Category: Love is God

In this post, I want to talk a little about one of my very favorite subjects– God.

Ever since I was little, I’ve always loved God and Church. Even before I was old enough to got to school, I went to Sunday school. And then on Sunday afternoons, at home with my dad and grandmother, I would have Sunday school with them, teaching them the lessons I had at church.

And the God I learned about way back then was the one that created the world and everything in it. He was said to love the people he created.

This God was usually portrayed as a very old man, the Ancient of Days and he was white and had a great long white beard and hair. In fact, as I think about that image, he was just a really big jolly green giant sized version of my dad or Santa Claus.

As I grew up, this picture was enlarged to include the side of God that loved some people who followed all the rules and also judged sinners who broke the rules. The good people were promised heaven when they died and the sinners, well they just got to roast in hell for all eternity.

This version of the story just never really made a lot of sense to me but since this was what I was told the Bible said and meant, I believed that it was the truth.

Now I have come to the place where I question both that version of God and also the idea that just because the Bible says it does not necessarily make it true. (But I will tell you more about that journey another time.)

Charles Fillmore, the co-founder of Unity says

 The starting place of spiritual attainment is the right understanding of that one that we designate as the ‘Almighty.’

So let me share some of who God is for me today.

God Is Omnipresent

There is a wonderful verse in the Christian scriptures that says, “in whom (God) we live and move and have our being.”

Now I used to think this was just one of those nice saying put in there to fill up space or it was one of those “mysteries” that we just were not supposed to understand.

But now I believe that it’s a statement of truth and really just means what it says and says what it means. It shares with us the fact that God is all there is and that everything that exists, exists in God.

David, in the Psalms, says that if we go to the highest heights or to the lowest depths, that there is no place that we can go where God is not. (Now what does that say about hell?)

God is omnipresent — present everywhere.

God Is Love

Another wonderful truth about God is that God is love and love is God.

This love is unconditional and eternal. It’s not some on again, off again type of love. The “I love you when you love me and do what I want” type of love.

God is love.

And God’s love extend to and includes all of God’s children. No one is excluded.

You see, I let go of the old idea of a God that was just waiting for me to slip-up and do something wrong so he could just whack me good and punish me. I have some to realize that we are not punished for our mistakes in life but we are punished by our mistakes. What we sow, we reap.

God set in place the wonderful law of cause and effect. And we are offered every provision to correct anything that we deem a mistake so they can be changed from chains that bind and enslave us into steps that lead us higher and higher as we are transformed.

I guess one of the most important things I have learned on my journey of spiritual attainment is to trust my own heart and my own experience.

I have experiences the presence of God and I have felt my heart warmed and enlightened by this presence.

I have taken the time to look at my beliefs about God, to examine them and to see which ones ring true with what my heart says. And this has caused my love for god to grow and increase as endeavor to see and sense God’s presence everywhere I go and in each person I encounter.

Final Thoughts

As I close, I want to share with you something I came across recently in my reading. It is called The Golden Key written by Emmet Fox.. The basis of this key is to practice the presence of God. Fox says that too often we spend our time focusing on our problems and what is wrong with our lives and our world. He then says that the golden key to changing things in our life is to instead focus on the goodness of God.

Look for Good!

Look for love.

Look for beauty.

And as you do, you will find more Good, more love and more beauty. You will find more God.

For you see my friends, wherever you are, God is. A friend of mine told me once, there is only God or not paying attention.

Try paying more attention this week and see where you find God.