I Believe… In God the Father

It is utterly necessary that we know this God, this One that John wrote about, this One that the poet speaks about, this One that theology talks about and this One that we’re sent to preach and teach about. It is absolutely, utterly, and critically necessary that we know this One, for you see, man fell when he lost his right concept of God.

As long as man trusted God everything was all right; human beings were healthy and holy (or at least innocent), and pure and good. But then the devil came along and threw a question mark into the mind of the woman: “And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said . . . ?” (Gen. 3:1). This was equivalent to sneaking around behind God’s back and casting doubt on the goodness of God. And then began the progressive degeneration downward.

That first chapter of Romans ends with a terrible charge of unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, and all the long, black list of crimes and sins that man has been guilty of.

All that came about because man lost his confidence in God. He didn’t know God’s character. He didn’t know what kind of God God was. He got all mixed up about what God was like. Now the only way back is to have restored confidence in God. And the only way to have restored confidence in God is to have restored knowledge of God.

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One hour with the majesty of God would be worth more to you now and in eternity than all the preachers—including myself— that ever stood up to open their Bible. I want a vision of the majesty of God—not as that song says, “one transient gleam”—no, I don’t want anything transient, I want the gleam of majesty and wonder to be permanent! I want to live where the face of God shines every day. No child says, “Mother, let me see your face transiently.” The child wants to be where any minute of the hour he can look up and see his mother’s face.

Excerpted from The Apostles’ Creed by A.W. Tozer, chapter 1.