What do you mean when you say God?

Is it a name, an exclamation, a request, gratitude, a noun, a verb, blasphemy or an invocation?

Imagine that I asked 1000 willing participants to draw a picture of a dog from memory.

How likely is it that any two people would draw the same dog in the same way?

Not very.

These unique mental visions of dogs are very similar to our unique mental visions of God.

If you’ll allow, we’d like to take you on a mental journey.

However, to join us on this journey, you’ll need a copy of the map we used and the key.

Listening and observing the conversations of the world, we’ve come to realize many disagreements about God grow from a lack of communication about who or what is the meaning of the God being referred to.

While two people may share a deity, they will never share the same experiences of said deity. Fools will argue for centuries about whether it’s better to have the left or right eye of God. While the wise ones benefit from using both eyes.

Therefore, we must create a shared understanding of what these conversations are include and what they exclude.

Consider this short series a snapshot of where I’ve been, where I’m coming from, and my direction.

But most importantly, in order to communicate we’d like to clarify what is meant when We say God.

To those who enjoy talking about God experiences, these unique visions are exciting. A gathering of the group. Like Candy Crush – “Divine.”

For those who dislike conversations about God, these unique visions are more evidence of the lack of evidence.

Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” John 20:24-25