There is a question I come back to every morning. Not because I have forgotten the answer, but because I need to feel the weight of it again. Because the mind drifts. The day crowds in. The world with all its noise starts filling up the space that belongs to something else.
So I ask it again.
Who is God?
Not the version of the question you answer automatically because you have heard it a thousand times. I mean the real question. Sit with it for a moment and remove everything you already think you know. Remove the familiar words, the church language, the answers that come too easily.
Do you believe God created everything? Everything you can see, everything you cannot. Every galaxy and every atom. Every breath you have taken today. You are alive right now because He is sustaining you. The oxygen in your lungs, the beat of your heart — none of it exists apart from Him.
When I truly sit with that, something happens in my mind. It starts to race. Things begin to feel almost surreal. There is a part of me that cannot fully comprehend it, no matter how long I have believed it. And I think that is actually right.
The moment God becomes easy to comprehend, we have probably made Him smaller than He is.
Who is God? That is always the first question. And the answer to that question determines everything else.
The Morning Sequence
I want to be clear — I don't do this perfectly. There are mornings I skip it entirely. Mornings where the day starts before I've asked anything at all, and I feel the difference by noon. But when I do it, this is what it looks like.
I start by reminding myself who God is. The Creator of all things. The One in whom everything holds together. Not a distant force, not a concept, not a religious idea — a living God who made me with purpose and has not stopped being involved in what He made.
Then I remind myself who man was before the fall. The authority and dominion God delegated to us. The height from which we were designed to operate. A little lower than God Himself, made in His image, placed here as His representatives.
Then I remind myself who I became without Him. How far we fell. How sin severed the connection that made us who we were. How lost and broken and hopeless we were on our own. I do not skip over this part. You cannot understand grace if you do not understand what you needed to be saved from.
Then I remind myself what God did. That where there was no way, He made a way. That He did not send a representative — He came Himself. That Jesus took every sin, every consequence, every separation, and absorbed it completely. And that through Him, what was broken has been restored.
Then I remind myself who I am now. A son of God. A co-heir with Christ. Not a sinner barely hanging on, not someone trying to earn their way back — but someone who has been fully received into the royal family of God.
And finally I ask: what does this mean? What is my response to all of this? If God is who He says He is, if the Bible is true, if eternity is real and the spiritual war around us is more real than what our eyes can see — then what do I do with my day? What do I do with my life?
That last question has a way of putting everything else in its proper place.
I Don't Need Your Money
There was a season where I felt God calling me toward something specific. Something I genuinely wanted to do, something I believed He was behind. But I kept putting it off. The equipment wasn't there. The resources weren't there. I kept working, kept grinding, telling myself I would get to it once I had what I needed.
Then one day I heard God speak to me in a placed thought. Clear and simple.
"I don't need your money."
I brushed it off. The next day, the same thing. The day after that, again. By the third time I was frustrated. I finally said out loud — okay, I get it. You don't need my money. But I do. How am I supposed to do any of this without it?
It took me a while to understand what He was actually saying.
He was not telling me money was unimportant. He was telling me that my lack of it was not the obstacle I thought it was. That if He was truly calling me to something, the provision was His responsibility, not mine. That my job was not to accumulate enough resources to make it possible — my job was to be available.
God does not need what we have in order to do what He wants to do. He is not waiting on our bank accounts or our abilities or our perfect circumstances. He created everything from nothing. He fed thousands with a boy's lunch. He used a shepherd's staff to part a sea. What He needs from us is not our resources. It is our willingness.
And what we are all called to first — before any specific assignment, before any particular calling — is simply to worship Him with our whole being. To put Him first. Everything else flows from that.
"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever!" Ephesians 3:20–21 NIV
The Question That Won't Stop
I want to be honest with you about something.
There are times when I would rather not think about any of this. I would rather just live a normal life. Go through my day without the weight of a spiritual war pressing on my chest. Without the urgency that wakes me up at three or four in the morning with the sense that something is wrong and needs to be fixed.
But the question keeps growing louder.
Who is God?
And if the answer is what I believe it is — if He is truly who Scripture says He is, if the spiritual world around us is more real than what our eyes can see, if eternity is not a concept but a reality that has already begun — then I cannot just sit with that comfortably and go back to sleep.
One way I learned to study the Bible was to ask three questions. What does it say? What does it mean? And then the hardest one — what does this mean for me? What am I going to do about it?
The sequence I walk through every morning is the same line of questioning applied to the biggest truth I know. Who is God? What did He do? Who am I because of it? And then — what is my response?
God says He is coming back. With an army. And when the world sees it, people will weep — some because they never had a chance to repent, others because they never told the people they loved about Jesus. That is not a comfortable thing to sit with. Part of me wants to say that sounds too extreme, too intense, too much.
But I keep coming back to this: the One who shows us these things is the same One who made us with a purpose. He is not trying to frighten us into paralysis. He is trying to wake us up.
This restlessness I feel — this urgency that will not leave me alone — I do not think it is anxiety. I think it is God. I think it is the same Spirit that groans for what is not yet finished, pressing on the hearts of people who were made for more than what they are currently living.
The Church was never meant to be a few people carrying this. God called the Church — all of us — to put on the armor and run the race. The problem is that too many people with genuine gifts and callings are busy building a life for themselves because no one has told them clearly enough what is actually at stake. The battle was never meant for a handful of radicals. It was meant for all of us.
So I keep asking the question. Not because I have it figured out. Because I don't. But because I know what happens when I stop asking.
Immeasurably More
I think about heaven often. And I think most people have the wrong picture of it.
Somewhere along the way, people got the idea that heaven is going to be quiet and still and a little dull — sitting on clouds, playing harps, existing in some kind of pleasant emptiness forever. I genuinely do not know where that picture came from. It is certainly not from the God revealed in Scripture.
Think about who God is. He created every taste that has ever delighted you. Every color you have ever seen — the ones that stopped you in your tracks, the ones you could not find words for. Every smell that ever carried a memory. Every piece of music that ever moved something deep inside you. Every feeling of joy and wonder and beauty you have ever experienced — He made all of it. Out of nothing.
And He is unlimited.
If God made every color we have ever seen, heaven will have colors no human eye has ever encountered. If He made every taste we have ever known, there will be flavors in eternity that we have no frame of reference for. If He made every sound that has ever moved us to tears, the music of heaven will be something no instrument on earth has ever produced.
Every perfect gift comes from Him. Every creative idea, every moment of true beauty, every experience that made you feel — even briefly — that life was more than ordinary. That was God. A small glimpse of what He is capable of.
He can do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine. That is not just a verse to quote in hard times. It is a statement about the nature of who He is. Our imagination, as wide as it can stretch, is still finite. His is not. Whatever we think heaven might be, it is more. Whatever we think God might do, He can do more. Whatever we think we might become in Him, He has more in mind.
When I ask myself who God is in the morning, this is part of what I am reminding myself. Not just that He is powerful or holy or sovereign — but that He is more than my mind can hold. More than my expectations. More than the small version of Him I sometimes settle for when life gets heavy and faith gets hard.
Who is God? He is more than enough. He is more than we have asked. He is more than we have imagined.
First Ask. Then Surrender.
I want to leave you with something I wrote during a season when the question was louder than the answers. I share it because I think some of you will recognize the feeling.
I want to be fully present.
I want to be fully present.
I don't want to see the world through this lens anymore.
Where everything is dull and meaningless.
Regardless of fact, there was something about that sense of awe. Seeing something that no one else could see. Knowing there was something greater than me. Lord, I believe this to still be true. Help my eyes to open to You. Show me Your ways, Lord. I need new eyes. These that I have are not enough for me.
I have exhausted all longing for what this world can give me. Money means nothing, wealth is fleeting, health is diminishing day by day, my soul feels crushed under the weight of the meaningless.
Open my eyes. Open my heart to You. Open my ears to hear Your voice. Please Lord, let wisdom be found by me. Give me knowledge of You that only comes from You. Reveal to me Your wonders.
Nothing I could ever want compares to You. Nothing and no one else. How true these words are. How true they are! I believed them then, and had forgotten they were true. Now I know they are true! I know they are true beyond all I can know!
You are all I could desire. Please help me. Take my burdens and give me Life. True Life. Give me Jesus. Give me a new mind and spirit. Put a new heart within me. Show me Your Glory!
I don't always get this right. Some mornings the question feels alive and real. Other mornings I go through the motions and the words feel empty. But I keep asking it. Because even on the days it doesn't land the way I want it to, I know what happens when I stop asking altogether.
Who is God?
Ask it every morning. Let it reset everything. Let it be the question that orients your mind before the world gets a chance to.
First ask who He is. Then say — God, in my life, You will be first.