Where did God come from?

Your children are asking a question that the strong majority of people ask sooner or later. Because, as you say, we assume that “everything comes from something,” it makes logical sense to assume that God came from something at some point in time.

Our only answer is to express what the Bible tells us about God. God didn’t come from anything. He always was and always will be. Passages like Psalm 90:2 and Psalm 93:2 touch on this subject. “Eternity” and “everlasting” are terms that we finite creatures use to express the concept of something that has no end and/or no beginning. God has no beginning or end. He is outside the realm of time. The problem in saying this, of course, is that we cannot comprehend the idea of being beyond time or being without beginning or end. What Solomon expressed in Ecclesiastes 3:11 is humbling but true. We are informed of the concept but cannot fathom it.

I suggest that in talking about this to your children you simply emphasize that (1) God is different from everyone and everything else. Everything else comes from something (ultimately from God himself), but God doesn’t. He is simply different; and (2) God is especially different in the kind of love he shows to us. He loves us so much that, even though we disobey him and often disrespect him, he sent Jesus to take away the guilt of our sin and adopt us into his family as dear children.

In this way, your answer can redirect the curiosity of your children to a subject they (and we) can better understand and appreciate. When we are more fully occupied with the gospel, we grow more content with what we do not know.