I Believe in God - The implications of a belief in God

So I believe in a creator God. More importantly is the question, "What are the implications of this belief and how does it impact my life?" 

There was a book several years ago titled "Your God Is Too Small". We often limit God to those things we see as being possible for humans to do.  For many, God is nothing more than an over-sized, very powerful human.  So our requests of God are often limited to those thing we think are possible for humans. Seldom do we ask for or expect to receive those things which we perceive to be impossible. We underestimate a God who is powerful enough to create the earth and the universe from nothing. So the first implication of the creator God is that nothing is impossible with God. As an aside, realizing that nothing is impossible with God is not the same as expecting to receive everything we ask of God even those things which are for a good purpose. Can God heal? Can God move mountains? Can God keep our loved ones safe in a war?  The answer is yes to all three.  But the real question is not can He, but does He in all cases? I think the answer is probably no.  These are things we want but are they the things God wants? Unfortunately, we do not know the details of God's will.  But we do trust that God has our best interest at heart and the things that happen do so for a reason although the reason may be unknown to us.

The creator God does not have a time table for this earth. As humans, we are constrained by the limits of time, minutes, hours, days, years. Thus when we write of the creation of the earth we are limited to the use of words such as, "On the third day...". When in fact, a God unlimited by time, may have taken a billion years of human time to accomplish the task of creation.

The natural sciences suggest that the earth has taken millions of our years to develop and evolve. That evolution extends to the development of  humans as well. Natural scientist have discovered the bones of prehistoric humans, often different or varying species of human-like creatures they estimate are the steps in the evolution of mankind as we know it today. Through carbon dating they have  determined the period of time when these various prehistoric humans lived.  These estimates are given in human concepts of time.  Interestingly, the dating is in increments of tens of thousands of years; this species of human lived between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago, etc. so far there have been discoveries of at least three fossil remains of variational of humans.

Since God is not constrained by the limits of human time, why it so hard for us to believe that God used  all of these variations in humans to test and refine us as we are today?  What to us is 200,000 year ago might be a mere second in God's time table. The fossil remains may, indeed, be evidence of God's craftsmanship.

To believe in a creator God, we must not restrict God to the limits of our understanding of Time nor must we gauge His handiwork on our scale of the possible.

We are also limited to concepts of the past, which we can not change, the present, which is ever changing and the future, which we can not foresee. I believe God is not constrained by these concepts. To God, the past, the present and the future are all visible in one panorama.  This gives God the ability to intervene at any time in any part of our lives. It also sets up another concept that I have trouble understanding. If God knows the choices I will make, then do I truly have free will to make choices? (Please allow me to postpone discussion of this topic to a later time.)

To bring order to His creation, God established thousands rules of nature. These are the cause and effects that rule all of God's works.  If I am cut, I bleed; water evaporates; sunshine causes some plants to grow and some to wilt; water flows downhill; etc. The wonder of it all is that the earth operates in a balance. God rarely chooses to suspend the laws of nature.  When they are suspended, we refer to it as a miracle. 

If we disobey or ignore these laws, the results can be a tragedy. A small boy runs after a ball that rolls into the street.  He is hit by a speeding car and injured.  He is rushed to the hospital and we begin praying for his survival. Depending on the extent of the injuries, loss of blood, damage to vital organs, the skill of the surgical team and any number of other  factors, the boy may survive or may not.  But the results depend largely on the laws of nature.  

Why does God allow these things to happen is the subject of a later post.  But sufficient it to say, the laws of nature are the rules God set in motion to govern this world and we ignore them at our peril.

There are other considerations about the nature of God.  What does it mean to be created in the image of God?  Does man have free will and why did God see fit to give it to humans?  Can man's free will alter Gods will and plans for the earth? What is God's relationship to mankind; is it evil, good or neutral? These are pretty heady subjects and will be subjects of later posts.