The Many Faces of God

23 And so it happened just as the Scriptures say: “Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith.” He was even called the friend of God.  James 2:23(NLT)

In recent years I’ve repeatedly heard many individuals, particularly “learned” individuals, talk negatively about certain perspectives of God—namely the perspective that “God is my friend” or “buddy.”  Their position is that it is wrong to see God as anything other than one’s Lord, the Creator God, King of all reality.  At first I agreed, but since I’ve been working in youth ministry, I think my eyes have opened up to a new and maybe fuller understanding of what our relationship looks like with God. Let me paint a few pictures.

I see a young boy, sitting in the corner of a classroom, alone, staring out a window.  As he peers through the plate glass and past the glorious playground, the sun shines bright overhead, but all he sees are dull gray clouds and the splashes of cold rain dousing the joy that was once in his heart.  You see it’s been a year since his daddy walked out on mommy. Since then he can only try to remember what was, and the more time passes by the harder it is to remember the face of his hero who use to walk through the front door every day, drop his work on the table, and swing down to pick the little boy up.  He wonders what life will be like growing up without a dad—the very person who is supposed to model for him what it means to be a boy, and what it will one day mean to be a man.  He needs a Father.

Time goes by, and the boy grows up. He’s in the eighth grade now, and he’s got all these new stresses and struggles.  He hasn’t heard from Dad in years and has all but given up on ever hearing from him again.  He’s determined in his own heart to become a man in spite of it all, and so he fights for respect and the things that make him feel more like that man.  But he’s hit an emotional speed bump.  He’s been putting on this façade for so long that he’s starting to feel weak.  He has so much on his plate—school, pressure from peers, pressure from home, and the terrifying gantlet of trying to fit in.  Even though he has a lot of relationships, he still feels alone. He needs a true friend.

Time goes by, and the boy becomes a young man. He starts to look back at his life—the trials he’s faced, the decisions he’s made, his triumphs, his failures.  He’s still trying to figure out who he is in all of it.   And the phone rings.  It’s Dad; he wants to meet his son.  The young man erupts in rage, “I don’t understand—you didn’t want to be there when I needed you, but now you want me to be there when you need me to feel better about yourself!?!  A real father is there when his son needs him—fatherhood starts at conception and ends at death.  There is no time-out in the middle to wait for all the hard parenting to go by!”  The young man once again feels like a boy.  He feels guilty for hurting the very man whom he’d longed to see all these years.  All of it drags up so many emotions and so much pent up hurt.  He’s torn between the anguish of a re-broken heart and the need to forgive and be forgiven.  He needs a Savior.

Time goes by, and the young man becomes a father. He picks up his newborn son and thinks back to his own childhood.  He vows never to leave his son as his father left him.  But then a new fear emerges, “How can I be a father when I never had one?  How will I know what to do?  I have all this baggage—what do I do with it?  What will I say?  What will I teach him?  How do I do this?” He needs a counselor.

Time goes by, and his son grows up to be a strong young man, wise, and well-rounded.  The father looks around and feels a sense of gratitude in his heart. He doesn’t know how he did it, but he did.  He sees how much his life has been blessed, and how his hopes and dreams have been fulfilled.  He feels so undeserving and seeks to offer praise.  It is then that he needs a King.

You see, God comes to us in whatever form we need Him to be when we need Him.  As we grow and mature, we have different needs, and He wants to meet those needs and be our fulfillment. That doesn’t make one form of God more right or wrong; it’s simply the nature of an all-knowing, all-good God. And when we come to the end of our days, we can look back and see that God was with us through thick and thin.  He was there as the Father, who picked us up and dusted us off when we fell.  He was there as the Friend, who sat with us and simply listened when we needed to pour our heart out and find comfort.  He was there as the Savior when we were lost and needed to be found.  He was there as a counselor when we didn’t know how to let go and become.  And finally, no matter who He was to us before, we realize He has always been and always will be the King of Kings and Lord of Lords worthy of all glory and majesty who all along has reached out to us with a grace no earthly king has known—one that meets us wherever we are exactly as we need Him.