matthew 6:9, Matthew 7:11, Matthew 10:33, Matthew 16:17, Matthew 18:10, Matthew 18:14, Matthew 23:9). Positionally, He is seated on His throne in glory and majesty, and He is being fawned over and worshipped by an innumerable company of angels in the highest where He is (Isaiah 6, Revelation 4).
Inasmuch as God is not omnipresent or everywhere, He nonetheless has the ability to be wherever He wants to be at any time. He can also be in multiple places at the same time as He desires. But that does not mean that He is presently present everywhere at the same time as we have long believed Him to be. No, that is a myth.
God did not communicate Himself to us in this way. The only thing He claimed to be is the Almighty, or Omnipotent (Genesis 17:1). As for Him being omnipresent, that is a myth.
Another lesson we can learn from God is His disposition to a balancing act. He is not a God of extremes. Even though some who profess to follow Him go to extremes in His name or make extreme claims on His behalf, extreme is not a label that one can pin on God. He balances the acts.
Understanding God: He is Not Moved by Sentiments
Another lesson we can learn from the personality of God is that sentiments do not move Him. Therefore, He cannot be deceived into making a wrong judgment or call, as humans tend to do.
Understanding God: He is A Creator
He is a Creator. This is not to be interpreted loosely, particularly in the light of our contemporary use of the word. God is the ultimate Creator, as He created all things, even the ends of the earth (Isaiah 40:28).
Understanding God: God of the Beginning
There is no better way to begin this journey of exploring the people and entities in the Bible than to start with God. He is not just the beginning but is the origin of all things.
Women in the Bible: A Paragon of Beauty
What made Sarah’s beauty so compelling that kings and nations took notice? Explore the deeper layers of grace, favour, and mystery surrounding one of Scripture’s most unforgettable women — and discover why her story still provokes wonder today.
Men in the Bible: A Man of Ambition and Adventure
Terah may not have reached Canaan, but his courage to start a life-changing journey laid the foundation for Abraham’s destiny. Discover how ambition and bold steps mark a life of significance.
Men in the Bible: An Impetuous and Impudent Man
A revealing glimpse into a man whose choices exposed deeper issues of character, showing how hastiness and entitlement can quietly shape a destiny, and why his story still speaks to us today.
Men in the Bible: A Man with Little Foresight
Sometimes what looks like a smart choice can hide the seed of a mistake. This reflection from Scripture invites us to think again about how foresight — or the lack of it — shapes a man’s story.
Men in the Bible: The First Man to Tithe
Before laws, temples, or traditions, one man honoured God with his substance. Abraham’s tithe was not commanded, demanded, or enforced. It flowed from reverence.
Fathers in the Bible: A Destiny-Shaping Father
What makes a man a truly aware father? Discover how one man’s prophetic foresight shaped his son’s destiny and changed generations forever.
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