The Scriptures brim with all types of metaphors, similes, and phrase photos to explain God and His work. God has designed us to resonate with imaginative methods of describing actuality. We really feel God’s unshakable energy as He compares Himself to immovable rock. We really feel the deep guttural rumble of God’s energy as He calls Himself a lion. We really feel His tenderness when He comforts us with rod and workers.
Our connection to those metaphors and photos relies upon our experiences of encountering them outdoors of the Bible. We join with God deeply as lion as a result of now we have stood by an enclosure in a zoo or animal park and felt in our chests the fierceness of a lion’s roar. We develop in appreciation of God’s stability and unchangeableness as we consider El Capitan or the rugged majesty of the Rockies. Photographs work as a result of they breathe emotion and understanding from one area of life into one other, creating contemporary methods to see what has already been seen.
What If the Photographs Are Scary?
However what about when an individual’s expertise of a metaphor or picture is profoundly unfavorable? An individual who has been mauled by a lion skilled its energy, however that energy was directed towards their hurt. That individual metaphor might have grow to be cluttered, a mixture of understanding what the Bible is educating about God and chronic emotional issue as speaking about God-as-lion brings again into focus issues they’d a lot fairly neglect.
God-as-lion isn’t a dominant metaphor within the Scriptures. However what of a counselee who struggles with the idea of God-as-Father? Earthly fathers are meant to be pictures of this Nice Father, but some fathers are remembered not for his or her safety, provision, and kindness however for his or her self-centeredness, cruelty, and hurt. What can we do when a counselee’s expertise of their father makes all fathers really feel unsafe and untrustworthy?
Answering this query requires cautious consideration. On the one hand, we want for our counselee to have their expertise of their Heavenly Father’s goodness overwrite their expertise of their earthly father’s cruelty. Then again, the injury accomplished to folks can run deep, and for a lot of people, the visceral flip that occurs when staring on the phrase “Father” drowns out the numerous different fantastic truths that they may hear in any other case.
God’s multifaceted presentation of Himself by way of a large variety of pictures, photos, and metaphors implies that when certainly one of these causes vital misery, we might typically get to the identical truths about God by way of different avenues. Reasonably than merely making an attempt to vary their intestine response to the time period “father,” we will start by asking, “What door can we step by way of into this individual’s life that enables them to expertise God actually and richly?” Extra necessary than connecting with anybody picture of God is connecting with God Himself.
God Photos Himself as Our Mom
One picture of God that we might typically overlook is all of the locations God describes Himself in motherly pictures. Maybe this is because of issues that we’d start conceiving of God as a lady. Nonetheless, there are numerous locations within the Scriptures the place God describes His love, His compassion, and His safety in female pictures. Think about the next three examples:
1. God’s Deep Love
“Hearken to me, O home of Jacob,
all of the remnant of the home of Israel,
who’ve been borne by me from earlier than your start,
carried from the womb;
even to your outdated age I’m he,
and to grey hairs I’ll carry you.
I’ve made, and I’ll bear;
I’ll carry and can save” (Isa. 46:3-4).
2. God’s Tender Compassion
“As a mom comforts her son,
so I’ll consolation you” (Isa. 66:13).
3. God’s Fierce Safety
“I’ll assault them
like a bear robbed of her cubs
and tear open the rib cage over their hearts.
I’ll devour them there like a lioness,
like a wild beast that might rip them open” (Hosea 13:8).
All three of those passages body God’s energy, compassion, and safety by way of female pictures. God carries and bears and comforts His youngsters like a mom. He defends them like a bear robbed of her cubs. These character qualities are neither masculine nor female, but they’ve completely different hues and textures positioned in female imagery fairly than masculine.
As counselors who search to have interaction our counselees with the total counsel of God, we’re sensible to have the ability to use each metaphor and picture that God offers us in His textual content. We don’t wish to let worry of individuals imagining a feminine deity or fear that we gained’t be perceived as “complementarian sufficient” to functionally clip the Bible right into a smaller ebook. Our want is to deliver the best quantity of hope to our counselees through the use of the whole lot of what God has given us for our transformation.
Conclusion
The Bible is deep and large with metaphors and pictures about God and His work. Totally different counselees will join extra strongly with sure pictures over others as completely different personalities, completely different experiences, and lots of different components affect the way in which they learn the biblical textual content. The broader our capacity to attract from each image painted by the Scriptures, the broader our assist will probably be as we search to minister to God’s folks.
Questions for Reflection
- What are your favourite pictures or metaphors from the Scriptures? What about these resonate so strongly with you?
- What pictures or metaphors do you not resonate nicely with? Are you able to determine why this may be the case?
- What’s one picture of God within the Scriptures that you could be underutilize in your counseling?
