Category: God & His Glory

Oceans Drained Dry

On By BrianIn God & His Glory1 Comment

A good way to conclude this week’s discussion about God’s amazing heart for us might be to reflect again on these wonderful words from F. M. Lehman:

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.
O love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure
The saints’ and angels’ song.

Drain the oceans and fill the sky – and you still have not grasped the depths of God’s love!  A great thought to prepare us to gather tomorrow to worship this great God of love!

Grasping the Ungraspable

On By BrianIn God & His Glory1 Comment

God’s heart for us is one of mercy, love, and grace.  Our great need is to grasp this with our hearts and minds.  So Paul prays that you:

“May have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.” – Ephesians 3:18-19a

We need strength to comprehend his love.  A few verses earlier, Paul makes clear that this strength comes from the Spirit – so we need God’s help to grasp his love.

We need to comprehend his love – how broad and long and high and deep God’s love for us is.  We need to know this love…which surpasses knowledge.  To know what is unknowable.  To grasp what is ungraspable.  The point is that God’s love is too deep to fathom.  We can always go deeper.  We can always reach higher.  We can always move further.  We can always grasp more and more because there always is more.

And so we pray that we might each day know his love a little more.  Grasp a little more.  Comprehend a little more.

May this be our prayer…and our experience!

Amazing Grace

On By BrianIn God & His Glory1 Comment

As I mentioned in my last post, God takes us who were dead in our sins and makes us alive in Christ because of his mercy, love, and grace (Ephesians 2:4-5).  Verse 7 adds a wonderful description to God’s grace.  Paul refers to God’s grace as the “immeasurable riches of his grace.”  Ponder that phrase.

Immeasurable – too big, too vast, and too immense to measure or consider or fathom.  Were you to spend your entire life investigating the riches of God’s grace to us, you would never reach the end, never fully grasp it or comprehend it.

Riches – Here, in his grace, is true riches.  With his grace that makes us alive, we are truly wealthy.  The richest person on the earth (financially) is a pauper without God’s grace.  And the poorest person on the planet (financially) who has received God’s grace is wealthy beyond measure. True riches are found, not in material things, but in God’s grace.

Immeasurable riches.  Do we believe this?  Are we living like it?

God’s Heart For Us

On By BrianIn God & His Glory, Heart2 Comments

This past Sunday I preached about God’s heart for us.  We looked at Ephesians 2:4-5 which says, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved.”  Three words describe God’s heart for us:

Mercy – We deserve judgment and wrath and condemnation because of our sins, but God gives us mercy.  We who were dead, helpless, unworthy rebels have received mercy from almighty God.  And his mercy isn’t stingy or small, but overflowing – God is “rich in mercy.”

Love – How do we account for his mercy?  The answer is his great love.  And how did God show his love?  He showed it by sending his Son for our salvation (John 3:16).  Jesus showed his love for us in that while we were still sinners, he suffered and died for us (Romans 5:8).  We didn’t deserve it, but Jesus did it.  He died that we who were dead might have a new life.  That is great love!

Grace – God saves us by his grace – his free undeserved favor.  It is free – you can’t buy it or work for it.  It is undeserved – you can never earn it or do enough good things to merit it.  And it is this  grace alone that saves us. Without his grace we are dead.  By his grace we are made alive.

Mercy.  Love.  Grace.  This is God’s heart for us.  And this is our salvation!

Convicting Truths About God

On By BrianIn God & His Glory, Revival

Psalm 139 gives us three convicting truths about God.

Verses 1-6 remind us that God knows us completely.  He knows our thoughts, our words, and our actions.  He knows what we will do tomorrow, next week, next month.  Which means he knows about all of our sins.  He knows every sinful thought, every sinful word, every sinful action.  We can’t hide our sin.  God knows!

Verse 7-12 remind us that God is with us everywhere we go.  We simply cannot escape his presence.  Which mean he is always there witnessing our sins.  The kitchen may look empty, but God sees you reach into the cookie jar.  You might not to that sin in front of your mom or your spouse or your kids.  But every sin you commit you do before God.  He is always there.

Verses 13-16 remind us that God made us.  As his creatures, we belong to him (see Psalm 24:1-2), and so should live according his commands for his glory.  But of course we fail to live for our Creator way too often.

No wonder after reflecting on these three convicting truths about God, the Psalmist cries out for God to search his heart.  He wants God to examine his life.  The goal?  I think it is that God would reveal his sins (Job 13:23, Hebrews 4:12) that he might forsake them and follow God’s way – that God would lead him in the way everlasting.

We need to ponder these three convicting truths about God as they relate to our lives, asking God to show us where we have failed, that we might seek his mercy for our failures, and seek his grace to overcome those sins and follow him.

God’s faithfulness

On By BrianIn God & His Glory

Our church has been reading through the Old Testament this year, and we have come to Joshua this week.  Joshua is an incredible testimony of God’s faithfulness.  God had promised to give the land of Canaan to Abraham’s descendents over 400 years earlier.  In Joshua, God keeps his promise.  With great power, God brings Israel into the land.  While God’s saving work on the cross is his greatest demonstration of his love for us, his faithfulness is a priceless testimony of his love too.  Many of the Psalms tie his love and faithfulness together.  For example, the shortest Psalm – Psalm 117 – praises God because “great is his steadfast love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.”  How has God been faithful to you?  How does his faithfulness spur you on to love God more?