I read a book on vacation called The Shack by William Young. It had some ideas about God that I had never thought about before. One of those ideas is that when Jesus performed miracles, "He did so as a dependent, limited human being trusting in (God's) life and power to be at work within him and through him. Jesus, as a human being, had no power within himself to heal anyone." "So, when you look at Jesus... what you are actually seeing is (God); (God's) life in him. That's how he lives and acts as a true human, how every human is designed to live..." I had never thought about Jesus not using his own powers as God, but emptying himself and letting God work through him like the disciples learned to do.
Another new idea to me was that the reason God is three persons is because God is love. The only reason we can experience love is because love already existed between God, his only begotten son, and the Holy Spirit!
Sometimes we wonder why we pray because God already knows everything, but when we praise God for our children (for example), he takes great delight in seeing his children through our eyes. So when we pray, God loves hearing the passion we have for the one we are praying for.
The book talks a lot about when bad things happen. God sometimes allows bad things to happen because Adam ate from the tree of knowledge and we have free will to make right or wrong decisions. God can't make us (or bad guys) choose to do right. "If (God) takes away the consequences of people's choices, (He) destroys the possibility of love. Love that is forced is no love at all."
Speaking of bad guys, in the book God was asking someone to forgive a "bad guy" and that someone refused at first and said that he didn't want that person to be in heaven with him. God asked him to choose one of his own five children to go to hell. God explained that even "bad guys" are his children and said that he wants all of his children to be reconciled to himself.
This was weird - I was reading this book on the boat when we were getting ready to go snorkeling. I was reading in the book where this fictional character was getting ready to walk on water with Jesus. At the same time, Greg was talking to the snorkeling instructor about whether or not he needed to wear a life vest. At that time, I read this sentence, "we both know that you are a very capable swimmer, once a lifeguard..." I showed Greg the sentence in the book and he was surprised! Greg did not end up wearing a life vest and had fun holding his breath and diving down to the bottom. The instructor also told us to stand on the edge of the boat and jump one foot down into the water. I had just read, "The water lapped only about a foot below where he stood, but it might as well have been a hundred feet." It's neat that God had me reading that chapter right when we were going snorkeling!
"Being my follower is not trying to 'be like Jesus,' it means for your independence to be killed. I came to give you life, real life, my life. We will come and live our life inside of you, so that you begin to see with our eyes, and hear with our ears, and touch with our hands, and think like we do. But, we will never force that union on you." So, we're not supposed to ask, "What would Jesus do?" We're supposed to lay down our life and let him live in us.