Asking questions is one of the best ways to come to understand. Likewise, answering questions sheds light on our views, both accurate and distorted. For instance, if our views of God are distorted we may be led in the wrong direction when seeking His will, even if we ask the right question. As the saying goes, if our ladder is propped up against the wrong wall, then you or I won’t be where we wish to be when we get to the top. So how do we know when our ladder is properly placed? Let’s look at three answers to the question, “Who do you say I am?” and how a correct view and a distorted view changes the location of that ladder.

God the Father
    So what kind of father are we talking about? Are we talking about a drill sergeant parent, a pushover father, a controlling and smothering dad? Our human terms limit us.  Even the Bible’s authors struggled to describe the great I AM. They recognized the shortcomings of their language, and feared, or as we better understand it today, revered God.
    The name Yahweh meaning the self-existent, ever-present One, occurs 5,311 times in the Old Testament as the primary name given the Creator God. He is the One who always has been and always will be present. In the Gospels Jesus adds yet another dimension to God’s character by calling God, Father. 275 times Jesus calls God, Father; a title given more than any other name. No longer is God simply ‘God the Father, our Creator,’ but he is now ‘our Father which art in heaven.’ This intimate, stunningly personal relationship must have been revolutionary to a people who so revered his name they would not even spell it out fully. Of all the names of God, Abba most fully addresses this intimacy. Abba, the name a Jewish or Arab child would use for his daddy, is often combined with the word father. This Father-son, Father-daughter relationship is what Jesus was establishing when he taught us to pray saying “Our Father...” It is not to some distant, overbearing, rule-touting, or abusive father that we are praying but to our “Abba,” our “Daddy,” who longs to protect us, hold us dearly, and love us unconditionally.

God Our Guide
    As we’ve seen with the metaphor of Father, it has its limitations. Jesus fully understood this when he used the term to describe God the Father, and God our Father. If he had done just that, then we’d rightly be confused, but Jesus went beyond the simple metaphor. He combined it with parable to paint a picture of our Creator as similar to or like our earthly fathers in some ways, yet radically different.
    Take the story of The Prodigal Son, which is a story Jesus shared to help us understand our heavenly father. Every one of us remembers what it was like to be a teenager who thought we knew it all. The son in this story is no different. He asks his father for his share of the inheritance and then skipped town. Now I’m certain this father knew his son well enough to know what he was about to do, but he chose to give him the freedom to make his own mistakes. And just like good parents who send their children out into this world, having given their children all of the guidance and training they could, God stands ready to pick us up when we fall.
Yet our God is radically different than our earthly fathers because he knows more about our futures than they do. In the parable the father runs to greet his wayward child and throws a celebration. Now I don’t know about you, but that would not have been my father’s response. But our Heavenly Father sees beyond our actions to who we are becoming. God’s guidance is not about telling us what we should and should not do, which is not to say he does not do that, but his purpose is more long term. Like the prodigal son, He will allow us to go off and make mistakes, even big ones, because it is through the process of making choices that we learn to be who he has intended us to be. 
 
God as Friend
    I was blessed to grow up in a Christian home where the name of Jesus was as common as hearing my own. I also grew up during a time in the Christian church when the theological pendulum had swung away from viewing God as the taskmaster towards seeing Him as our friend. In Sunday school we sang songs about Jesus as friend, and when I spoke of my relationship with him I used the language of friendship—buddy, pal, confidant, companion, soul mate.   
    Knowing God as my Best Friend brought great comfort through my difficult teenage years. During tough times I’d sit in the wooden pews in the tiny chapel at our church talking out loud to my Best Friend, confident that He was always there for me, would never forsake me, and always understood me better than anyone else ever could.
    When you and I have a best friend, we know what she likes to eat, her favorite color, and how she likes to celebrate her birthday. We also know her pet peeves, the things that make her angry, and what disappoints her. Likewise, when we know Jesus as our Best Friend, we make it a point to know what pleases and disappoints him and then we adjust our behavior accordingly.

Who Do You Say I Am?
    What would my Father say, what would my Guide do, what would my Best Friend think? When we’re in an intimate relationship with Him these become our first thoughts. Placing our ladder against the wall of God as our Abba, Father, Guide, and Best Friend, will allow us to answer the question, “Who Do You Say I Am?” with confidence and trust that the One who holds all the answers is leading us all the way.
  

Cheri Cowell is a speaker and the author of Direction: Discernment for the Decisions of Your Life, which offers a biblically-sound, no-nonsense approach to making God-centered life choices. To find out more visit www.DirectionAndDiscernment.com

To learn more about Cheri the speaker and the presentations she offers, poke around on this site. Then give her a shout through email .

To receive Cheri's monthly e-zine (newsletter) with a new article each month like the one above sign up here.