Who is God?

I get the feeling that people consider their thoughts to be God. I get this feeling about myself as well. This seems to happen in many ways: philosophically, spiritually/religiously, emotionally, etc.

I’d like to explore these a little further, and I’ll start with the spiritual/religious aspect. We as evangelicals seem to place a high emphasis on “hearing” God’s voice, and I think this is likely a correct emphasis, but we don’t often enter fully into the conversation of how God speaks to us. Does He influence our thoughts? I think He does, but at what point do we distinguish between what we think and what God is saying? Furthermore, how can we trust what God says to someone else, especially if we think He’s said something different to us?

So then, are our thoughts anything more than just thoughts? I don’t deny that sometimes our thoughts can come from God, but often even those thoughts that do indeed come from God come via some other means, i.e. a person, a book, a conversation. I think there is a fundamental honesty lacking when we assume that an out of place thought is a thought from God.

What seems to take the cake though, is the way we make our thoughts into our God. I’m guilty of it myself, but that doesn’t mean I can’t call it for what it is: self reliance and arrogance. Perhaps then, we would do well to allow that our thoughts are our thoughts, and take responsibility for our own actions, instead of trying to justify them by blaming God.