Your Concept of God
If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to
your children, how much more shall your Father who is in
heaven give what is good to those who ask Him! (Matthew
7:11).
Most people in spiritual conflict have a distorted concept
of God. Mentally they may have embraced correct theology,
but emotionally they feel something different. True concepts
of God are filtered through a grid of negative experiences
to produce false concepts of God. These false concepts must
be replaced by truth in order for freedom to be realized.
A pastor's wife who came to me for counseling told me about
her rigidly moral home which was dominated by her demanding
mother. The father was a wimp who knew better than to
interrupt the mother's tirades against their daughter
"You really love Jesus, don't you?" I asked the pastor's
wife.
"Oh, yes," she responded.
"And you really love the Holy Spirit?"
"Yes, I do."
"But you don't even like God the Father, do you?"
She could only respond with tears. Her concept of the
heavenly Father was distorted by the image of her earthly
father. She perceived Jesus and the Holy Spirit as actively
involved with her, but in her mind God the Father, like her
earthly father, just sat around passive and uncaring while
she went through torture in her life.
I often ask, "If you performed better, would God love you
more?" Most people know the right answer: no. But when I ask
if they feel loved by God, most express that they show more
love and concern for their own children than they expect God
to show for them (see Luke 11:9-13). This is all part of
Satan's strategy to raise up thoughts against the knowledge
of God (2 Corinthians 10:5). If the enemy can keep people
from a true concept of God, he can destroy their hope in
God.
Dr. Anderson, Freedom in Christ and Harvest House Publishers www.ficm.org