What is your God like?

There are many different ways of describing who God is. Lots of names and descriptions are found in the Bible; other descriptions have been spoken or penned by people throughout history who have experienced God's reality in their own life. I was struck this week by a description of God that was said by Abraham when he was a very old man.

In Genesis 24 verse 40, when speaking to a servant whom he was sending on a special mission, Abraham described God as the Lord in whose presence I have lived. This gives us an insight into who God is (personal, present, very close to us…) but it also gives us an insight into who Abraham is: someone who had chosen, despite all his mistakes and weaknesses, to live his life in God's presence. There were many other people on earth in Abraham's day, but not all would have described God in the same way… because not all had made a personal choice to live in God's presence. It was this choice of Abraham's that caused people to describe him as a friend of God. (James 2: 23)

I remember, during the years that I lived in Glasgow and Paisley, that a King's Kids leader I worked with used to make this statement to the teenagers: You can be as close to God as you want to be. Whether or not you live your life in God's presence, as Abraham did, doesn't depend on God, because He's already made the decision to draw very close to you. Now it depends on your, and my, response: will we make the choice to live our lives every day in His presence?