Insecurity Podcast Episode

We also need to work on asking God to help us to see the Scripture for what it is, and then superimpose that onto our lives, instead of taking the experiences that we’ve had and superimposing those onto the Scripture. Welcome everyone to Breaking Bread, the podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling and Family Services. 

Today I’m glad to air the second part of my conversation with Ted Witzig, Jr. on God image. So, Ted, we’ve talked about these different sources, these different places whereby we construct a God image. Yes. Okay. And you’ve given a few broad-brush examples of an austere God and then a cosmic buddy, I think is how you said it, but fill in the spaces in between. What are some of the images, perhaps inaccurate images that we might draw that would have devastating or not helpful ends in our life?  

So, one is a God who has impossible expectations. A God who is never pleased. You’ll find that oftentimes that these God image distortions have a grain of truth. Like we’re supposed to keep growing, right? But here’s what happens when my need to keep growing or the desire to keep growing turns into a pass fail. You’re good enough. You’re not good enough. You’re in, you’re out. It becomes so self-defeating because when are you ever going to pray enough, Matt? When are you ever going to love enough? When are you ever, and it becomes exhausting? 

Another one is having a picture of God as being emotionally distant. And this is one of those that comes out that God likes you when you have happy joyful emotions but when you struggle, when you’re depressed, when you go through hard times God is distant. Again, God image is oftentimes shaped by experiences where people have felt that withdrawal from human beings. But it’s so interesting Matt, because the Scripture talks so much about how God is close to the broken hearted. 

The Psalms are filled with an emotional outpouring, whether in lament or in joy and worship and praise. But I think one of the things is somehow we pick up these things and sometimes they’re never really said out loud, but we pick them up. That if I struggle then he’s distant. He’s distant. I’m not a good Christian. 

Another one is the gotcha God Oh, you know, there you were just feeling blessed, well, I’m going to take it away from you. We have to be careful that we don’t look at God as enjoying seeing us or anybody suffer. God is not petty. Yeah, he’s not like oh, well, you know, did you pray for three minutes? 

Well, if you would have prayed for four, I would protect you today but since you only prayed for three you get a flat tire today. That’s just not God, but we can pick that up through life. Yeah, it’s a very common one that I hear. Another one is a God who is hiding, a God who is trying not to be found, is making it hard for us. 

God has a will for me, but he’s not going to tell me what it is, but he’s going to punish me if I don’t find it. And I want you to think about how many times God the Father uses the parent and child analogy. And again, we’re imperfect fathers, both you and I, but is that how you would parent? 

And all of these so far that you’ve said, fall under the weight of the father child relationship, you know, they don’t make sense. I think we would all come to the agreement whether you had a good father or poor father, we would all come to the conclusion, that’s not a good father. That it’s right for me to say to my daughters, I’m going to punish you greatly, but I’m not going to tell you for what and you’ve got to figure it out on your own. Good luck. You’ve got three minutes. That’s pernicious. That’s not holiness. Yeah, our healthy concept of God has to be able to hold the fact that he is above us and he is mysterious to us at a certain level. 

Yeah. Okay. That we don’t understand how some things come together. And oftentimes for us that comes down to things that are painful, but sometimes it just comes down to things that don’t make sense to us in terms of how, you know, God’s sovereignty and free will. We don’t understand these things altogether. 

And if our God image can contain that by saying, he is wonderful. He is trustworthy in that wonder. Yeah. Okay. That allows us to be able to see that. And what I like about what you’re really encouraging us in is that we don’t shrink away from these attributes of God, holiness, for example. But you’ve been encouraging us to lean into them, to search them, to understand them even deeper, to say, ah, the holiness of God must be much grander than what I’ve formally thought it to be. 

Yep. Do you know, Matt, I think a lot of people that I talk to about a distorted God image, when they think of God’s holiness, they think about it in one dimension and they think about his holiness as judging sin, okay, and God’s holiness certainly judges sin. That’s true. One of the things that they forget is that the holiness of God is also one of the safest things about him. 

What I mean by that is God’s holiness does not allow him to be petty. It does not allow him to just have a bad day and go, I don’t have enough time for you. He is so settled. The word is immutable. It’s so unchanging. And that is so safe for us because as human beings, you know what? Oh, did I catch on a good day or a bad day? A bad day of sleep, a good day of sleep, you know, a day that you have time for me or not. Can we say this for a believer? Every attribute of God should bring us a measure of comfort. Yes, that’s a bold statement, but I’m speaking as a believer. 

Yes. Comfort. Another word that should also bring is just awe for the believer because of what Christ did. Okay, and because of his imputed righteousness being placed on us through Christ, I mean the comfort that gives the awe that gives, and I think what ends up happening is it actually promotes a healthy God concept because we don’t have to shrink away from God. 

We are actually awed by him and drawn to him. Sure. So, Ted, we’ve talked about the different sources, where our God image comes from. We’ve talked about the different God images that can come about, the distorted images and the effect that those have. Well, on everybody’s mind is, how do I get a good God image? 

How do I reconstruct it? How do I identify even if I’m off? Yes. So, the most important place to start is with Scripture. And we also need to work on asking God to help us to see Scripture for what it is and then superimpose that onto our lives instead of taking the experiences that we’ve had and superimposing those onto Scripture. 

I just want to accent that because I think that’s key. We’ve been talking a lot about understanding and experience and how these interplay. Yes. And it sounds to me as I reflect over our conversation, Ted, it sounds to me that experience is pretty persuasive. It is a true statement. And unfortunately, Matt, for us as believers, it becomes very easy for us when our heads and our hearts disagree to follow what our heart or our emotions say. So, if our emotions say I can’t trust, that has many times a more persuasive voice. Yeah, so you’re saying we go to Scripture, we don’t superimpose our experience on Scripture, but we allow Scripture to inform our experiences. 

That’s the goal. And the reason that we need to say it that way is it’s okay to say, life is broken. Our Christian worldview says we’ve had experiences that have shaped and shifted our God image. That’s okay to say that’s true. That’s the impact of life. The neat part is Christ is making all things new and part of that renewing of our mind that is going on is being able to see God for who he is instead of seeing him through our experiences. 

And again, we’re going to be in a contest always. But a second thing other than the Scripture, the most important next step is to have people in our lives who are walking alongside us that we are talking to and in relationship with who are going to model grace and truth. The fact is sometimes we don’t even see our God image distortions, but other people can point those out to us, and we can talk through those. 

I will oftentimes have people just do a little exercise for me. And here’s the exercise I’ll say to them. I would like you to draw me a picture of God, not out of your head, not out of your head knowledge, but out of your gut, out of your emotions. And then I use this example. This was the example that I was taught on. 

And the person said this, I feel like I’m in a 100-story building. And God is on the top floor. I’m in the building and I’m even in the elevator, but the elevator doesn’t work. That was a person’s God image picture. It was based on some life experiences that they had. And so, it’s sometimes helpful to just kind of sit back and say, so how do I think about God? 

So, what you’re really suggesting here is part of the work that needs to be done and getting a good, healthy God image is knowing where you’re starting from. That is exactly right. Really taking an inward look to say, what is my God image? And I think some of the value of this podcast is we’ve probably placed some vocabulary, some bins, to think about categories, because I think otherwise that’s kind of a difficult thing to do that type of exercise. 

Yes. But it’s interesting, Matt, that as we do this, different things emerge. And again, I don’t buy any stretch of the imagination mean that everybody has some distorted, just ugly, awful picture. Okay. But I think one of the things that I want to know in my counseling work, but also as I work with people as a minister and as an elder is I want to know when I’m working with somebody, who it is they picture when they pray. 

Yeah. Okay. Because it’s natural for us to assume that when we sit down with somebody, the who I’m praying to, the God who loves me and whom I love and that is working in me and that I believe is working as a person. I superimpose my picture onto their picture And so I assume that they have a picture of God as loving and who wants to see them grow and is challenging in that way. 

But the fact is, if they have a picture of God as not being able to tolerate them as looking for a reason to kick them out, that’s going to really impact how they view God. For sure. Ted, I would imagine this type of work requires patience. Yes, I’m guessing that we don’t change these types of things very easily. 

No. I wish. I will tell you this, that God concept work, the knowledge base work, can change much more rapidly because it’s about learning and oh, what’s this? Oh, I see. Yeah, where God image work oftentimes takes more repetition. It is slower and it’s not that distortions come up every minute of every hour of the day. 

They tend to come up though, when something tends to push somebody’s buttons. They’re charged, or where the rubber hits the road. We might say it’s in those moments, sometimes, that we slide right into them, and we do so without awareness. Other ways, any other tips? 

Matt, another area that I really encourage people is in Bible memory, prayer and meditation. And these things are all different, but they can move one into the other. Sure. And I encourage people to memorize Scripture because we have to really pour on the truth. Okay. And we have to learn to take the truth and bring it into authority over our lives. 

Okay. If you’re going to wait to feel like God loves you or that God has forgiven you, sometimes your feelings are going to outlast you. Okay We have to start moving in the direction of the truth. We have to say this is the truth based on Scripture and I am going to move into that and I’m going to live like that is true. It is hard to do sometimes, that’s why having mentors and friends and ministers and whoever around us to walk in that is so helpful. 

I think when you talk about memorization and then meditation, what you’re really doing is you’re occupying that brain space that thought space with that truth, infusing it with truth through repetition and through recollection. And that much truth in your thought space is going to have a positive effect. That’s correct. 

That’s the way things go. Yes. So another piece to that is thinking through. Remember I said I encourage people to draw out the God image distortion, but I also encourage people to identify some type of an image that can represent a healthy God image to them. One that I’m really drawn to is Jesus as a shepherd. And I oftentimes do it in my counseling room. I do it in my elder office at home. I give people a little picture of Jesus holding a lamb. Okay, and in this picture, Jesus is holding on to this lamb and I will ask people and I’ll say to them. So, what do you see there? And they’ll say well, it’s a man holding a lamb. I say look a little closer and they can see that there’s a nail piercing on the back of Jesus’s hand in this picture. Oh, it’s Jesus. 

Yeah, it’s Jesus. I say, so do you think that lamb is a good lamb or a bad lamb? And it is marvelous to watch people’s responses. Well, it has to be a good lamb. Well, maybe it’s a bad lamb. And, actually that says more about the person than it does anything because it really doesn’t matter. Yeah. If it’s a good lamb or a bad lamb. 

What it matters is that the lamb is near Jesus. Right. And the lamb is leaning into Jesus. And I think one of the things that happens is really to understand that whether that lamb represents that person, represents you, Matt, represents me, represents each listener, that as we lean into Jesus, whether that is our worst day, of life where we have really come to an awareness of our sin of something. We’ve really messed up and we just come to him, and we lean into Jesus. 

But what I really like about that exercise though, Ted, is you’re taking just the truth of Scripture, I am the good shepherd. Yeah, I seek the one out of the 99 when I find it. 

It’s biblical, right? But it being a picture connects with our feeling, doesn’t it? It does. Which is a very persuasive part of ourselves. That’s what we’ve been saying. And so there seems to be a part of this journey in constructing good God images and moving away from poor God images is connecting with that experience. 

It is. And therefore, when we have this image and I use this particular one, but it’s not magical. It’s not the only way that somebody can do it. But one of the things I want to do is particularly with the Scripture and with their prayer time and their meditation is to be able to sit there with the Lord. 

Okay, and to learn for example, sometimes they’ve not learned to be able to sit and be nurtured by the Lord, to be loved by him. Okay, or how about this? Many people don’t know what it is to be corrected and that correction doesn’t mean rejection. Lovingly corrected. Okay. Yeah. This is a huge thing. 

God’s conviction is a conviction that says, come closer to me. Yes. Okay. So many times people have only learned how to deal with correction through shame. You aren’t good enough. You’re outside. Again, God in his holiness will call out sin for what it is, but in his love, he says, come closer to me as it says, as a father to a son in whom he delights. 

That’s excellent. Isn’t that amazing? It is. It’s so beautiful. I would say another thing that I would bring in there, is many times people end up dealing with their God image when they’re dealing with either painful mental health or emotional challenges or relational struggles. And so, in counseling, we deal with these quite often. 

And so, when somebody deals with depression or OCD and scrupulosity, for example, a religious OCD, or somebody going through trauma or abuse or loss. These kinds of things will emerge and then we will work with them through the counseling process. And it is one of the things that I would say that many people that come into counseling, Christian counseling, that’s solidly biblical, it will have an impact not only on healing somebody’s hurts, their pain will go down, but it will allow for richness and healing. 

I won’t say that going through the pain just for pain’s sake is anything good. I will say that because God is gracious and that he is good through hard things, he can bring something deeper and better into your life and more wonderful than we could have imagined. 

And we have just the history of Christian testimony to that exact point, Ted, even circling back to that important role that the church plays, and church community plays and helping us understand that particular thing. You know, I think that even encourages us. And we know we should share testimony of God’s faithfulness in our lives, in spite of difficulty, in spite of trial, right? 

To see him redeeming these things. Yes. I think one last thing that I would add, Matt, and it was just as we were going through the Sharing of the Gospel, Bible study, and there’s a section that teaches to take some Scripture and to personalize it. Put your name in there. Okay. And I think this is a beautiful way to really not only make Scripture real to us and personalize, for Matt, you are God’s workmanship created in Christ. 

Jesus said to good works that he created you, Matt, to walk in. Okay. To be able to say that, to speak that gospel truth helps us to take something that we could just keep at a head level and move it down into our hearts. I like that. I like that very practical exercise of doing just what we’re talking about here, bringing together this mind and heart. 

Yes. And that is exactly what it looks like. I think at a very practical level of personalizing it, reading it to ourselves and allowing that to be for us. For me, yes, it’s part of this God image work. That’s right. Ted, we started just reflecting on who Jesus was constantly going back. Yes, saying, this is the way God is. 

Yes, if you know me you know the father. He had such a desire, didn’t he? That people saw the Father rightly. And I would just love our listeners to catch the Passion of Christ for that very thing. Yes. And Matt, I would just leave you and the listeners with this passage from Hebrews 1. It’s about in verse 3 here it says about Jesus who being the brightness of his glory. He’s talking about Jesus being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person and upholding all things by the word of his power It’s really so beautiful to me that God the Father looks at the Son and says, everybody look at my Son. This is my Son and the Spirit’s going, this is Jesus, and Jesus is going this is my Father and this is his Spirit. 

And you know what? That creates something so powerful for us because Jesus was meant to be somebody that we could identify with in a sense. And through him we get to know God. Yeah. So, thank you very much. Thank you for the opportunity, Matt. Thanks to our listeners for being along. And may the Lord bless you as he continually opens your eyes, as he does all of us to see him in more clearer tones than we’ve ever seen him before. 

Thanks for being here.