Who Is God, Anyway?
We don't know what God looks like or how big he is. What we do know about God comes from the things we know he has done.
God made every one and every thing, including each and every one of us.
God made order in the world. Because of God's desire for order, morning always follows night (we never have three nights in a row with no days)
God made all kinds of things. We still have not found and named all the kinds of plants there are in the world, nor have we found and named all the creatures who live in the ocean. We still haven't found all the stars, either. Only God knows each and every one, because he made them.
The world is beautiful because God seems to like beautiful things. We could live in a black and white world with only six kinds of trees and five kinds of birds, but God likes the beauty of variety and color.
God gives us many gifts. He gives us our homes, our parents, our health, and everything we need for daily life. He especially gives us the gift of laughter, of getting the joke and seeing the silliness around us when we think life is becoming too hard.
God cares about us. He wants to hear our prayers, and he sent his only son, Jesus to live and to die for us, so that we might lead good lives, filled with thankfulness to him.
God sends us his Spirit, who callsus to do what God wants us to do, and who fills us with God's presence with every breath, so that God can live in our hearts.
Together, God the Father, God the Son (Jesus) and God the Holy Spirit are called the Trinity or the triune (three-in-one) God.
We learn about God in his book, the Bible.
Why Do We Study God's
Word?
We study God's word because
God's word is the most direct way to get to know about him.
God is the
most fascinating subject in the universe. Learning who he is, what he has
created, why he cares about us, and what he would like us to do in return for
all the gifts he gives us can take a lifetime of study.
Our primary text
is the Bible, the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments. We use several
different translations: the King James Version for its beautiful poetry, the New
Revised Standard Version for its careful scholarship, the New International
Version for its simpler vocabulary, and the Contemporary English Version for its
gift of storytelling.