1 Thessalonians 4:16

Knowing God
God is friendly. His track record proves it. In the beginning, he made
a garden. Not a cesspool, not a slum, not a crowded freeway, but a
garden, a nice place, where Adam’s every need was met. Adam
messed things up, not God. Adam got greedy. He wanted the one
thing he couldn’t have. Adam hid from God because of his own
character flaws. Even then, God came looking for him. God seeks us
long before we have the good sense to seek him.
Let the Bible form your image of God. He is bigger than the Bible,
but he uses it as one of the ways he reveals himself. Only, keep in
mind, the Bible is limited to words and God is not. Whatever you
imagine as you read Holy Scripture falls short of all that God is. He
is smarter than intelligence itself. Nothing can be done he cannot do.
Nothing exists he did not make. He can’t learn something new
because he knows all there is to know. He is not wiser today than he
was yesterday. Those omni words are so familiar to us they’ve lost
their capacity to amaze. God is omnipotent—all powerful.
Omniscient—all knowing. Omni-present—everywhere all the time
at the same time, in every place where it is possible to be. But you
probably won’t spot him in traffic. Not that he isn’t there, just that it
is too noisy. Eternal—beyond time. He lives in the past, present, and
future at the same moment.
God is other. Unique. Not like you and me. We strive to be like him.
He is the original. We are incomplete copies made in his image. God
is much more aware of the consequences of that reality than we are.
God seldom shouts. The day he does, creation won’t be able to
handle it. The world will end. For the Lord himself will come down
from heaven with a commanding shout, with the voice of the
archangel, and with the trumpet call of God. First, the Christians
who have died will rise from their graves. (1 Thessalonians 4:16
NLT)
Greg Cummings