Recently I started reading Herbert Lockyer's book, All the Divine Names and Titles in the Bible. What a blessing! As I was reading, I was amazed by how many different names and titles there were. I skipped ahead to the index in the back to try to get some idea how many descriptions there were. It looked like every noun, verb, and adjective in the entire English language was used to describe God. I suppose it shouldn't be a big surprise that nearly every word describes God. After all, everything was created to glorify God. Pastor Mike is always saying, "Glory is the visible manifestation of one's essence." Therefore, all things were created to manifest the essence of God.

In one of the sections of Lockyer's book where he is talking about "The Lord Our Maker," he says this: "(Ephesians 2:22) Paul reminds us that 'we are His workmanship.' It is from the Greek word for 'workmanship' that we have our English term poet. Thus, in effect, 'We are God's poem.' The question is, 'As such, do we read well, and are we expressive of the feelings of His heart?'" Ephesians 2:22 goes on to say "created in Christ Jesus for good works." While there are many good works for us to do in edifying the body (the church) and evangelizing the lost, our primary work is to manifest the essence of God.

Unfortunately, myself included, we spend way too little time learning about and reflecting the essence of God. We spend most of our time and energy worried about the reflection of our own essence. How we hate to be wrong and fight to be right. How we worry about what others think of us. How we fight to be loved and respected. How concerned we are to reflect our own righteousness. We try to write our own poem.

So, how do we go from manifesting self to manifesting God? Well, I can not reflect that which I do not know. When I grow close to God, then His essence--His character--rubs off on me so that when people look at me, they see a little less of me and a little more of God. I need to continue to grow closer and closer to God until all of my reflection is gone and only God's is left. "...predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son."

How long will does it take to learn the essence of God? Here is where we Christians get off track. Not long into our walk with God, we begin to think we have pretty much learned everything there is to know about Him. Maybe that is because we mistakenly think of God as just a higher level human. And since it doesn't take very long to figure out most humans, it just takes a little bit longer to figure out God. We may not have consciously thought this way, but we act like it.

If God uses nearly 300 words in the Bible to describe Himself, how long will it take us to fully know Him? Back to Ephesians 2. In verses 6 and 7, just before "workmanship," Paul says, "and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus:" How many ages will it take for God to show us His grace and His kindness--just two of His attributes? How long will it take to explain His love, His mercy, His justice, His creativity? We will spend an eternity with God because it takes an eternity to know Him.

Todd Tjepkema, B.A.
Executive Assistant