Consider God Without…

God is truly remarkable. While He is “not far from any one of us” (Acts 17:27), still He is unfathomable in all His attributes.

Those first lines are ones that we agree with, but I want us to consider a struggle we often face in our society. We need to consider, ponder, and contemplate God without thinking of how to “market” Him.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against a congregation considering ways to make sure the local community knows of its presence. Congregations are wise when they think of making sure they are visible.

But that’s not what I’m talking about.

I think many Christians have gotten so caught up in marketing mentality that we think we need to market God. How so?

• We think of how to “best present” God to our world, only sharing His love and grace while never presenting His wrath and justice.
• Because our world cries out for gender equality (whatever is meant by that), we decide that God doesn’t know how He wants to be presented (in the masculine gender), so we call Him a “her” or “mother” or “she.”
• We “slick up” God by referring to Him in cooler terms than Father or Jehovah. We think we can just call Him “daddy” or some other slick term, and people will warm up to Him.

Friends, let’s think about this for a minute. God is our Creator. He spoke the entire universe into existence. He planned from before the foundation of the world to redeem us, and had a perfect plan in place for that to happen. He is eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing, and omnipresent.

He doesn’t need our marketing techniques.

He just asks us to show Him–as He is–to our world. Will you?

QUESTIONS: Where else have you seen this “marketing” of God? What are some ways we can stem the tide against it?