God Views
Week 2
How We Developed
Our View of God
Song “Come and Do What
You Have to Do Lord”
by Ruth Fazal
Come and do what You have to do Lord
Come and say what You have to say.
Come and work in our hearts anew
Lord,
Jesus, come and have Your way.
DVD clip from God Views
by Curt Cloninger
Introduction to the God Views
Video Series.
Curt Cloninger
“Show me someone’s
picture of God, and I’ll
show you how they live
their lives.”
What I attend to (look
at; believe), I will
become like.
Believing God was judgmental –
I became judgmental
Where did my distortions
come from?
Culture
Church
Religion
Peers
Family
Where did my distortions
come from?
What affects us most are
significant people in our early
lives (parents and parental
substitutes).
Where did my distortions
come from?
Often we transfer our
parents characteristics
onto God.
Personal Reflection
Worksheet 1-B
In the space, please respond to
the following words with the first
words or images that spring to
your mind. Write down the first
five responses for each category.
DVD clip from God Views
by Curt Cloninger
Beverly Oxley’s testimony
Your Parents and You
Our views of God, our selfconcepts and our abilities to
relate to others are primarily
shaped by our parental
relationships.
Your Parents and You
The foundation of our
emotional, relational, and
spiritual health is usually
established by parental
modeling, and the results can
be wonderful or tragic.
My Relationship with My Father
This exercise is to help you
examine your relationship with
your father as you were growing
up. Check the appropriate
squares as you recall how he
related to you when you were
young.
Evaluating My Relationship with
God
We can begin to see how our
relationships with our parents
have influenced our perception
of God when we evaluate our
present relationship with Him.
Evaluating My Relationship with
God
Answer openly and honestly. Don’t
respond from a theological knowledge
of God, but from personal experience.
Don’t describe what the relationship
ought to be, or what you hope it will
be, but what it is right now.
Evaluating My Relationship with
God
Turn each characteristic into a
question.
To what degree do I really feel
that God loves me?
To what degree do I really feel
that God understands me?
My Father’s Influence on My
Relationship with God
To make a comparison, transfer all
of the check marks you made for
your own father onto the father &
God comparison chart. Transfer
them to the shaded columns using
check marks.
My Father’s Influence on My
Relationship with God
Next, transfer the marks from
your relationship with God chart.
To make them more obvious, use an
“x” and put them in the white
columns in the appropriate places.
My Mother’s Influence on My
Relationship with God
To make a comparison, transfer all
of the check marks you made for
your own mother onto the mother &
God comparison chart. Transfer
them to the shaded columns using
check marks.
My Mother’s Influence on My
Relationship with God
Next, transfer the marks from
your relationship with God chart.
To make them more obvious, use an
“x” and put them in the white
columns in the appropriate places.
Song “I Hope You Dance”
By LeeAnn Womack