Is My God Just an Image of My Private Desires?

 


As a believer I must recover a God who is both personally near and objectively holy—rather than a God made in the image of my private desires.

God is our true center

Modern culture has displaced God with the self, leaving people “centerless,” fragmented, and spiritually empty. The spiritual truth is that human life only finds meaning, identity, morality, and hope when it is ordered around the triune God revealed in Scripture.

  • I am created to live before God, not merely to pursue self-fulfillment.

  • When the self becomes the center of reality, it cannot bear the weight and collapses into emptiness.

  • Repentance is therefore a re-centering: turning from self-rule back to God’s rightful rule.

God is both near and transcendent

The “inside God”—God’s nearness, presence, and care— is distinguished from the “outside God”—God’s majesty, holiness, sovereignty, and authority above us. I do not deny God’s immanence; rather, I am warned that emphasizing nearness without transcendence turns God into a private spiritual companion who exists mainly to meet my needs.

Truth

  • God is near.  I may pray, trust, and find comfort in His presence.
  • God is above me. I must worship, obey, and submit to His authority.
  • God is holy.  Sin is serious and cannot be minimized.
  • God is sovereign. My life and the church belong to Him, not to cultural trends. 

God defines reality

Because God stands outside us as Creator and Judge, His Word gives us an objective moral order. This “outside God” establishes that there is moral law, sin, a cross, divine conquest or judgment, and human obligation. Spiritually, this means morality is not merely personal preference or cultural construction; it is grounded in God’s unchanging character.

Sin is rebellion against God

Sin is not only wrongdoing, but active defiance of God’s authority, rejection of His truth, and the attempt to live independently of Him. The spiritual lesson is humility: I do not simply need improvement or encouragement; I need forgiveness, repentance, and rescue.

The cross reveals God’s holiness and love

If sin is merely a lack of self-esteem, the cross becomes unnecessary. But if sin is rebellion against a holy God, then Christ’s death is essential. The majesty of forgiveness is lost when I lose sight of what must be forgiven—my sin and sinfulness. The cross therefore teaches both God’s holy judgment against sin and His gracious love in providing salvation through Christ.

Scripture, not culture, reveals God

Culture may provide the church’s context, but it must not set the church’s agenda; the church’s belief and mission come from God’s Word. The practical spiritual application is to let Scripture correct my assumptions about God, rather than reshaping God to fit contemporary feelings, marketing strategies, or postmodern individualism.

What this means for daily life

  • Worship God as He reveals Himself, not as a customized source of personal comfort.

  • Let God’s holiness expose sin and lead to genuine repentance.

  • Find identity in being known by God, not in self-invention.

  • Approach prayer and worship with reverence as well as confidence.

  • Measure church life by faithfulness to Scripture, not by cultural success or consumer appeal.

In short, I am called to recover reverence for the holy, sovereign, self-revealing God—the God who is near enough to save, but great enough to command my worship and obedience.

My Notes from David F. Wells' Chapter 3 "God" in his book The Courage to Be Protestant


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