Josh Timonen was one of Richard Dawkins’ (author of God Delusion) closest companions from 2006-2010. He was even working for Richard Dawkins when Dawkins was publicly shaming Ray Comfort for videos that appeared as if Ray was saying that bananas prove the existence of God—which eventually culminated in Ray being known as The Banana Man. Yet by the grace of God, over a decade later, Josh ended up coming to Christ! Here’s his story. You will be encouraged in your faith by watching this video.
Tag Archives: grace of God
APPROACHING GOD TO FIND GRACE
What do you do with the following Scripture? Most do not believe it is possible.
“Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” Hebrews 4:16
There’s little consolation in knowing God is your Creator unless you know what He’s like. It is only when you know God by searching His Word will you be able to approach God with confidence. Moreover, you will not do that unless you have total confidence in God’s Word from Genesis to Revelation. The two best ministries I know of to help you gain that confidence are Creation Ministries International (CMI) and Answers in Genesis (AIG). Become followers and supporters, God will bless you for doing so. Also, for me, fulfilled prophecies were confirmation that the Bible is the inspired work of God.
“And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” 2 Peter 1:19-21
To a devout Jew, the notion of unhindered access to God is scandalous. Yet by God’s grace and for His grace, that access is ours. Because of Christ’s work, God’s door is always open to us. Let’s enter freely and frequently!
God’s grace is constant, and not stationary. It keeps moving toward us day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. It’s always there when we need it—and there’s never a moment we don’t need it.
The grace that saves us is also the grace that sanctifies and empowers us. God’s power isn’t needed just by unbelievers to be converted. It’s needed by believers to be obedient and joyful. We can look back at the day we first experienced the sunrise of God’s grace. But grace is a sun that never sets in the believer’s life.
Spurgeon is one of my go-to authors, this is what he has to say on grace: “One thing is past all question: we shall bring our Lord most glory if we get from him much grace.” –Charles Spurgeon
What God had to say when He visited Moses on Mt Sinai after the Exodus is relevant here:
“The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there… The Lord passed before him (Moses) and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving (confessed) iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” Exodus 34:5-7
God knows everything, so no sin surprises Him. He knows all our worst secrets (Psalm 69:5). He’s seen us at our worst and still loves us. John Calvin said, “Grace does not grant permission to live in the flesh; it supplies power to live in the Spirit.”
Jesus made it possible for our Heavenly Father to send the Holy Spirit to indwell the spirit of all believers so we have the grace of God in full measure. It is up to us to “die to self” and live with the Holy Spirit guiding our every step.
God in His grace offers salvation to all people because all people need His salvation. Christ came precisely because not one of us is fine without Him.
For some, “human depravity” (total inability to earn our way to God) may be an insulting doctrine, but grasping it is liberating. When I realize the best I can do without God is like “filthy rags” in His sight, it finally sinks in that I have nothing to offer. Salvation hinges on His work, not mine. What a relief!
God’s children have been saved from the penalty of sin, we are being saved from the power of sin, and we will be saved from the presence of sin. Salvation, sanctification, and glorification are all grounded solidly in exactly the same thing: God’s grace.
GOD ORDAINS WHATSOEVER COMES TO PASS
Can I suggest that before you read this post you read or re-read my post “The Key to Evangelism is God’s Power” on June 30th, 2022.
If we go into evangelism understanding that in some cases, God actually uses the proclamation of truth as a means to close one’s mind from repentance, we can guard our hearts by recognizing that God ordains whatsoever comes to pass. What that means with respect to evangelism is that sometimes, the preaching of the gospel actually serves as the means through which an individual’s heart is hardened against God. In other words, not every instance of proclaiming a message of repentance is designed by God to bring the people who hear it to repentance and faith. In fact, Scripture often demonstrates the opposite is true—that the proclamation serves to condemn the recipients rather than restore them. A great example of this is found in the commissioning of the prophet Isaiah:
Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!” He said, “Go, and tell this people: Keep on listening, but do not perceive; keep on looking, but do not understand. Render the hearts of this people insensitive, their ears dull, and their eyes dim, otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and return and be healed.” Then I said, “Lord, how long?” and He answered, “Until cities are devastated and without inhabitant, houses are without people and the land is utterly desolate. the Lord has removed men far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. Yet there will be a tenth portion in it, and it will again be subject to burning, like a terebinth or an oak whose stump remains when it is felled. The holy seed is its stump.” Isaiah 6:8-13
Many tend to focus on Isaiah’s answer to the commission, but the focus of the passages itself is on the content of the commission, which is fleshed out in verses 9-12. The Hebrew denotes the continuing nature of the commands to be given to the people in v. 9, yet also the subsequent result. The Israelites will be commanded by the prophet to continually be in a state of listening, but they will never come to understanding; they are to be continually in a state of seeking out understanding, but they will never come to an understanding. They are to constantly seek after God—yet they will not find Him. In other words, they will be given an impossible task and the preaching of the prophet himself will only solidify this reality. In v. 10 the prophet is actually commanded—the imperative form of the verbs is used here—to render their hearts insensitive (lit. fat), their ears dull (lit. heavy), and their eyes dim (lit. pasted shut). As Brevard Childs puts it, “The prophet is to be the executor of death, the guarantor of complete hardening. His very proclamation is to ensure that Israel will not turn and repent.”
Notice the prophet doesn’t ask any questions concerning the fairness of God’s edict in v. 11, but rather the duration for which he is to heed this commission. The answer, of course, is devastating. The prophet’s work of preaching a message that will only harden the hearts of his people will not be completed until the Lord has rendered the capital cities desolate and carried the Israelites away to captivity.
The passage plainly suggests the purpose and result of the prophet’s commission is to be an agent God uses to harden the hearts of those who hear him. In other words, his message, though one riddled with calls to repentance and faith in Yahweh and a future restoration of the nation, will never be heeded by the people because it only serves to intensify their immediate judgment. The promise of v. 13 still carries with it the tones of judgment simply because like their fathers before them who died off in the desert, they will die off in captivity. Thus, even this promise serves as a means of hardening their hearts against the Lord.
This theme comes up time and again not only throughout the book of Isaiah, but the other prophets as well, and likewise, in the New Testament.
“The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened, as it is written, “God gave them a spirit of stupor,
eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day.” And David says, “Let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them; let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see, and bend their backs forever.” Romans 11:7-10
The prophets Ezekiel and Jeremiah are called to a similar path as Isaiah, where they will preach a message of judgment and salvation, yet they will not be heeded (Ez. 2:7; Jer. 7:27). Christ Himself taught in parables for the express purpose of concealing the truth of the Kingdom of God, lest those whom it was not granted to would hear and repent (Matt. 13:10-16; Mk. 4:10-12; Lk. 8:9-10). The apostle Paul even picks this idea up when he speaks of God giving mankind up to the lusts of their hearts, dishonorable passions, and a debased mind (Rom. 1:18-32). When you look through the entirety of the Old and New Testaments, what is plainly seen is that God is at work to harden the hearts of whom He desires, which is most clearly expressed in Rom. 9:6-29. In every instance where the edict is rendered a “lost-cause” against the recipients of the message, the truth of God has been made self-evident so that man is without excuse.
None of this is a matter of controversy in Scripture. Instead, election and reprobation are simply part of the cosmic reality of judgment and salvation unfolding before us as the plan of God is revealed. In the midst of this, Scripture unabashedly upholds the tension between God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility without much qualification. The important thing to note in all of this is that it is not as if those under this severe indictment from the Lord are under it without cause. In every instance, the people have either forsaken the covenant or rejected their Creator willingly. The commission of Isaiah serves to show us this reality quite clearly, in that chapters 2-5 give clear evidence that the people plainly rejected the terms of their covenant with God, and as a result, He would send the prophet to seal their fate.
To put it in as blunt of terms as I can: there was no hope for their escape from judgment, as God made it an impossibility for them to hear the words of His prophet and repent. The fullness of the consequences had come upon that generation, showing the patience of the Lord had long been extinguished. The only thing one is left to conclude then from the call given to Isaiah is that his words would not serve to be a message of hope; his words tell them, “I have been given a command by Yahweh to preach in such a manner that your hearts become hardened, your ears become blocked, and your eyes become darkened.”
What all of this means for the church then is that we are simply to be found faithful to the task of heralding God’s message. We are to bring the gospel to the ends of the earth, which for most people, means you are to bring the gospel into your workplaces, friendships, families, and so forth. All that is required of you is to look to where God has placed you currently and simply be found faithful to the task of proclaiming the good news to those who are dead in their sins. It requires that we not be ashamed of the good news of the gospel, which includes not being ashamed of the bad news of God’s judgment against sin. Whatever the result of that proclamation of the gospel may be, whether a hardening or a softening of the heart, God effectually uses this message for His purposes. We may not necessarily like the implications of God using our proclamation of judgment and salvation to effectively harden an individual’s heart. We may not believe the implications of this are even fair—but we ought to remember in the midst of everything that we don’t want fair because our idea of what’s fair doesn’t square with God’s.
The gospel is a scandal to the world because it sees the murderer, rapist, racist, and the like, on equal footing with the sweet old lady who doesn’t confess Christ—and offers them all the same grace of God in Christ. What that very simply means is that the gospel is not barred from anyone on the basis of their own doing or choosing, but rather, on the sovereign choice of God Himself. If those who struggle with evangelizing were to focus on the sovereignty of God in evangelism, it would free many a burdened soul up to take joy in the work that God has given them, realizing that whether the person they share the gospel with rejects or receives it, God is glorified in accomplishing His work through the preached word.
Adapted from an article by Grayson Gilbert “God ordaims whatsoever comes to pass: including your suffering” http://www.patheos.com
WISDOM
Where are you getting your wisdom from? This verse from James says it all. There is only one place to get wisdom that is pure, peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy, impartial, sincere, and will bear good fruit.
If it does not come down from above, note what James says, it is earthly, unspiritual, demonic.
Wisdom from Above
“Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.“ James 3:13-18
Words make an impact for good or bad. One kind word can change someone’s entire day.
One sentence can change your life forever. If the Holy Spirit convicts you of your sin and you repent of those sins and earnestly desire to get right with God and accept what Jesus has accomplished for you by dying in your place then this one sentence will change your life forever.
“My Heavenly Father, please wash me clean in the blood of your Son, Jesus, truly the lamb of God spoken of by John the Baptist.”
You do need to be baptised and you will want to be, so you are obedient to God’s commands. Note also the signs that should accompany you receiving the Holy Spirit.
“Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name, they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.” Mark 16:16-18
Also, if you are saved you will want to get on with doing the works that God has prepared for you to do.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Ephesian 2:8-10
LIVING ETERNAL NOW 