“There never was a time when God was not.”
Before Everything Else, There Was God
Before the first star burned, before the first word was spoken, before time itself had a name there was God.
That is where every honest conversation about the character of God has to begin. Not with what God has done, but with what God simply is. Because most of us approach God through the lens of what we need, what we’ve experienced, or what we’ve been told. And while those things aren’t unimportant, they can quietly distort who God actually is.
We live in an age of curated identity. We are what our profiles say we are. We build images of ourselves online that are, at best, partial, the most flattering angles, the best-lit moments. Without realising it, we can begin to read God the same way. We take the parts of him we find comfortable, encouraging, or culturally acceptable, and quietly set aside the rest. We end up worshipping a version of God, not God himself.
We have made the mistake of looking God wrong. We have “edited” God in our minds. How you see God determines everything, how you pray, how you handle fear, how you treat people, how you face suffering, how you make decisions. Maybe the reason why it seems impossible to change the world is because we haven’t changed the way we look at God. Imagine if all the people who know Christ, looked at God the way He Is. Imagine if all the people, with that way looked at the world. Imagine the change we can bring to this place, the impact we can create and leave behind for a generation that can follow it.
The theologian A.W. Tozer once wrote that “what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” That’s a striking statement. But the more you sit with it, the more it rings true. A small God produces small faith. A distorted God produces distorted living. But a God seen clearly, in all his love, his holiness, his power, his nearness, has the capacity to completely reorient a life.
So we start at the beginning. Before the universe, before your story, before every good thing you have ever received, there was a God who needed nothing, lacked nothing, and was not waiting for anything to begin. A God who is not the product of human longing or religious tradition, but who simply, eternally, is.
That word “is”, is worth pausing on. God does not exist in the past tense. He is not the God who was. He is the God who is. Alive. Present. Here. Right now, even as you read this.
This changes everything. Including you, if you let it.
Paper Cut Premise 