God’s Attributes in Counseling
AW Tozer says “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”
God is not like you!
There is such a vast difference between Creator and creature that we do not really comprehend God.
Augustine said, “If you comprehend, it is not God you comprehend. Let it be a pious confession of ignorance rather than a rash profession of knowledge. To attain some slight knowledge of God is a great blessing; to comprehend him, however, is totally impossible.”
There is no way for a finite sinner to comprehend a Holy God. Scripture makes this clear.
Isaiah 40:28 says “his understanding is unsearchable”
Isaiah 46:9 says “I am God, and there is none like me”
Isaiah 40:17-18 “All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness. To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare him with?”
If we know anything about God it is because He has chosen to make it known. God chose to write a book and reveal His nature to us and chooses to be in relationship with His children. His revelation of himself is a gift! Our response to his revelation about himself is not to demand more, but to meditate on what is revealed in scripture and worship.
The theology term for God’s essence is “simple”. Simplicity means that God is not made up of parts; he is not composite or a compounded being. It is not theologically precise to say God possesses attributes; rather He is His attributes.
A. W. Tozer says , “The doctrine of the divine unity means not only that there is but one God; it means also that God is simple, uncomplex, one with Himself. The harmony of His being is the result not of a perfect balance of parts but of the absence of parts. Between His attributes no contradiction can exist. He need not suspend one to exercise another, for in Him all His attributes are one. All of God does all that God does; He does not divide himself to perform a work, but works in the total unity of His being.
The divine attributes are what we know to be true of God. He does not possess them as qualities; they are how God is as He reveals Himself to His creatures. Love, for instance, is not something God has and which may grow or diminish or cease to be. His love is the way God is, and when He loves He is simply being Himself. And so with the other attributes.” (chapter 3, Knowledge of the Holy)
God does not lose any of His being as He shows grace or mercy. Those are not things that are dispensed. Grace and mercy is who God is. God does not expend strength as a person does. We may expend energy and be tired. God never changes.
God is Goodness itself. All that is good is imitating the nature of God.
God is Truthfulness. All truth is truth because it is mimicking the very nature of God, who is Truth.
God is Triune. The Father, Son and Spirit are not parts of God. The Trinity is three persons. Each Person does not possess part of the divinity, nor does each person make up a part of God like you need to add up the qualities of each to be the totality of God. Instead, each Person of the Trinity equally and fully shares the undivided essence of God. The Father is God and all His attributes. Jesus is God and all His attributes. The Holy Spirit is God and all His attributes. God is not divided!
Each Person of the Trinity has different roles, but each is equally and fully God.
For example:
The Son came incarnate and died on the cross.
The Holy Spirit illuminates scripture and reminds us of the truth of God’s word.
The Father sent the Son and it is His will that is fulfilled.
God is not like you! He is all that He is at all times and never changes. He is always all that He is - nothing is lost, used up, or lessened, EVER.
God is independent of the created order. He is self-sufficient and self-existent. He is life in and of Himself. God has always existed as all of Himself and will always exist as His whole being.
A.W. Tozer says, “When we try to imagine what God is like we must of necessity use that-which-is-not-God as the raw material for our minds to work on; hence whatever we visualize God to be, He is not, for we have constructed our image out of that which He has made and what He has made is not God. If we insist upon trying to imagine Him we end with an idol, made not with hands but with thoughts, and an idol of the mind is as offensive to God as an idol of the hand… For while the name of God is secret and His essential nature incomprehensible, He in condescending love has by revelation declared certain things to be true of Himself. These we call His attributes.” - from Knowledge of the Holy
What types of counseling situations need to address the attributes of God? Maybe your counselee is experiencing ANXIETY over an illness or a difficult situation with a child or spouse. Or, you may have a counselee who is experiencing DEPRESSIVE type symptoms over being alone or struggling through a long-term suffering. A person might seek counseling for a life-enslaving sin like alcohol or pornography. A counselee may be seeking help to forgive a past hurt or to learn how to work through conflict in a relationship. Whatever situation or sin a counselee is facing, be thinking about these attributes of God, how each attribute can bring HELP and HOPE to a counselee. Every counseling situation needs to involve a study of God.
I start EVERY counselee off with studying God’s attributes. Whether the counselee is primarily a sinner or sufferer, knowing God is key. I give them reading on about 12 attributes of God that explain who God is and how their circumstances can be viewed differently because of those truths. Our counselees come in for help because they are looking at their circumstances and don’t know what to do. They are so consumed with life’s situations, that their view of God is getting smaller. When the prodigal son came to his senses in the pig pen, he recounted the goodness of his father and all that his father had done for him. When Nebuchadnezzar comes to his senses after 7 years of acting like a cow, he looks up and thinks rightly about God. Our counselees need to get their eyes on God. Then, their circumstances will be viewed through the lens of truth that a Holy, Merciful, Omnipotent, Omnipresence, Omniscient God is with them and for them!