Tag: God

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!

Pursuing Joy

On By BrianIn Virtue of Joy3 Comments

One of my resolutions for the year is to grow in the Christian virtue of joy.  To that end, I recently read John Piper’s book When I Don’t Desire God: How To Fight For Joy.  It doesn’t take too long before you come to this statement:

Pursuing joy in God was a non-negotiable way of honoring God.

Seeking and finding joy in God honors him, it acknowledges God as the glorious being that he is.  The alternative is sobering: failing to seek and find joy in God dishonors God – it treats him as unglorious, ho-hum, run-of-the-mill.  Pursuing joy in other things before God dishonors him because it treats those things as more glorious than God.  As Piper writes later:

Preferring anything above Christ is the very essence of sin.

Preferring something before Christ is to give it a status above God; indeed to make it our god.  It then is a violation of the First Commandment – “You shall have no other gods before me.”  Which is to say that it is idolatry.  So joy is a serious affair – the failure to rejoice in the Lord dishonors him, is the essence of sin, and is nothing short of idolatry.  So here is the question: how do you pursue joy?  Piper seeks to answer that question in his book, but I’d love to get some other perspectives.

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?