The God You Inherited

D E V O T I O N A L

I was praying one night and caught myself bracing.

That is the only word for it. I was bringing something to God that I was not proud of, and my whole posture, even in my own head, was the posture of a kid walking into the principal's office. Shoulders up. Explanation ready. Waiting for the part where I got told what a disappointment I was.

And somewhere in the middle of it, a question surfaced that I did not have a good answer for.

Where did I learn to expect that from Him?

Because it was not from scripture. I had read the thing about the father running toward the son who wasted everything. I knew the verses. I could have taught them to somebody else. But knowing it and expecting it turned out to be two very different things, and in that moment, the expectation was running the show.

Here is what I think happens to a lot of us. Nobody sits you down and formally teaches you what God is like. You absorb it. You pick it up in pieces from the people and experiences around you, and by the time you are old enough to examine any of it, it has already set.

If love in your house came with conditions, you probably learned that God's does too. If the adult you looked up to was warm one day and cold the next, you might still approach God not knowing which version you are going to get. If you grew up in a church that was heavy on what God hated and light on what He loved, that is the voice that shows up when you pray.

None of that was a decision you made. It was just the water you swam in.

And so a lot of us end up with an inherited God. Not the one in scripture. A composite built out of a father, a pastor, a bad season, a sermon that landed wrong. We carry that version around and never think to check it against the actual thing.

Jesus addressed this more directly than we usually notice. In John 14:9 Philip asks Him to show them the Father, and Jesus says "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father!"

That is His correction. You want to know what God is like? Look at Me. Stop guessing. Stop generalizing from the people who hurt you. Look at Me.

So look at Him.

Look at who He went to. Not the polished people. The ones everybody else had written off. Look at how He handled the woman they dragged in front of Him ready to stone, and compare that to how you assume God handles you when you have blown it. Look at Peter, who denied knowing Him at the worst possible moment, and look at the breakfast on the beach afterward. No lecture. No probation period. Just restoration and a job to do.

That is the Father. Not the one you pieced together. That one.

And I think this matters more than we realize, because you cannot really love a God you are afraid of. You can obey Him. You can perform for Him. You can show up every week and do everything right and never once relax in His presence, because some part of you is always waiting for the other shoe.

A relationship built on bracing is not a relationship. It is a performance review that never ends.

So here is what I would ask you to do this week. When you pray, notice your posture. Not your words. Your posture. Are you coming to someone you trust, or are you coming with your defense already prepared?

And if it is the second one, ask yourself where that came from. Not to assign blame to anybody. Just to see it clearly. Because once you can see that the picture was handed to you, you can start to question it. And once you can question it, you can replace it with the one Jesus actually gave us.

He is not who you were afraid He was. He never has been.

Much love and blessings,

Ramzi

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Family

The way you parent is teaching your kids something about God whether you intend it or not. Let them see grace and consistency, not conditions.

Relationships

If you expect people to eventually turn on you, that same expectation is probably shaping how you approach God. Both are worth examining.

Mental Health

Shame-based faith takes a real toll. If church or religion is tangled up with painful experiences for you, talking it through with a counselor or a trusted pastor is not weakness. It is healing.

Finances

Some of us quietly believe God blesses the deserving and withholds from the rest. That is a scoreboard, not a Father. Your provision is not a report card.

Physical Health

If you think suffering means God is displeased with you, that belief will make every hard season twice as heavy. It is not true, and you can set it down.

You cannot relax with a God you are braced against. Go look at Jesus again.

Lord, show me where my picture of You came from something other than You. Forgive me for the times I have approached You braced instead of trusting. Replace the version I inherited with the one Jesus actually showed us. Help me finally relax in Your presence. Amen.

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