1) Understanding Gods attributes as revealed in His Word is essential for your spiritual well being.
You must know God, not as you may conceive Him to be or wish Him to be, but as He has revealed Himself in the Bible. I’ve heard professing Christians say, "My God is not a God of judgment; He’s a God of love." That’s nice, but your God is not the God of the Bible! He is a figment of your own imagination! The God of the Bible is both a God of judgment and of love. Or, there are Christians who dodge a difficult chapter like Romans 9, where Paul says of God (Ro 9:18), "So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires." They don’t want to conceive of God as having the sovereign right to save whom He chooses and to harden others in their sin. But to dodge what the Bible says about God is to make God in your own image, which is idolatry.
- J. I. Packer’s classic, Knowing God [IVP] is a good place to start.
- A. W. Pink’s The Attributes of God [Baker] is brief, but good.
- A. W. Tozer’s The Knowledge of the Holy [Harper & Row] is a bit mystical, but worth reading.
- Stephen Charnock’s The Existence and Attributes of God [Baker] is wordy, but a gold mine. He spends 146 pages on the goodness of God (2:209-355).
- Any good systematic theology
- (Charles Hodge, Louis Berkhof, Wayne Grudem, Robert Reymond, etc.) will have a section on God’s attributes.
- There are also some excellent easy-to-read books on various attributes of God, such as
- R. C. Sproul’s The Holiness of God [Tyndale],
- A. W. Pink’s The Sovereignty of God [Banner of Truth],
- or John MacArthur’s The Love of God [Word]. Understanding God’s attributes will give you a firm footing
Two things will help you understand God’s attributes. First, read the Bible over and over, asking as you read, "What does this teach me about You, God?"
\ Second, read some good books on the attributes of God.
when you encounter trials.
2) Interpreting your circumstances in light of God's attributes is essential for your spiritual well being.
You must know God, but then when trials hit, you have to process what you know in light of your difficult situation. By faith, you have to rehearse for yourself what you know to be true, maybe a hundred times a day.
The psalms are full of this type of thing. The psalmist is in a huge crisis. He rehearses for himself what he knows about God’s character and His covenant promises. By the end of the psalm his circumstances haven’t changed, but his attitude and emotions have changed dramatically, because he has interpreted his circumstances in light of who God is. For example, in Psalms 42 and Ps 43, there is a refrain, where the psalmist talks to himself. Three times he asks (Ps 43:5; see also, Ps 42:5, 11), "Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why are you disturbed within me?" He answers himself (Ps 43:5), "Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him, the help of my countenance and my God." When you’re in the emotional throes of a major trial, you have to do this by faith in God’s Word, not by your feelings. Your feelings will be all over the chart, but your faith must rest on the facts about God as declared in His Word of truth: He is good
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