2002-12-27
Good Morning Cherished Readers,
The Holy Spirit has led me to the seventh and most important element on the list of seven ones that we have been examining all week from EPH 4: 4-6. “There is one body and one Spirit, just as there is one hope to which God has called you. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism; there is one God and Father of all mankind, Who is Lord of all, works through all, and is in all.” It’s probably no accident that the Lord God is number seven on the list, His number of perfection and completion. To recap, we have looked at: 1) one body [the Body of Christ, the church]; 2) one Spirit [the Holy Spirit]; 3) one hope to which God has called you [the Gospel of Jesus Christ]; 4) one Lord [Jesus Christ]; 5) one faith [faith in Christ]; 6) one baptism [by water and Spirit]; and today we look at 7) one God.
My reaction when I realized I would be able to write today about God was, “yippee, my favorite topic!” It wasn’t always that way, but this is the blessing that God wrought when He inwardly transformed me by the renewal of my mind [RO 12: 2]. Today, I can tell you that everything that I am and everything that I do for Him is His work in me. I can’t take any of the glory. It all belongs to Him. In no other belief system does the deity reach out first to those who believe in him to invite them to lives which lead to their salvation, an invitation to join Him in His work, and a blissful eternal life with Him. Our God is the One and Only True God. 2 COR 4: 6, “The God Who said, ‘out of darkness the light shall shine! ’[GN 1: 3] is the same God Who made this light shine in our hearts, to bring us the knowledge of God’s glory shining in the face of Christ.” COL 1: 13-14, “He rescued us from the power of darkness and brought us safe into the Kingdom of His dear Son, by Whom we are set free, that is, our sins are forgiven.” God’s invitation to us to come to faith and join Him in His work is no accident. I have written many times about how it was part of a plan of salvation that He devised and commanded Christ to carry out with the help of the Holy Spirit at a pre-Creation council in heaven [COL 1: 19-20; 1 PET 1: 20-21]. Such a plan arose out of the magnificent agape [unconditional] love such as the universe had never before seen.
God’s will concerning our relationship with Him is something He made abundantly clear right from the first time that He gave Moses the Law. EX 20: 2-5, “I am the Lord your God Who brought you out of Egypt, where you were salves. Worship no god but Me. Do not make for yourselves images of anything in heaven or on earth or in the water under the earth. Do not bow down to any idol or worship it, because I am the Lord your God and I tolerate no rivals. I bring punishment on those who hate Me and on their descendants down to the third and fourth generation.” A faithless person might read this commandment and come to the conclusion that this bellicose Deity is unrighteously jealous and an egotist. However, those of us with faith know that it is necessary for God to see to it that idolatry is expunged, so that the people can one day be brought to salvation. That person wouldn’t know that God is always righteous and that His greatest desire is to see as many people as possible saved, sanctified, and eventually resurrected to a life of joy, peace, and fellowship with Him forever [1 TIM 2: 5-6]. Nor would he understand the alternative to this idyllic heavenly life, that spiritual death and eternal torment in the lake of fire and sulfur awaits those who reject God. DT 6: 4, “Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.” This familiar directive is the basis of both the Jewish and the Christian faiths. While traditional Jews don’t understand the Trinitarian nature of our God, the hope remains that a remnant of them will come to know it [RO 11: 25].
God has given us some wonderful assurances that He will equip us for our battles with the devil [EPH 1: 18-20]. As we endure in our faithful obedience, He will never abandon us [IS 49: 14-16]. We have seen repeated demonstrations of the truth of His supreme power, authority, and goodness throughout the Scriptures and in our own lives. His names, and there are many of them such as I AM WHO I AM, Jehovah Mekaddishkem [the God Who Sanctifies], Jehovah Shalom [the God of Peace], etc., reveal His remarkable attributes. The Psalmist understood Who God is when he exclaimed in PS 96: 10, 13, “Say to all the nations, ‘The Lord is King! The earth is set firmly in place and cannot be moved; He will judge the peoples with justice…When the Lord comes to rule the earth, He will rule the peoples of the world with justice and fairness.” He asks and answers in PS 115: 2-3, “Why should the nations ask us, ‘Where is your God?’ Our God is in heaven; He does whatever He wishes.” And then he goes on to say in (9), “Trust in the Lord, you people of Israel. He helps you and protects you.” We must take time to meditate on what God means to each of us in our own lives. To me, considering the predicament of my early life, He means everything!
PRAYER: O Lord, when we consider what You mean to us today and always, there is much upon which we must meditate. There is no simple answer to this question. To fully understand the great Force for good in our lives that You are, we must come to know You well through daily study of the Scriptures and prayer. We must take the time to search the circumstances of our lives to see where and how You are at work in them. We must appreciate the great sacrifice You made of Your only Son on the cross, making it possible for us to be saved. We must understand the depth of His suffering as He took on the sins of the world and of Your power in raising Him from physical death to spiritual life forever. We must accept Your unselfish willingness to grant Him authority to be Judge, all the while knowing that His perfection would exert itself in justice, compassion, and fairness. We must bask in the warmth of Your love for us, demonstrated in Your perfection as our Covenant Partner always keeping His promises to us. EPH 1: 13-15 are the words we use to day to begin offering You the praise You so richly deserve. “And you also became God’s people when you heard the true message, the Good News that brought you salvation. You believed in Christ, and God put His stamp of ownership on you by giving you the Holy Spirit He had promised. The Spirit is the guarantee that we shall receive what God has promised His people, and this assures us that God will give complete freedom to those who are His. Let us praise His glory!” We are honored to be Your children and thank You for allowing us to remember our pasts, so that we could appreciate the great work You do in us by transforming our minds. You allow us to have the comparison of our peace and happiness which comes from having faith to our prior misery from our past lives without it. Today and always, we pledge You our trust, obedience, loyalty, diligence, adoration, and worship. In humility we bow before You to confess our sins. Above all, we offer You our utter thanksgiving and praise for all that You are and all that You do for us. In Christ’s name, amen.
There are a number of citations which further illuminate how we can be worthy of the Lord’s blessings. These will be the subject of tomorrow’s message. Each day, it is my privilege to bring myself and hopefully, all of you, closer to knowing and loving the God Whom we worship. Worship should never be a blind thing, done only because it is the custom to do so. God wants us to know Him and to desire to carry out lives of holiness with Him at the center of them. This is surely not an ego trip on His part. Instead, it is a manifestation of His profound and sincere love for each of us. Some of us have been given the message that we are worthless by other people. God differs enormously with that Satan-led lie. To Him, each one of us is a treasured child created for only the best reasons and loved deeply. We are told that we are to be citizens of His heavenly home, but must endure in faith while we are still here on earth. When we do, He grants us protection against Satan’s fiery darts and peace even while under attack. He did this for King Jehoshphat [2 CH 20: 1-23], and He will do this for us. Please remember His precious message sent out of His love in IS 40: 31, “But those who trust in the Lord for help will find their strength renewed. They will rise up on wings like eagles; they will run and not get weary; they will walk and not grow weak.” That’s our awesome God, and He really does love us. Peter and I send you our love too.
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn