Your God Is Too Small

In 1961, J. B. Phillips wrote a small but excellent book entitled Your God Is Too Small. The idea behind this book is that we have many notions of God which are simply inadequate to describe our great Jehovah. Since our ideas about God are flawed, our behavior toward him is often equally flawed. If we see God as a benevolent grandfather, we tend to take his mercy for granted and overlook his judgment. If we think of God primarily as a stern and harsh disciplinarian, we are likely to emphasize his punishment and overlook his grace.

Perhaps the greatest problem Phillips addressed was man's tendency to make God into a bigger version of himself . . . we try to create God in our own image. We make him think like us and react like us and feel like us. Too often, we become the yardstick against which the character of God is measured. Our worship of this kind of "god" quickly degenerates into a worship of ourselves.