Why God made us

The evil spirits who are trying to enslave us have many advantages over us. One of the sources of their strength lies in their longevity and in their clear understanding of human nature. You must always keep this in mind: the forces of darkness have had thousands of years in which to perfect the art of manipulating human beings.

If we are going to resist them then we must have a better understanding of ourselves. If the enemy knows who we are and what we are here for, and if we do not understand these things, it gives him tremendous leverage to use against us.

In today’s post we will consider the whole question of what it means to be human. Next Tuesday we will apply all of this to our war against the powers of darkness.

This is the truth about what it means to be a human. We were designed for a specific purpose: to become junior partners with God in a shared life. I believe that God designed us this way because of His own triune nature.

Let me tell you what it’s like to be a Person in the three-in-one Godhead. As I explain this please keep in mind that I am very much like a two year old who’s daddy just happens to be an astrophysicist. The two year old has only the slightest idea of what his father really does. Our understanding of God is much like that, but that doesn’t mean that the things we know aren’t true. It simply means that we only know a tiny fraction of all there is to know about God.

God is three persons sharing one life. Another way to say it is that God is three individuals sharing one life. Here are three basic facts about the Trinity and how these facts relate to the human condition.

Each person in the Trinity is never alone. They are everlastingly conscious of one another. Needless to say, this is not the way that human beings relate to one another.

Sometimes I am with my wife and sometimes I am not. When I am with her I can share my thoughts with her and she with me. When we are apart we have no idea what the other person is doing or thinking. When we come back together we can share the things that happened and what we were thinking about when we were apart. Our experience of each other is an off and on thing. Sometimes we’re together and sometimes we’re apart.

Most of us conceive of a relationship with God in the same way we think about and experience human relationships. Sometimes I’m with God (when I’m praying or worshipping) and sometimes I’m not. When I get to heaven I’ll have my own house (mansion). Sometimes I’ll be in my house, and other times I’ll be with other people, and other times I’ll go down to the temple and be in the presence of God.

That’s not the way it’s going to be. You don’t go to heaven so that you can live in God’s neighborhood. God is heaven. Being in heaven is the same thing as being constantly in the presence of God. Because of this we can mature in our Christian faith until we reach the point were we are dwelling in heaven on earth as we constantly experience His presence. Bother Lawrence is probably the best known example of this. He was a monk who lived in the middle ages. He found that he could experience just as much of God’s presence when he was working in the garden or doing dishes as he could when he was actively engaged in worship. He had learned to experience God in much the same way that the persons of the Trinity experience each other. They are never alone.

So that’s the first thing we need to learn: each person of the Godhead is everlastingly aware of the presence of the other members of the Godhead and God has specifically designed us so that we can enter into that everlasting, intimate relationship. This is what we were created for. This is the reason we exist.

The second thing we need to learn about the persons in the three-in-one God is that they flow in perfect harmony together. They are able to do this because they are the perfect mind. Oh how I wish I could convey to you in some small measure the absolute beauty and perfection of the mind of God! Because they know everything perfectly and understand everything perfectly they always agree in whatever decisions have to be made. If you could somehow separate each of the three and give them scenarios to work on each and every one of them would always come up with the exact same solution every time. And their solutions would be the best possible solutions. Every time.

We were designed to flow in perfect harmony with the will of God. We were created to become incorporated into a higher power who will be making almost all of the decisions, great and small, on the basis of His perfect wisdom and knowledge. Notice that I said “almost all of the decisions.” We can and do have some say in what happens. That is part of the mystery of prayer. For the most part we will joyfully concur with each and every decision that God makes as we marvel at the perfection of the workings of His mind. The will of God will become our will except on those occasions where our will becomes His will. From time to time our desires will change His intentions. It is love that makes this so.

When my son joined the National Guard, he had to go away and do the same basic training that regular Air Force personal go through. This training was in Texas. We live in Illinois.

I had no idea that there was a formal graduation and that families were invited to attend. So I wasn’t planning on it. We hadn’t set aside vacation time or saved up money to make the trip. So when we found out about the graduation, my will was that we ought not go. I would have liked to, but we don’t have the kind of financial resources that can easily absorb the cost of gas, motels, and meals for a trip like that without prior warning. So I decided we wouldn’t go. That was my will.

Until I found out that my wife really needed to go. Not that she wanted to go. She needed to go. And then that immediately became my will. Love made it so. Once I fully understood that there was something in her mother’s heart that made it imperative for her to go, I not only changed my mind, I become positively enthusiastic about the whole idea. (For those of you who don’t believe in miracles, I invite you to ponder the mystery of how a woman who weighs just over 100 pounds can stroll through life with a man who weighs well over 200 pounds wrapped around her little finger without even having to lean slightly in the direction of the hand that includes the finger around which the 200 plus pound man is wrapped.)

Sometimes love will make our will God’s will. If you don’t believe me, understand that when God said he was going to destroy the Israelites in the wilderness and replace them with the descendants of Moses, that was precisely what He intended to do. God never says anything that He doesn’t mean. But Moses interceded and asked God to spare them, and in a miracle of love, the will of Moses became the will of God and the Israelites were saved. I think that God allows our wills to prevail in circumstances where His perfect mind can find ways to incorporate our desires with His larger, perfect plans. But the same love that transformed the will of Moses into the will of God, and that transformed the will of Nancy into the will of Mark, will transform your will and mine into harmony with the will of the awesome, perfect, beautiful God we adore.

So these are the first to things we must know. We are designed to be everlastingly in the presence of God and in perfect harmony with the will of God. Here is the third truth about the Trinity and how His triune nature relates to human nature. It is a gleaming jewel of a truth.

God exists in a state of everlasting ecstasy. Love is what makes this so. The three Persons of the triune God-head share an everlasting drug that is stronger than the most powerful liquor man has ever distilled. And please, don’t be offended by the comparison between the love of God and drunkenness. God Himself makes that comparison/contrast when he exhorts us to “be not drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit.” As someone who was raised in the sixties I can’t find a better way to say it: God is everlastingly high on love. And He wants to share that emotional state with us everlastingly.