God is not just a chapter in the story of your life, he’s the author of your story, the one who makes sense of all the chapters of your life.
– Trevin Wax and Thomas West in The Gospel Way Catechism
Tag: God
God Is Love
God is love (I John 4:8). God is eternal (Jeremiah 10:10). God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19). When you put those three truths together, we find that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in a perfect loving relationship for all of eternity. He is radiant glorious love in action for all eternity.
God is love in Himself. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit forever loving each other. Which means He didn’t need to create us to have someone to love. Instead, He chose to create us, and this eternal love between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit spilled over to people like us. That ought to boggle our brains!
And when we sinned against Him, rejecting His amazing love, He chose to show the extent of His great love by saving us through the cross. He went to great lengths to save us, so that He might continue to extend His love to us forever. Not because we are lovable, but because He is love!
So how should we respond to His amazing love? Jesus sums it up in Matthew 22:37-40. Love God with all your being. Love your neighbor as yourself. In other words, love as God loves. Here is our challenge. Here is our purpose. Here is what life is all about. Love as God loves.
God and Our Vision of Life
We believe in the one true and living God,
who eternally exists in three unique persons –
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Each one is identical in nature and substance,
with the same attributes and perfections.
Our culture tells us that it is all about you.
You create your own story,
your own identity,
your own reality.
You do whatever you want to do,
because you are center,
everything revolves around you.
Is it not obvious that this doctrine of God refutes this vision of life?
Flips it upside-down?
Or rather right-side up?
There is one true living God, and I am not Him.
So everything revolves around Him, not me.
He is center, not me.
I am to do whatever He wants.
Because this is His great story.
He determines reality.
He gives me my identity.
He makes me part of His story.
So I am going to live for Him, not me.
This doctrine totally changes our vision of life,
and so will change how we live each day.
Doctrine Matters for Our Relationship with God
What is required to have a growing relationship with God, to know God more and more? I must learn about Him. Doctrine teaches us about Him – the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – so that I might know Him better.
Imagine a young man and a young woman meet, and they want to get to know each other. What do they do? They spend time together. They talk to each other and listen. They learn about each other.
If you want to get to know God better, you need to learn about Him – who He is, what He has done, what He is doing now, and what He will do in the future. That’s doctrine. It’s not dry! It is relational. It is exciting!
And as we learn more about God – His love, His faithfulness, His mercy, and what He has done to save us by becoming one of us to die on a cross – we not only get to know Him better, but we love Him more. Our love for Him grows. We learn of His love for us, and we grow in our love towards Him. Our relationship is not dry, but a loving relationship between God and us.
And as we learn about Him through doctrine, this love then leads to worship. Theology should always lead to doxology. Doctrine should always lead to praise. In Ephesians 1-3, Paul lays out the doctrines of salvation and then closes in 3:20-21 with worship to God. The same thing happens in Romans. Paul lays out wondrous doctrinal truth in chapters 1-11, and then closes in 11:33-36 with praise to God. As Paul reflects on doctrinal truths, he can’t help but break into joyful worship.
Doctrine teaches us about God, that we might grow in our relationship with Him, loving Him more, and falling down before Him in worship.
Saturday Strands
Here are some loose strands for our growth:
How Should We Pray? A Helpful Framework of Seven ‘P’s – John Stevens
It helps to have some framework for prayer that shapes our thinking and speaking. I find it helpful to bear in mind the following aspects of prayer, both for my personal praying and public prayers.
Leave Church a Little Tired: Serving the Saints on Sunday Morning – Sam Emadi (DG)
The next time you gather with God’s people, I hope you leave strengthened and spiritually fed, I hope you’re built up by the gospel, and I also hope you leave a little tired. I hope you leave looking a little more like the Son of Man, who gave his life to serve.
The Radiance of Real Holiness – Trevin Wax
I’ve been thinking more carefully about how compelling and attractive holiness can be in a world that has forgotten the sacred dignity of humanity and the high calling God has for us.
Follow the Truth, Not Your Heart – Robby Lashua (STR)
The Christian worldview teaches that the heart is deceitfully wicked and that transformation happens when our minds are conformed to the truth. According to the New Age worldview, the mind is a trickster, so we should follow our hearts. This is a complete inversion of the truth.
Flashback: Where God Dwells
God is high and holy, so it should not surprise us that he dwells in a high and holy place. What should absolutely amaze us….
Hope you have a great Lord’s Day worshiping God with your local church!
Eden Longing
Prayer is our response to the echoes of Eden where we long to walk with God in the cool of the day.
– Philip Nation in Habits for Our Holiness
Our Declaration
In the LORD I take refuge.
– Psalm 11:1a
David knows where to turn in his trial. He turns to the LORD.
This isn’t a prayer; it is a declaration.
David declares what we should declare:
In the LORD I take refuge.
What about us?
When faced with trials, suffering, struggles, do you declare?
In the LORD I take refuge.
When you have struggles with your health, do you declare?
In the LORD I take refuge.
When there are struggles in your family, do you declare?
In the LORD I take refuge.
When there are problems at work, do you declare?
In the LORD I take refuge.
When you read or watch the news and see mess our world is in, do you declare?
In the LORD I take refuge.
When you are afraid, anxious, or worried about something, do you declare?
In the LORD I take refuge.
When you are weary, exhausted, feeling overwhelmed, do you declare?
In the LORD I take refuge.
Whatever the trial, whatever the trouble that springs up in our lives, let us boldly declare with David:
In the LORD I take refuge.
One Greater
In prayer, you recognize that there is One greater than you and you are needful of His intervention in your life.
– Philip Nation in Habits for Our Holiness
Let Us Ask
And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him. – I John 5:14-15 (ESV)
We can have confidence toward God, boldness to actively approach God. We are God’s beloved children and so we approach Him as children approach a loving parent.
When my toddling grandson is hurt, he runs to mommy. When he is hungry, he runs to mommy. When he needs help, he runs to mommy. When he is happy, he runs to mommy.
In the same way, when we are hurting or hungry or need help or are happy, we should run to God as His children, as instinctively and automatically as my grandson runs to his mommy.
The cosmic conflict is bigger than us. All the conflicts we see around us are bigger than us. The conflict you face today is very likely too big for you. But none of these conflicts are too big for God. God is bigger. God is stronger. We can run to Him.
We run to God with confidence – and we ask, and He hears, and we receive. This is the equation for prayer that John gives us: We ask + He hears = We receive. Do you believe that? Do you have that confidence? Do you grasp that God delights to answer your prayers, delights to give you what is good?
Now we must ask according to His will. He won’t just give us anything we ask for. Why not? Because He is a good Father. If my grandson wants to play in road or play with a stick of dynamite, his daddy is going to say “no” because it is not good for him. In the same way, we all too often don’t know what is best for us. But our Father knows what is best for us, and so He screens our requests according to His will. His will is not against us, but for us. Do you believe that? Will you trust Him?
Come to Him and make your request. He will hear and gives us what is best.
Enabled to Love
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
– I John 4:7-8 (ESV)
How are we able to love one another? Do we strive to muster up the willpower on our own. No, that will never work – at least not for long. Rather, we must be enabled to love.
Love is from God. He enables us to love. How?
First, because He is love. God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in a perfect loving relationship for all of eternity. Love is what characterizes our Triune God. It is who He is. And because God is love, He is the source of love. Love comes from Him. But how does this love come to us and enable us?
That brings us to the second point – we have been born of God; that is, born of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit dwells within us, connecting us to God. The Spirit of love connects us to the God of love so that we might love.
A power outlet has power available to run an appliance, but we must plug the appliance into the outlet for the power to run the appliance. God has all the love needed to enable us to love, but we must be plugged into God in order to love. And we are! And so we are without excuse.
You and I are enabled to love by the Holy Spirit living within us, connecting us to the God of love. May we make use of His enabling. Let us love one another.
Brian J. Mikul 