When I Speak About God

When I speak about God’s being, His essence, His nature, about what God is...

• ...it is very hard for me to do, for whenever I want to describe something that is unknown to me, I compare it to something I know. 
• I say that the unknown is like something else, except that it differs in this or that respect. 
• Yet when I speak about God, I have nothing with which to compare Him. 

Psalm 40:5 

• Many, O Lord my God, are Your wonderful works which You have done; 
• and Your thoughts toward us cannot be recounted to You in order;
• if I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered.  

Isaiah 40:18

• To whom then will you liken God? 
• Or what likeness will you compare to Him?

When I speak about God, I must be careful to limit myself to what God reveals concerning Himself in Scripture. 

• I must not draw my concept of God from anything that I see in this world. 
• This is what the natural man does. 
• He makes God a reflection of himself or of other things that he sees in creation. 

In Romans 1:23f. Paul says that the ungodly 

• changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man, and birds and four‑footed beasts and creeping things... 
• They worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator.

Therefore I must draw my concept of God from the Scriptures and not from my own mind.

Even when I draw my concept of God from the Scriptures, I have difficulty to comprehend God. 

• I am finite, but God is infinite. 
• I am limited in my knowledge, but God is limitless. 

God says about Himself (Isaiah 55:8-9), 

• “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord. 
• For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.” 

I must realize then, that I am very limited in understanding, 

• especially when I speak about God.

Adapted Excerpt From Van Delden's Only By True Faith