Repentance, Healing and Three Attributes of God

It is vital that we come to know in our hearts that God is greater than anything we have ever experienced and therefore capable of changing that which we may have known for most of our time on earth. There are so many things in our lives that we have seen and felt, been and done, possessed and lost. All too often these things have crippled us spiritually, emotionally and psychologically, and may continue to do so long years into our Christian lives.

It is easy to forget, or simply to not fully believe in, some of the attributes of God that can give us the most hope for real personal transformation. For instance we forget that He is omnipotent, all-powerful. There is nothing in our damaged and sin-wracked hearts that His power cannot heal once we have repented in spirit and in truth. Even the very ability to give ourselves over to such repentance comes from His omnipotent kindness leading us there. We fail to remember that His capacity to transform is absolute. His arm is never too short to save no matter how bad we think our lives have been or how terrible and repetitive have been our sins. It is a matter of recognizing that God is not “almighty” in the abstract. He is almighty in our most intimate and guarded selves. He is almighty to us as individuals.

God is also omniscient. By this we mean that He is all-knowing. Sometimes, many times if those of us who struggle are honest with ourselves, we must admit that we do not really feel “known” by the One we call Lord. This is because we do not feel the intimacy with God that we assume would come with being so known. But God never promises that we will always sense His presence in the “knowing”. We must take it on faith that His very nature as God insures that nothing which continues to hurt and cripple us is not fully and intimately known and understood by Him. We must trust that the power He can wield in our lives for good is always guided by a personal knowledge of who we are that goes far beyond our own often flawed self-knowledge.

These two attributes, omnipotence and omniscience, are vital for us to apprehend and accept as absolute truth if we are to find the faith to believe in the potential of God’s transformative power for our lives. But they are not enough for us. We must also accept another eternal attribute of our Creator and Redeemer in Christ if we are to have real hope. That attribute is His absolute goodness. Our God is un-utterably good. There is nothing of the wicked to be found in Him….ever. Wickedness is a characteristic only of created beings that were given the divine gift of free-will and then used it to rebel against God. God Himself is purely good and therefore, by blessed extension, good to us. The aspect of this goodness that is most needful for we who struggle so hard in the Christian life to know is that it favorably disposes God towards us. He desires our good because He is good.

So these three aspects of God’s unchanging nature together can give us the hope we need for real and blessed change in who we are this very moment. His omnipotence supplies the power greater than any external power blocking our repentance and healing. His omniscience enables Him to know completely what inside of us is in desperate need of change. Finally God’s pure and infinite goodness motivates Him to use both of the other attributes to transform us according to what we most deeply need, and what He most deeply wants for us.

If you have found it difficult to believe that real and positive change is still possible in your life try meditating regularly on these three aspects of God’s perfect character. Beyond that, meditate on all the aspects of who God is. You may find yourself beginning to believe that since “nothing is impossible” for such a God maybe, just maybe, He can and will deliver you from the things you have felt helpless to change by yourself.