Lesson 4: Spiritual Formation through Knowing God

Note to class leader: Discuss the main points of Lesson 3. Ask students who are willing to share their written personal prayers from Lesson 3. Also review the three aspects of the journey of spiritual formation discussed in Lesson 2.

By the end of this lesson, the student should:

(1) Know where to look to discover who God is.

(2) Understand three important ways God reveals himself.

(3) Understand how important knowing God is to spiritual formation.

(4) Be able to articulate some of the key attributes of God.

(5) Understand how Jesus perfectly reveals the nature of God.

Ever since man’s sin in the Garden, he has been tempted to believe the worst about God. But we will never be compelled to love or imitate a God we do not trust. Some sincere believers find it difficult to pursue Christlikeness because they do not see in Jesus the beauties that others see.

Victims of Calamity

When natural disasters, acts of terror, or widespread disease strike a nation, some spiritual leaders claim that these are the outpourings of God’s wrath and judgment. Many Christians struggle with this view of God, especially since many believers suffer along with unbelievers.

Bible School Students

Several Bible school students met weekly with their college president for small group discipleship. During one of these evenings, their president and mentor asked the students this question: “If Jesus were to walk through the door right now and look directly at you, what, do you believe, would be the expression on his face?” The students were surprised by the question, but it caused them to think. A couple of them believed Jesus would look at them with disappointment. His expression would say, “You can do better.” At least one student believed Jesus would look angry. One young woman started to cry and became so emotional she couldn’t answer. Only one student believed that if Jesus walked through the door he would be smiling!

A Young Wife and Mother

Trying to teach and mentor Trisha, a new Christian, toward an established and fulfilling Christian life was not going to be easy. She had grown up in an abusive, broken home and with very few positive role models. In her late teens, she had come in contact with a group of professing Christians who made her feel like family but who also “brain-washed” her in an extremely distorted, graceless form of “Christianity.”

Under this influence Trisha never felt that she could measure up. Rather than experiencing the joy of salvation, she constantly fought doubt, despair, and shame. She became very spiritually confused. She did not know how to separate the essential doctrines of the Bible from the non-essential doctrines of her church. When she couldn’t take the pressure anymore, Trisha broke from that church and began attending the church I was pastoring. In a very tired and despondent voice one Sunday, she stood and testified, concluding her “testimony” with this very sad but revealing statement: “I’m just trying my best to stay saved!” To Trisha God is very demanding; serving him is a burden, and he is impossible to please.

When I tried to instruct Trisha in the truth of the gospel and in the doctrine of God’s grace, she seemed to view me with suspicion. I think she wondered if I was one of the “worldly” pastors her first church family had warned her about. Perhaps I was offering her a cheap version of the Christian life. Maybe being a Christian was meant to be really hard, and I was just trying to make it easy!

A Believer in Pain

A very poor farmer’s wife I met in a small village in Asia was suddenly afflicted with mysterious sores all over her body. She suffered unspeakable pain for weeks. None of the remedies prescribed by her doctor were effective. One day, a prosperity evangelist held a crusade near her village, and her family took her to meet him. He proclaimed that since sickness and suffering are a result of sin, it is always God’s will to heal physically. He preached physical healing as a blessing every believer could claim, even demand, as their rightful inheritance! He preached that those who had enough faith, and would give a “seed” offering, would receive immediate healing. Out of desperation, this poor woman gave all she could and “believed” sincerely for healing and prayed fervently. She wasn’t healed. Why? She didn’t know. Maybe she wasn’t worthy in God’s sight. Her faith was wounded. She felt abandoned by God.

An Elderly Christian

I know an elderly Christian who is tortured by thoughts about God. She believes that the bad things which happen to her are a result of God’s punishment for failure to obey all his inner promptings. Once she felt like God told her to attend a certain revival; but because she and her husband were not feeling well, they chose not to go. When she fell and broke her arm a few days later, she was sure it was God’s punishment for “disobedience.” This precious lady lives with tremendous anxiety.

A Farmer in Asia

I was recently told of a Christian farmer in the Philippines who confessed his anger and confusion to his church family. “I don’t understand it!” he exclaimed. “Why is it that my onion crop is sickly and meager, while my non-Christian neighbor’s is healthy and bountiful? God seems unfair! Since I am a Christian, shouldn’t God be prospering my onions more than my neighbor’s onions?”

A Group of Teenagers in Mexico

A group of teenagers in Mexico are forbidden from playing sports on church property. “This is sacred ground!” they are lectured from time to time, “and if you must play sports, you’ll have to do it away from God’s house!” The leaders of this congregation, as well as the teens, are confused about spirituality. Many of the teens who have grown up in this local church are turning away from God.

► What do the individuals in these stories seem to believe about God? How is their view of God shaping their lives?

Without doubt, the single greatest influence in our spiritual formation is our view of God. Your view of God is greatly impacting your life right now. It is impacting your view of yourselves. It is impacting your relationships with others. It is impacting your relationship with God. Read carefully these words from A.W. Tozer:

"Nothing twists and deforms the soul more than a low or unworthy conception of God. Certain sects, such as Pharisees, while they held that God was stern and austere, managed to maintain a fairly high level of external morality; but their righteousness was only outward.... The God of the Pharisee was not an easy God to live with, so his religion became grim and hard and loveless....

"How good it would be if we could learn that God is easy to live with. He remembers our frame and knows that we are dust. He may sometimes chasten us, it is true, but even this he does with a smile ‒ the proud, tender smile of a Father who is bursting with pleasure over an imperfect but promising son who is coming every day to look more and more like the One whose child he is."[1]

What we believe about God matters.

• Job’s friends thought God always prospers the righteous and punishes the guilty, so they judged and condemned their suffering friend as wicked.
• King Saul thought God would be more impressed with sacrifices than obedience, so he lost his kingdom.
• King David thought God’s laws were only suggestions, so he became angry with God for killing Uzza.
• The Pharisees thought holiness before God could be obtained by doing more, so they became more conservative and more sacrificial, but also more spiritually proud and abusive.
• Average people in Jesus’ day believed that calamity and sickness were always God’s curse for personal or family sin, so they blamed birth defects and falling towers on the victims.[2]
• Even the disciples believed that Jesus was sectarian, so they condemned godly workers who were not part of their team.

It really does matter what we believe about God!

[1] A.W. Tozer, “God is the Most Winsome of All Beings” in Renewed Day by Day (Volume 1).  Retrieved from https://dailytozer.wordpress.com/2012/09/01/god-is-the-most-winsome-of-all-beings September 12, 2020.

[2] John 9:3; Luke 13:2, 5

The question we want to help answer in this lesson is: How do we begin developing a healthy view of God? How do we develop ears to hear God more distinctly and eyes that see him more clearly? 

God is eternally the same, but our vision has been impaired by clouds: clouds of tradition, clouds of misconception, clouds of sin, clouds of pride, and sometimes clouds of spiritual abuse. We have developed our image of God through information we pick up from our families, our church, and our surrounding culture. Not all that we learn is wrong, of course, but some of it is. So, in every life, the image of God is obscured in some way. The enemy of our souls has seen to it. Spiritual formation can help remove everything which hides the true face of God.

When I was a boy, my family lived in the beautiful state of Washington for a period of time. One of my favorite memories of those days happened as we visited Mt. Rainier, a majestic 4,392 meter mountain, the peak of which, on a clear day, could be seen for probably a hundred miles!

One day as my father drove our family through the foothills at Mount Rainier’s base, we were disappointed that we hadn’t been able to see the peak all day because it was obscured by clouds. I remember looking wistfully out the window in the back seat of our brown station wagon just hoping for a glimpse of it when, all of a sudden, the clouds parted, and there it was! It was unspeakably glorious! To this day I cannot find the words to describe the awesome sight of that mountain peak suspended in the blue sky two kilometers above us.

It is a wonderful day in a believer’s life when the clouds disappear and he catches sight of God – God revealed most perfectly and beautifully in Jesus!

In this lesson, we will learn that a clearer, healthier view of God will be formed in a number of ways:

1. By meditating on God’s revelation of himself, especially in his creative acts and in the Scriptures. The effort to empty our minds of wrong images of God is futile unless we are constantly filling our minds with truth. It is the fresh winds of truth that push the clouds away.
2. By fixing our thoughts on Jesus, God’s full revelation of himself to man. We will train ourselves to see God in the person, teaching, and redemptive work of Jesus. We will learn that seeing God in the face of Jesus is vital to a well-formed view of God.
3. By experiencing God personally. We will learn that God most often reveals more and more of his beauty as we walk with him. All through history God has chosen to reveal the truth about himself in the context of relationship.

Then, we will learn to daily take captive every thought and make it obedient to the truth he has revealed about himself.

There are many ways in which God reveals himself to man. He reveals himself every day in the beauties and wonders of the world he has both created and sustains. The heavens declare his glory and the work of his hands.[1] Earth’s fascinating variety of creatures, its majestic mountains and flowing springs, its teeming oceans and abundant vegetation, its intricate design and fascinating mysteries all say something about his wisdom,[2] his power, and his divine nature.[3] Jesus’ own mind was intrigued by the world he had made, and he constantly referred to it in his teaching.[4] But in this lesson we will focus primarily on God’s more perfect revelation.

God Reveals Himself in the Scriptures by His Attributes

It’s important for us to study the ways God has chosen to describe himself. Take the following passage as an example:

"And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, 'The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.'”[5]

This passage is one of the best places in all of Scripture to catch a glimpse of the glorious attributes of God. In this passage, Moses, God’s friend,[6] asked to see God’s glory! It is a bold request. God responded,

"I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim the name of the LORD to you…. So it shall be, while my glory passes by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock, and will cover you with my hand while I pass by."[7]

Though Moses was only given a glimpse of God’s back, and not his full glory – his face – that day,[8] yet the revelation of God was so holy and beautiful and compelling that it caused Moses to “bow his head toward the earth and worship.” Rather than cause Moses to run away, this vision of God caused Moses to plead for God to go with his people, to “pardon our iniquity and sin,” and to “take us as your inheritance.”[9] Moses wanted to belong to this God!

► As you reflect prayerfully on the following attributes of God revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai, ask yourself the question: Is the God Moses saw the God I know in my mind and heart?

(1) LORD – Yahweh

Moses learned that God is “LORD, the LORD God.” When LORD is written in capitals, it indicates the personal name for the God of Israel – Yahweh. Yahweh is the God who loves, provides for, defends, and disciplines his inheritance.

(2) Compassionate or Merciful

The first attribute of Yahweh listed is that he is a “compassionate” God, meaning that he genuinely cares about humans and holds toward them a tender attitude of concern and mercy.

(3) Gracious

Second, Yahweh called himself “gracious,” meaning that he does things for people they do not deserve and goes beyond what might be expected to grant truly kind favor toward people.

(4) Slow to anger

Third, Yahweh described himself as “slow to anger,” meaning that he has patience with people’s less-than-satisfactory behavior and failures, including their moral failures. Yahweh is the God of the second chance!

(5) Love

Fourth, Yahweh declared himself to be “abounding” (literally, “great”) in “love.” The Hebrew word hesed, here translated love (NIV) or goodness (NKJV), is a word used 175 times in the Bible in reference to God. It speaks of his undeserved, unshakable love and kindness. It is a word which speaks of the compassionate, undying, loving devotion of one member of a covenant relationship to another. However fickle and unreliable humans may be in their relationship to God, he can be counted on in every situation and at all times to be completely faithful to his promises!

(6) Truth

Next, he described himself as “abounding in truth,” meaning that whatever he says is correct, reliable, and may be trusted even to the extent of life and death issues, or indeed eternal life and death issues.[10]

► Take some time to meditate on these attributes of God and ask yourself if this looks like the God you have in your mind. Does God seem as wonderful to you as he did to Moses?

[1] Psalm 19:1

[2] Psalm 104:24. This whole chapter is a beautiful depiction of God as both creator and sustainer of his world.

[3] Romans 1:20

[4] Matthew 6:26-29 as an example

[5] Exodus 34:6

[6] Exodus 33:11

[7] Exodus 33:19; 22

[8] Exodus 33:23

[9] Exodus 34:9

[10] D. K. Stuart, Exodus (Volume 2), (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2006), pp. 715–716

Jesus is the Glory of God

► Read John 1:14-18 thoughtfully.

In this text, John is telling us that the glory of God Moses could not see, and was not permitted to see, we have seen in the revelation of Jesus:

"And the Word [who 'was with God' and who 'was God'[1]] became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory…. And of his fullness we have all received.... No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him.[2]

In these verses, John is teaching the astounding truth that Jesus is the full revelation of the glory of God and that Jesus, the one who was in the “bosom of the Father,” or the one who is united with and who knows the Father intimately, has come to our world to make him known to us; not just that we might know about him, but that we might know him intimately.

The name Father is more perfectly revealed in the Gospels. The New Testament reveals that through faith in Christ, God becomes our Father ‒ a name for God used only fifteen times in the Old Testament, but 245 times in the New! As a name of God, it stresses God’s loving care, provision, discipline, and the way we are to address God in prayer. Through Jesus, we are brought into fellowship with Father God![3]

In Jesus, God gave more than his names and attributes. He gave us himself! He gave us one we could see with our eyes, hear with our ears, and touch with our hands.[4]

Jesus Makes God’s Nature Clearly Visible

“For it is God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”[5]

► What do you think the phrase, “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” means?

What this verse means is that God has illuminated the heart of every true believer to see in Jesus every attribute, every excellency of God. In Jesus the glory of the triune God is seen in flesh and blood.

The understanding that God is fully revealed in Jesus will be the most spiritually formative influence in our lives when we fully grasp it. Why? Because in times of confusion about God and his ways, we will learn to turn to the life and teaching of Jesus for answer.

The fullest revelation of God is not in his creation, his names, or his attributes. These are wonderful and true revelations. But the fullest revelation of God is in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Those who truly grasp and receive this amazing truth will be put on a path of freedom, healing, and wholeness.

Everything God is, Jesus is. Every attribute of God is also an attribute of Jesus. Every name of God is the name of Jesus. Whoever Jesus is, God is. Therefore, any concept of God in my mind that is not consistent with the person, redemptive work, and teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ, as taught in the Word of God, is a counterfeit God.

The God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament are the same. But only in the incarnation, only in the gospel can God be clearly understood.

Jesus reveals that God is holy love ‒ that he is good, patient, trustworthy, generous, faithful, holy, just, and so much more.

► Take a few moments to think about the formative influences in your life. How do you think your family, church, and culture have shaped your understanding of God? Yourself? Are there things my family or church teach about God which are not consistent with the life and teaching of Jesus?

Jesus Is God’s Interpreter

When I travel overseas I often need an interpreter. Why? Not because other languages don't make sense, but because they don't make sense to me! My brain hasn't learned how to interpret the various sounds and expressions, so I need someone who does understand them to interpret them for me. I have found that the best interpreters are people who not only understand my language and culture, but people native to the culture and language I want to understand. Native speakers can understand and interpret their culture in ways that outsiders cannot. In the same way, God’s prophets, priests, and poets were divinely inspired to explain the nature, ways, and will of God. They did the best they could. But only God can fully reveal and explain God; that’s why Jesus, the God-man, heaven’s native, came. In him, and through him, God could at last be heard, seen, and touched in flesh and blood. Through him alone, sinful man can be reconciled to God. 

A Personal Journey

“The process of spiritual formation in Christ is one of progressively replacing... destructive images and ideas with the images and ideas that filled the mind of Jesus himself.”[6]

I am blessed to have had a wonderful, godly upbringing. My childhood was filled with really good, godly saints, including my parents, who loved me, instructed me in God's Word, and who provided wonderful examples to follow. Unfortunately, a few preachers and teachers I heard as a young person taught a distorted gospel. Their messages produced confusion, a distrust of balanced, biblical teachers, and a degree of spiritual insecurity (even a few struggles with false guilt and shame). 

I remember the period of my early walk with God when I said, “Father, I can't make sense of all these voices and opinions! My church teaches one thing, and other churches teach another. One Bible teacher says one thing, and another teacher seems to contradict him. Who has it right, God? I want to know the truth!”

During this season of searching for answers, it slowly began to dawn on me that one of the primary reasons God sent his Son into the world was to clear up my confusion about God. From childhood I had been taught that Jesus is God, but I hadn’t fully understood that Jesus came to fully reveal what God is like. The Holy Spirit began to quicken certain passages in my heart, passages like the following:

• “He who has seen me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?”[7]
• “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.”[8]
• “For it pleased the Father that in him all the fullness should dwell.”[9]

It finally began to sink in that Jesus truly is God in the flesh, the full and final revelation of God, and that I could trust him to help me understand God and his ways. I began to understand now that God had been progressively revealing himself throughout biblical history, but that Jesus was, and is, the full and perfect revelation of God in flesh and blood.[10]

I understood that all through Old Testament history God taught mankind about himself, and especially about his redeeming love. He spoke through the creation of the world; through the Garden of Eden; through his evening walks in that garden with Adam and Eve; through the promise of a Savior, even after their fall; through the tunics of skin made by God for a covering; through the ark of Noah with a single door; through his covenant with Abraham and his descendants; through the deliverance of his chosen people from slavery through the Red Sea; through his awesome presence on Mt. Sinai; through his holy law; through his beautiful tabernacle with all its redemptive symbols, anointed priesthood, blood sacrifices, and glory; through his judgements on rebellion; through his miraculous provisions of manna and water from the rock which was struck; through his victories over wicked nations; through his Land of Promise; and through his messages of judgment and hope through his prophets and poets of Israel. Every time God spoke, he was pointing sinful man to a sinless Savior who would redeem fallen man and restore him to fellowship with God. So, the only way to truly understand anything in the Bible is to know Jesus. Jesus is the one everything and everyone points to. He is the beginning and the end of everything. 

As the Lord Jesus became my focal point as a young man, little by little the clouds of confusion began to lift. With the Holy Spirit’s help, I began to test the teachings I had heard, as well as my own understanding of God, with the question: Is this teaching and belief consistent with the truth about God which Jesus reveals?[11]

I would also ask myself: What did it mean for the disciples to follow Jesus two thousand years ago? What does it mean to follow Jesus now? Little by little, the confusing, conflicting voices of men began to fade; and I began to hear the voice of the Shepherd. By the grace of God and the counsel of godly mentors, I began to rediscover the beauty and simplicity of following Jesus Christ. 

God Is Revealed in the Narratives of Jesus

There are portraits of Jesus in the Gospels that help us frame our understanding of what God must be like. In one portrait, we find him reclining at a table with sinners. In another portrait, we see happy little children climbing up on his lap, without a shred of fear. In another portrait, we see him squatting on a sandy beach along the shore of Galilee cooking fish for his weary and worn disciples. I also love the biblical portrait of Jesus walking with and teaching the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Then, there are the many portraits of Jesus during Passion Week: washing the feet of his disciples, breaking the bread and pouring the wine, falling on his face in the garden, standing silent before his accusers, and hanging willingly on the cross. Each one of these portraits is meant to say something about who God is in his redeeming love.

The most important lessons we will ever learn about God we will learn most clearly from the narratives of Jesus – from his teaching.

• Jesus reveals that God loves sinners.
• Jesus reveals that God is generous.
• Jesus reveals that God is not harsh, impatient, unkind, or angry with disciples if they fail.
• Jesus reveals that a real disciple is one who takes up his or her cross daily and follows Jesus.
• Jesus reveals that God’s love for his children is unconditional.
• Jesus reveals that salvation can never be earned but is always by grace through faith in him.
• Jesus reveals that many of those who are unknown in this life will be famous in eternity.
• Jesus reveals that the greatest in God’s kingdom is the one who serves.
• Jesus reveals that grace is opposed to earning but not to effort.
• Jesus reveals that we can never impress God by our good works but only with our dependence on him.
• Jesus reveals that God isn’t keeping a record of how many times he’s forgiven us, and that he will always forgive a repentant soul one more time.
• Jesus reveals that God chastens and corrects, but never punishes, those who love him.
• Jesus reveals that God is never surprised by our failures.
• Jesus reveals that God treasures our love for him and for people far more than our sacrifice.
• Jesus reveals that God does allow his children to suffer, and even die, especially when it serves his redemptive plan.
• Jesus reveals that God hates sin so much that he sent his one and only Son to die as our sin bearer.
• Jesus reveals that death has no power over God!

These are just a few of the lessons Jesus makes clear as we get to know him.

► Think over the painful stories at the beginning of this chapter and discuss how what you have learned in this chapter could help these who struggle with a wrong concept of God.

[1] John 1:1

[2] John 1:1, 14, 16, 18

[3] Matthew 7:11; James 1:7; Hebrews 12:5-11; John 15:6; 16:23; Romans 8:14-17; Galatians 4:4-7; Ephesians 2:18; 3:15;
1 Thessalonians 3:11

[4] 1 John 1:1

[5] 2 Corinthians 4:6, emphasis added.

[6] Dallas Willard, as quoted in James Bryan Smith, The Good and Beautiful God (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2009), 75

[7] John 14:9, emphasis added.

[8] Colossians 1:15, emphasis added.

[9] Colossians 1:19, emphasis added.

[10] Hebrews 1:1-3

[11] An expression borrowed from James Bryan Smith, The Good and Beautiful God (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2009)

While our experiences must always be measured against the Word of God, yet God wants to reveal himself in the context of daily life.

In the Bible, Abraham and Sarah learned about God’s faithfulness as they walked with God in faith and struggled with conflicts, famine, and fear. Jacob learned about God’s purifying grace as he faced the consequences of his own deceptive nature (the consequences being his brother’s army of 400 men) and wrestled with God for a blessing. Joseph came to know the depth of God’s forgiving love as a forced slave in Egypt. Young David learned of God’s power in weakness as he ran toward Goliath with a sling and five stones. Hannah learned that God responds to humble, desperate prayer. Jesus learned obedience through the things he suffered. The disciples learned of God’s hatred for sin while they watched the passion of Jesus; they learned of his amazing grace and divine power as they fulfilled the Great Commission.

Just like these, we will learn most about God as we walk daily with him. There are many beauties in God we will never see until the eyes of our heart are opened through difficulty, through some challenging place on our journey with him. There are many painful truths about ourselves we will never see until we encounter trouble. So don’t be in a hurry. Never despair. Every step in our walk with Jesus is an adventure intended to form us into his likeness.[1] If we have eyes to see and ears to hear, then every test, every misunderstanding, and every experience will become our teacher.

We will never be formed in the virtue of love simply by reading about it or hearing a sermon about it or by attending a love conference. The knowledge gained through reading, anointed preaching, and conferences is important; but experience is the best teacher.

I know that God is sovereign because in a crisis moment in our family’s journey we became profoundly aware of it. While on a very brief visit to the USA from the Philippines, our five-week-old son, Jesse, was diagnosed with cancer. We were not supposed to be in the USA at that time, but I had been asked to testify in a criminal trial to a random street crime I had witnessed a year earlier. If we had not been back in the USA, we would not have had the medical help Jesse needed. In the car on the way to my wife’s parents’ home, our hearts were flooded with praise and a profound awareness of God’s sovereignty. The detailed way in which God had ordered our steps, timed Jesse’s birth, moved mountains at the US Embassy in Manila, and prepared us for that moment was comforting beyond description.

I know that God holds all power, for we have experienced it. One night while serving the Lord overseas, my wife and I were both awakened in the middle of the night by a terrifying evil presence in our room! Just then, our eight-year-old son, Timothy, came into our room holding his throat and whimpering that he felt something choking him. We were shaken! I reached for my Bible in desperation, opened it to Psalm 91, and began to read, “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty (El Shaddai)….” By the time I had finished the chapter, the peace of God had completely dispelled the darkness, and Timothy was asleep on the floor.

We must experience God! For our sake, and for the sake of our children and grandchildren, we must come to know who God is through personal experience.

► Ask students to share ways they have experienced God. Be sure to measure every experience by the clear revelation of the Scriptures.

[1] Romans 5:3

(1) Take a test based on the material from this lesson.

(2) Spend at least thirty minutes this week reviewing this lesson, including the Scripture references, asking the Holy Spirit for insight.

(3) Record in your journal any specific changes that ought to be made in your life, as the Lord reveals them to you.

(4) Meditate on at least one Psalm in your daily devotional time, and record in your journal what the psalmist says about the nature and character of God.

(5) Record in your journal a personal prayer for spiritual transformation and growth based on this lesson.

(6) Practice using Dr. Brown’s Daily Prayer Guide in your daily private prayer.

(1) What are the three keys to developing a healthier view of God presented in Lesson 4?

(2) Briefly define the attributes of God named in Exodus 34:4-11.

(3) Offer Scripture references which show that Jesus is the full revelation of God.