TRUE SPIRITUAL AWAKENING

Posted on by

Two of my most favoured ministers of God. Dr. John Lennox and Dr. James Tour speak on Scripture Meditation & God’s Voice. You will be blessed greatly by this conversation. Both share their life experiences getting to know God and how He speaks to us through His Word.

My own experience with God and His Word: I am challenged to ask God to speak to Me every time I open the two bibles which I believe God gave to me. When I do, the Holy Spirit always reveals something new.

I received my first bible from God in the UK, It was the New King James (The Open Bible) Expanded Edition by Thomas Nelson Publishers. I was in England at the UK Christian Booksellers Association Convention in 1985. I had purchased Christian Press Pty Ltd in 1983. It was the distributor of Thomas Nelson books and bibles in Australia. Thomas Nelson launched The Open Bible at that convention.

My youngest son Scott was with me, he was 17 at the time and had just finished the High School certificate and we had agreed he would attend Capernwray Bible College in the UK for 6 months rather than go direct to university to study economics. I knew Major Ian W. Thomas the founder of Capernwray Bible Colleges as we distributed his books in Australia. I had mentioned to him that I was concerned that Scott was too young emotionally to go to University and he suggested he attend his Bible College in Lancashire and then spend time with Scripture Union in London. Scott was more that willing to go along with this plan.

At breakfast on the first day of the CBA Convention we were sitting at a table with Arthur Farstad, Consulting Editor of the Open Bible. He heard Scott speak and asked me if Scott would read a passage from the Open Bible at the launch of the Open Bible the following night. He liked Scott’s Aussie accent and he wanted to get a number of people to read sections from the Open Bible to show that it retained the poetry of the King James version. Scott was delighted to do it and we both were given an Open Bible Expanded Edition which is a study bible (1403 pages + Concordance and maps). We both were blessed to receive it and are still using it today. The second bible I consider God gave me is the ESV Study Bible. It was given to me at the Christian Booksellers Convention in the USA in 2008 at the launch of the ESV Study Bible produced by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Scott was also with me on this occasion only now he was working with me at Care & Share Products, a ministry of Christian Press Pty Ltd. We were not the distributor of Crossway but went to the ESV Study Bible launch. Almost 2,000 people attended. Each person was asked for their business card which was put in a bin and after the launch they picked out one card and that person was to be given a leather covered ESV Study Bible. I was the lucky person to receive that ESV Study Bible. Both Scott and I were astounded when they called out my name. I have cherished it and use it alongside my Open Study Bible.

SCOTT MORRISON’S TESTIMONY OF GOD’S FAITHFULNESS

Posted on by

Love this quote from Scott Morrisons’ new book Plans for Your Good – A Prime Minister’s Testimony of God’s Faithfulness.

“It doesn’t matter what your vocation is, what job you have, what you’re doing in life. The prize is Christ and His presence. That’s what will sustain you always in everything.”

The former prime minister of Australia explained to The Christian Post how God sustained him when he led his country through an especially tumultuous time, and explained how he has learned to find his value not in power, but in God’s love for him.

Scott Morrison, a Christian who served as Australia’s 30th prime minister from 2018 to 2022, detailed his faith journey in his 2024 book, Plans For Your Good: A Prime Minister’s Testimony of God’s Faithfulness.

The book posits three main questions based on Jeremiah 29:11, exhorting readers to consider “Who am I?,” “How should I live?,” and “What should I hope for?” The book provides pastoral reflections on how to answer such fundamental questions while weaving compelling stories from his own life and time in office. Morrison emphasized to CP that the book is not a political memoir, but rather a message of hope to readers facing their own doubts and struggles.

Morrison is also very open in his book about how he began to suffer anxiety attacks while serving as prime minister that required medication in 2021. He urged Christians not to be ashamed if they need help with their mental health amid what he described as “an anxiety crisis, particularly in Western society.”

“Anxiety is human,” he said, adding that his anxiety was not caused by policy challenges or security threats, but rather “physical exhaustion combined with the tenacious, relentless, personal, vindictive attacks — principally through secular voices in the media and opponents.”

“We’re all flesh and blood, mind and spirit,” he said. “And these things can affect us.”

“I say to Christians that you take a pill for a headache, and your mental health is no different,” he said. “The stresses that we labor under at times need that sort of support.”

“I was on my knees at that time, I was praying, I was seeking the counsel and support of Christian friends and others, but there are physical things that happen that can affect your mental health, and you’ve got to be mindful of those things.”

Morrison also said Christians should acknowledge the spiritual aspect of anxiety by casting their anxieties on the Lord.

“As Christians, we need to learn how we can just hand these things over to God; the anxieties are real, the things we’re anxious about are real,” he added. “We can’t pretend they’re not there, and we’ve just got to deal with them and hand them over to Him and allow Him to give us peace.”

‘Constant source of strength and wisdom’

Morrison stressed the importance of having a community of believers who upheld him in prayer while he was in office, including a tight-knit group of pastors.

“You can’t live your faith other than in community of brothers and sisters in Christ, and that’s intentional by design, I believe,” he said.

“God helps us when we’re on our knees in prayer; He helps us when we’re reflecting on His work, and He also encourages us and supports us through those he puts around us. I’ve always been blessed with that, and, frankly, sought it out.”

Morrison suggested the increasingly secular nature of Western societies makes Christian fellowship even more vital.

“You can’t live in a secular society faithfully and strongly if you’re not in a community of those who love Christ,” he said. “They are a constant source of strength and wisdom and support and love, and to be in such a community is one of the great joys and blessings of Christian life.”

‘We don’t have to prove anything’

A section in the third chapter of Morrison’s book delves into the many setbacks and failures he has suffered, starting with when he was fired from his job in the country’s tourism agency during his late 30s. He claims he was fired for political reasons by then-Prime Minister John Howard, with whom he had a good relationship and whose campaign he worked for.

The experience, he writes, was “humiliating and soul destroying,” but revealed to him how much he was placing his self-worth in his own accomplishments instead of in God’s unconditional love for him.

“We don’t have to prove anything to God, even the things we think we are doing for Him,” Morrison writes. “God’s love has nothing to do with what we think we can offer. He loves us just as we are, in all our brokenness.”

“God’s love is transformational if you allow it to be. It’s one thing to accept it; it’s entirely another to let it transform you and allow you to see yourself through His eyes instead of through the perspective of what you have or haven’t accomplished.”

That lesson would prove invaluable throughout the rest of his life and steel him to experience other losses, including ultimately losing reelection as prime minister in 2022. He writes that while some politicians who lose begin to crave the “relevance” they lost, he is free from such an “affliction.”

Morrison suggested to CP that one of the greatest lessons he has learned is God’s faithfulness regardless of what vocation to which he is called in the different seasons of his life.

“I just found God faithful to me in every walk of life, whether it was as prime minister, as a treasurer, as a cabinet minister, a member of parliament, a father, senior chief executive, all these sorts of things that I’ve done over the course of my life,” he said.

GOD’S WORD IS TRUTH: FULFILLED PROPHECY PROVES IT

Posted on by

Scripture says this about its own nature:

“Every scripture is inspired by God and useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” 2 Timothy 3:16

“No prophecy of scripture ever comes about by the prophet’s own imagination, for no prophecy was ever borne of human impulse; rather, men carried along by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” 2 Peter 1:20-21

The people in Berea were commended for subjecting the apostle Paul’s words to God’s Word:

“Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so” Acts 17:11

Everything the Bible says about God is true; everything anyone says about God that contradicts the Bible is false. Apart from a belief in the authority of God’s Word—as well as a growing knowledge of what it says—we’ll be vulnerable to deception. This is why one of the greatest needs in churches today is the consistent teaching of sound doctrine. Without it, and without people reading good books that reinforce a biblical worldview, God’s people will drift along, swept away by the current of popular opinion.

Faith is not inherently virtuous. Its value depends on the worth of its object. The Bible, understood in context and given precedent over our own instincts and preferences, is our dependable guide for faith and practice. Only by learning what Scripture says about God can we know what’s true about Him.

When we delight in God’s Word, we are delighting in Him.

I’ve heard people say, “Don’t take pleasure in the Bible; take pleasure in God.” But to study God’s words is to take pleasure in God because His Word is an expression of His very being.

Anyone who finds happiness in God must find happiness in God’s words as David did:

“In the way of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches.” Psalm 119:14

“I find my delight in your commandments, which I love.” Psalm 119:47

“Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day.” Psalm 119:97

Notice these Scriptures demonstrate that to delight in and to meditate upon God’s Word is to delight in God Himself.

The point of studying God’s Word is to know Him.

There is a danger of idolizing our own knowledge of the Bible rather than remembering the point is to know Him better. (If we fail to understand that, the problem is with us, not the Bible!)

J. I. Packer, in the first chapter of his book Knowing God, says this: “To be preoccupied with getting theological knowledge as an end in itself, to approach Bible study with no higher a motive than a desire to know all the answers, is the direct route to a state of self-satisfied self-deception. We need to guard our hearts against such an attitude and pray to be kept from it. …there can be no spiritual health without doctrinal knowledge, but it is equally true that there can be no spiritual health with it if it is sought for the wrong purpose and valued by the wrong standard… Our aim in studying the Godhead must be to know God himself better. Our concern must be to enlarge our acquaintance, not simply with the doctrine of God’s attributes, but with the living God whose attributes they are. As he is the subject of our study, and our helper in it, so he must himself be the end of it.“

May we see Bible study and doctrine as a basis for humble worship of our King and Savior, not for prideful posturing.

God’s words have the power to bring heart happiness.

When Jeremiah said that God’s Word “became to me a joy and the delight of my heart” (Jeremiah 15:16), he was suggesting that Scripture has a cumulative effect that increases over time. Happily, by God’s grace, As Joni Eareckson Tada says: “If you want to increase your desire for God, then get to know Him more deeply. And there is no better way to know Him than through His Word. Get into God’s Word, and you will get a heart for Jesus. Get passionate about Scripture, and your passion for Him will increase. Feelings follow faith…and faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.“

God promises that His Word “will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:11). We live in a time where the Bible is increasingly minimized. Let’s be committed to doing everything we can to uplift and honor God’s Word, as a means of knowing and loving Him.

Adapted from an article by Randy Alcorn, “Is There a Danger of Worshipping the Bible Instead of God” http://www.patheos.com

DO YOU REALLY KNOW THE GOD OF THE BIBLE?

Posted on by

God is eternally perfect in every way. He is the single standard by which we understand all things to be good and true.

God is immutable (unchanging over time), omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. All powerful, all knowing, and ever-present.

God’s omnipotence describes His immeasurable power. He can do anything and everything. But, what should we do with this information? Simple. We are being told to keep calm and leave everything to the ever-powerful God we serve. He is all-powerful and He is in control.

God’s omniscience should remind us of how His Will is absolute. God knows you. He knows what’s going to hurt you, makes you smile, encourages you, heals you, and makes you more like Jesus. Because you committed your life to Jesus as your Lord and Saviour, God the Father has sent the Holy Spirit to indwell your spirit. He has given you everything you need to live a Christian life under His Grace and blessings. For your part, you only need to believe in the Will of God and know the Holy Spirit will guide your every step as long as you say, Lord, not my will but your will be done today. Humans can only predict but, the Lord can leap through time and He knows what good He is going to bring you. All you need to do is rest in that knowledge. No one except your deeds can take that away from you.

God’s omnipresence or “all-present” refers to how God is everywhere. He is not a material that is confined within time and space. God controls time and space. Psalm 139 shows us that He knows what we are going to do before we even do it. Jeremiah 1:5 says that God knew us before we were even formed in the womb of our mothers. Aside from this, God already has a purpose for us before we were even born! This is possible because of God’s omnipresence. He has already seen the future while being in the past.

For Christians, because we have accepted Jesus Christ as Our Lord and Saviour we have received the special privilege of the Holy Spirit indwelling our Spirit. As Proverbs states our spirit is the lamp of the Lord. The lamp requires oil (Holy Spirit) to function as God intended man to function.

“The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all his innermost parts.” Proverbs 20:27

Consider these words by Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck on the errors of a relationship-driven human-god economy. He writes, “The difference between the creator and the creatures hinges on the contrast between being and becoming” (Reformed Dogmatics, 2:156).

God is “being” (eternal, unchanging, perfect, all-knowing) and we are always “becoming” something else based on our experiences.

There is a problem with Mutual Theism: “it’s a relationship, not a religion” mentality. We must not forget that when we misrepresent and misunderstand the God of scripture, we make an idol. Our sinful, finite minds are naturally opposed to the holy and exclusive. It makes us uneasy. So, we will ease our consciences and in sin, make Him more like us. Outside of biblical Christianity, almost every religion presents divinity as attainable. But there is only one God that is truly transcendent, divine, and holy. This is the God of the bible. Unlike other gods, His actions are not removed from His being. Rather, His will, His being, His essence, and His actions are eternally the same within God.

One might counter that God’s actions/responses are not connected to His being or essence. He is not becoming something else when He responds with a temporal action.  But, that draws out complications related to how Christians historically understand God’s ontology (study of God’s existence). Christians understand God to be absolute. He is self-sustaining. All wisdom and knowledge are complete and found in Him. More than that, God is the source of all knowledge. No one can know anything unless God has revealed it to them. To suggest that God can know or become something different (if even only for an instant) undermines what it means to be God. God does not change. He is not subject to mood swings; He is always God with perfect understanding, knowledge, and action in every situation.

Furthermore, we must not attempt to understand God through a lens of attributes or behavior, rather, we must understand these attributes through the lens of God. God is not made up of components – like the sum of many parts. He is not some complex mixture of love, wrath, grace, etc. He just is. He cannot become anything else because He has always been. For these reasons, we cannot separate God’s actions from His being. They’re unified; all in one. God just is and will forever be. His actions are always the perfect expressions of His being.

Most of us are just uninformed and unaware that their framework for understanding how we relate to the divine is substantially skewed. We have unknowingly adopted Theistic Mutualism (it’s a relationship, not a religion) as our theological framework.

We pray and petition because we desire other realities in our life. We want God to hear us, change His mind, and honor our requests. For reference, consider the following verses:

  • Psalm 106:23: “Therefore he said he would destroy them had not Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach before him, to turn away his wrath from destroying them.”
  • Judges 2:18: “Whenever the Lord raised up a judge for them, he was with the judge and saved them out of the hands of their enemies as long as the judge lived; for the Lord relented because of their groaning under those who oppressed and afflicted them.”
  • Genesis 6:6: “And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart”

So how we do reconcile these emotionally-fueled responses from God with the fact that God is also immutable and impassable? The expressions from God we find in scripture are provided and written anthropomorphically. That is, they are written to give God human-like characteristics to help us better understand an aspect of God’s being or Law (the two can be separated). They are packaged in such a way that helps a finite being understand the behavior of an infinite one.

So, what’s so controversial? Well, the problem centers on how we understand the driving force of these responses from God. If it’s only us and prayer, then the economy of influence we have with God is not too dissimilar from that of the gods found within Greek Mythology. We possess the power to draw some alternate desired reality from God. God, the source of infinite power and knowledge, is ours to try and manipulate. Like Moses in the verse above, we act because we want to revise God’s position on a matter.

Peradventure, let’s pretend we think God to not be compassionate enough in a certain situation, but after intense prayer, fasting, and reasoning with God, He complies and divinely expresses the desired and proper compassion. Logically, this means the petitioner possesses some unique insight into the situation that God must not have. This person has enlightened God’s understanding and convinced Him that He ought to be more compassionate, given this and that. In this scenario, God is not immutable and certainly not omniscient. Instead, He is adapting and by way of outside influence, becoming a more enlightened version of Himself. Clearly, this is nonsense. God is eternally perfect in every way. He is the single standard by which we understand all things to be good and true. Yet, this is how many Christians practically carry out their relationship with God.

As an example, has there ever been a point in time when God did not hate sin? No, of course not – yet we find in scripture how God is enraged at sinful behavior. However, He didn’t start the day calmly and then become enraged once a sin was committed. No. His character and “being” has always hated that which is opposed to His righteousness. God is omniscient; He knows everything. He knew sin was going to happen. Nevertheless, scripture communicates God’s anger at sin to us in a way that is anthropomorphic and understandable. In fact, the only aspect of the human-divine “relationship”  that is subject to change is how we apply these eternal truths in our lives.

We must not forget that God created everything, even time. While God is eternal, He engages with us in the temporal. He meets us where we are. Bavinck helps us again when he explains, “He [God] remains eternal and inhabits eternity, but uses time with a view to manifesting His eternal thoughts and perfections” (Reformed Dogmatics, 2:164). It is as Reformed theologian Scott Clark once stated, “The historic Reformed view is that all of God’s revelation is accommodated. That is how it must be in the nature of divine-human relations.” The story of salvation is full of examples of God making Himself known to His people. This was perfectly manifested in the incarnation.

The problematic and prevalent relationship-first model of Christianity fails to paint the correct picture of the economy between God and man. God is God and we are not. We must not project a human relationship model onto the divine; this is precisely why Evangelicals need to abandon the, “It’s a relationship, not a religion” mentality.

That being said, none of what I have said means that we can’t know God and interact with Him. We absolutely can! Jesus has made this possible. But we must pursue a relationship that is honest to His being. Christianity is a religion, and it is the only religion that offers a covenantal relationship with the only true and living God.

In closing, I recommend reading James Dolezal’s book All That is in God. He deals with this topic in much more detail and effectiveness. It’s not an easy read, but it is rich in doctrine and thought and worthy of your time.

Adapted from the article “Why Evangelicals Need to Stop Saying ‘It’s a Relationship, Not a Religion” October 15, 2018, by Jack Lee published by Patheos.

RAISING KIDS WITH A BIBLICAL WORLDVIEW

Posted on by

When you have a biblical worldview, you know that God loves you and He knows you love Him and trust Him. As a result, God is your foundation and His truth guides your decision-making about what you spend money on and what you spend your time on. Moreover, you want to have a good witness so that your family, friends, and those in your workplace see that you use God and His Word for all decision-making.

In a world that has largely excluded God from its life it is imperative we teach our children how to overcome, be resilient, and have a biblical worldview.

How do we raise Bible-minded children in a chaotic culture? That’s what Dr. Kathy Koch, founder, and president of Celebrate Kids, Inc., tackles in her latest book, “Resilient Kids: Raising Them to Embrace Life with Confidence.” “One of the things that does concern me is … the helicoptering, the overprotection of children, the bubble wrapping of kids,” she said. “I’m concerned about that because children need to grow up and develop their own strength. They can’t always depend upon a mom and a dad or a teacher.” Koch said kids’ character is strengthened and faith is developed after we face a challenge. Overprotecting children can weaken them because they’re not able to have these overcomer moments. She also described the power and importance of “resiliency.” “Resiliency is readily recovering from difficulties, readily coming back from trauma, grief, fear, loss,” she said. Another question many Christian parents today struggle with is how to ensure their kids love Jesus throughout their lives — and not simply because their parents do. Koch said it all comes down to the examples we set. “Do they see that we use God and his Word for decision-making?” she asked.

It’s all about our children seeing us live out authentic biblical truth in our lives.

KNOWING GOD

Posted on by

Believers are usually pretty comfortable with revering God for his immortality, power, and perfection, and so we should be. He is the Creator, in whom we live and move and have our being. He is the Great I Am. But our connection with God will always be unfolding. If a person only focuses on the immensity of God, and on reverence for him, they will know little intimacy. If a person understands the great freedom we are promised in Christ but knows no reverence, they will be without foundation, To walk closely with God, we must be ever journeying, getting to know facet after facet of the divine nature. It is madness to think of him as less complex, less finely calibrated than ourselves.

God has sovereignly chosen to make himself vulnerable, in that he experiences difficult and negative emotions, along with great joy and delight, in response to earthly events.

“The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” Genesis 6:5-7

Divine regret is a difficult concept, as it challenges our understanding of infallibility. We relate regret to either poor choices, bad luck, or lack of knowledge – ‘If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t have done it.’ But God was fully cognizant of every one of his actions and choices, and still found himself regretting some of them. For God to feel regret, he must therefore be vulnerable to our choices. Free will must actually be free, and poor choices on our part can cause divine pain. The Lord gets upset and frustrated, just as He is pleased and delighted by us in turn. The only way I can make sense of this vulnerability is as a deliberate, sovereign choice. The Lord of All could have placed himself above such feelings, but instead, he chose a version of creation in which the choices of his children affect him.

We can see the breadth of God’s emotions at work in the life of Jesus. What do you make of the following passage?

‘O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!’ Matthew 23:37

Compassion, for example, drove him to acts of kindness and mercy, such as healing the sick.

‘And Jesus went forth, and saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion toward them, and He healed their sick.’” Matthew 14:14

Jesus knew ordinary, everyday emotions too, such as pleasure and friendship. There was a particular disciple he was closer to than any other, on a human level. John is referred to as ‘the disciple that Jesus loved’ on several occasions and was depicted leaning back on Jesus’ chest at the last supper to ask him a question. On the cross, Jesus charged this same disciple with looking after his mother, and his mother with looking after this disciple.

“When Jesus, therefore, saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing by, He said to His mother, “Woman, behold your son!” Then He said to the disciple, “Behold your mother!” And from that hour that disciple took her to his own home.’” John 19:26-27

How human! How relatable! On the day of his death, he was concerned about those he was leaving behind, providing for their emotional needs by calling them, mother and son. How dear, how important, this must have been to Jesus, at that moment.

There was no time when the emotions of God were stretched like they were in the Garden of Gethsemane.

‘And He was withdrawn from them about a stone’s throw, and He knelt down and prayed, saying, “Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done.” Then an angel appeared to Him from heaven, strengthening Him. And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.’ Luke 22:41-44

At that moment Jesus was a man in torment, able to prevent his own suffering but choosing to embrace it anyway. He was desperate to escape the agony of the cross – not just the physical pain, but the spiritual horror of becoming all human brokenness, for our sake – and yet he bowed his head. This total mastery of self serves as a supreme example to us. If Jesus were not a deeply emotional person, mastery might have been easier, but being torn up inside and still submitting to God? That is staggering, to me, what about you?

Adapted from an article by Duncan Edward Pile, October 27th, 2021 “Hold Me Closer Cosmic Dancer” http://www.patheos.com

OUR PRIMARY MISSION – GET INTO THE PRESENCE OF GOD

Posted on by

Chan shared that his latest book, Until Unity, was inspired by John 17, where Jesus prays for unity among the Body of Christ. Though he didn’t want to write another book, the bestselling author felt compelled to do so after seeing the severe lack of unity among believers. 

133429_a_600_400.jpg
Francis Chan criticises Western church for lack of unity and obsession with busyness

“When I look at Scripture, I see how much God wants unity. This is why Christ died on the cross; to make the two one. And I see how Ephesians four says that we actually grieve the Spirit of God by our disunity. I really believe this is God’s desire. And I just saw the Church getting worse and worse, and I would see the way people would bash each other. We’re getting further and further away from what God wants.”

The Crazy Love author emphasized the power of silence, citing Exodus 14:14, which reads “The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still,” and Proverbs 10:19: “When words are many, transgression is not lacking.” We don’t know how to quietly be in awe of Almighty God together. If we did, we’d find ourselves on our knees, in tears,” he said. 

Unity, Chan stressed, “has to start with Christ; it has to start with, ‘Wow, I was created in the image of the triune God.”

“But how many people wake up in the morning and have this reverent awe?” he lamented. “And because we don’t have that, and we’re not spending time marveling in silence at God and our oneness with Him, we try to jump to, ‘OK, let’s all get along.’ And I’m going, ‘No, we cannot all get along if we’re not in shock that we are one with Him and He’s given us His glory so that we can become perfect.’”

“The reason why we fight and the reason why we’re so sure of our opinions … is we don’t get into the presence of God,” he said. “All of this horizontal stuff is because we really aren’t truly, with all of our hearts, soul and mind loving Him, and entering into His presence.”

The author said he fears that many Christians are becoming the “Second Timothy 3 group that are always learning but never coming to the knowledge of the truth.”

“I don’t want to be one of those that are constantly acquiring information but not knowing it,” he said. “I worry about my friends, everyone else that grew up in the same type of evangelical faith that I did that it’s busy, and we don’t take time to meditate and know these truths. If we did, we wouldn’t be so quick to speak.”

“Get alone with the Lord,” he advised. “Let Him open you up. You may find issues and He may find issues in you that you need to know are wrong. You may have thought you’re just going in for a checkup, and He cuts you open. We’ve got to get back to getting people into the presence of God.”

UNDERSTANDING GOD

Posted on by

The Openness of God by Clark Pinnock, Richard Rice, John Sanders, William Hasker, and David Basinger (1994). The Openness of God presents a careful and full-orbed argument that God known through Christ desires a “responsive relationship” with his creatures. While it rejects process theology, the book asserts that such classical doctrines as God’s immutability, impassibility, and foreknowledge demand reconsideration. The authors insist that our understanding of God will be more consistently biblical and more true to the actual devotional lives of Christians if we profess that “God, in grace, grants humans significant freedom” and enters into a relationship with a genuine “give-and-take dynamic.” The Openness of God is remarkable in its comprehensiveness, drawing from the disciplines of biblical, historical, systematic, and philosophical theology. Evangelical and other orthodox Christian philosophers have promoted the “relational” or “personalist” perspective on God in recent decades. It was probably the first major attempt to bring the discussion into the evangelical theological arena.

653175
Christianity Today’s 1995 Book of the Year

God is everlasting, without beginning and without end i.e. God is eternal. God is not limited by anything outside of himself. However, Scripture reveals that God although omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, is not the “All” or the “Everything,” but He is a being rather than Being itself.

What do we read about God in God’s own revelation, the Bible? And what do we “see” in God-in-person Jesus Christ? We see a self-limiting God who grants His creation a degree of autonomy, freedom to go against and resist His will. We see a self-limiting God who enters into time and history and goes on a “journey” with His creation and especially with his covenant people. We see a God who can be deeply affected, grieved, made angry or blessed, by what his creatures do.

It seems that before there was a creation, God was not limited, but self-limitation out of love was potential within God.

Sure, philosophy can sometimes help fill in some gaps left open by the Bible, but we must be careful not to allow philosophy to overtake our thinking about God such that the God of the Bible is a mere symbol for something “more real” who is not really like the passionate, personal, historical, suffering, intervening, resistible God of the Bible. We Christians must begin our thinking about God with Jesus Christ and work our way out from there.

GOD IS FORCING CHURCH TO CHANGE

Posted on by

How many Christians believe God is bringing this pestilence for His purposes much as He brought the ten plagues on Egypt to force Pharaohs hand?

God, being the sovereign judge over the nations, is the theme throughout the Bible. Christians should have no doubt God is working out His plans and purposes in His world. Much of the Bible is prophecy, almost two thirds fulfilled prophecy so we know that the rest of the prophecies, much about the “end times” before Jesus returns to rule and reign with a rod of iron, will come to pass.

In a short period, God has shut down the activity and economy of the developed nations of the world! Sadly, the world so deceived by an evolutionary world view no longer believes God exists let alone controls all events in the Cosmos. A recent Barna survey revealed most Christians now don’t hold a Biblical world view. They need to be reminded afresh that Yahweh alone is the true sovereign Lord. Let me remind you of what the Bible says is coming.

“For the day of the Lord of hosts shall come upon everything proud and lofty, upon everything lifted up — and it shall be brought low — They shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, from the terror of the Lord and the glory of His majesty, when He arises to shake the earth mightily.” Isaiah 2:12, 19

The arrogance of humankind, seduced by its self-focused affluence, makes this generational visitation a necessity.

Due to the massive proliferation of this virulent outbreak God has hopefully caused every person to consider their fragility and mortality.

“Who knows the power of Your anger? For as the fear of You, so is Your wrath. So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Psalm 90:11

With schools cancelled and parents working from home, God has forced families to spend time together. Hopefully, mothers, fathers, siblings and spouses are connecting in a meaningful manner.

Now, more than ever, church will have to go to another level in faith and dependence upon God for their sustenance. Those who lack experiential faith and intimacy with God during these days will either pursue an encounter with the living God or experience deep despair and failure.

With less emphasis on the large crowd, many church initiatives have collapsed down to personal touch rather than programmatic persuasion. For too long, the term “church” was equated to what took place within the four walls of a building on Sunday mornings. The success of a congregation was primarily gauged by how many people were present for service. We even call the facilities that are being used for service, “church.” The coronavirus pandemic has proven that the church can no longer be defined by a single Sunday morning service. My prayer is; it will get back to holding a Biblical worldview knowing the Bible provides the only true history of God’s world. It tells us the end of the story. What we can expect to unfold in the years ahead before Jesus return. Watch this space and together we will see world events unfold exactly as prophesied.