Good Morning, my Friends. I have two walks and a trip to the gym behind me, and a hot cup of coffee in front of me, the sun is shining and the birds are chirping, Mahler 2 playing softly in the background… so already this is a Grrrrreat Day! Now I’m settled in to start writing about my favorite subject… the manifestations of God’s love! Gotta tell ya…it doesn’t get any better than this!
I closed last week’s blog stating what I believe are two fundamental Biblical truths that provide the basis for virtually everything spoken by the Prophets or written in scripture. Those two truths are: God is love ( 1John 4:8, 16) and God wants a relationship with us (Genesis 1:27). You will find those two truths innerwoven in scripture throughout the Bible. God created us for his purpose (to carry out his good, pleasing and perfect will) and for his pleasure (a relationship…not just a “here and now” relationship, but an eternal relationship).
Think about this. When God was creating, he could have created us to behave as perfect boys and girls. He was in charge; he was the architect! But he didn’t do that. Instead he did something that at first glance can appear to be quite unusual. He gave us free will. He put OUR choices in OUR hands! (We were given charge of our own destiny, so to speak.) He didn’t have to do that. He could have programed us to be perfect and this would still be the perfect world He created, ie. no wars, no poverty, no famine, no suffering, no disease…no death! Wow! We would be living in paradise…just like the Garden of Eden .
But because God wanted a relationship with us, both parties have to choose to participate in that relationship before love can flow in both directions. No one can command and receive true love and respect; that only comes from the condition of our heart. Therefore, God gave us free will so we could choose to love him back. 1 John 4:19 says, “we love because He first loved us.” Again, God wanted us to make the choice to love Him as he loves us.
As we all know, before any relationship can develop, two people have to spend time together getting acquainted, ie. what and how does the other person think; what do they believe; what is their temperament; are they trustworthy, etc . The same is true for developing a relationship with God. We have to devote time getting to know him, and we have to find answers to the same questions listed above before we can comfortably enter into a relationship How do we do that…. How do we get to know God?
The good news is… God is love and God wants a relationship with each one of us! God knows something about relationships, and he also knows what we need to know about Him before that relationship can take root. Therefore He chose to reveal himself to us through his chosen Prophets and through His Word – the Holy Bible. Using those sources, he tells us who he is; what he thinks; what he thinks about us; he gave us his standards; he gave us his promises, then he tells us how we can reap the benefit of those promises! Contained in His Word is everything we need for developing a relationship with him build on a solid foundation of truth, and from that foundation of truth we develop our faith. 2 Peter 1:21-22 says “…you must understand that no prophecy or scripture ever came about from the prophets themselves or because they wanted to prophesy. It was the Holy Spirit who moved the prophets to speak the word of God.” 2 Timothy 3:16 says, “All scripture is inspired by God…”
One of my favorite Christian authors, Neil Anderson , makes this statement in his book, Victory Over the Darkness: “You can’t have faith in something you don’t know about or understand”. No doubt that statement is true. So if we want to have a relationship with God, we have to spend time getting to know God, and the source book containing all the answers to our questions is the Holy Bible; The Word of God, or just The Bible. (sidebar: as pastor of a nondenominational church, I believe the Bible to be the inerrant word of God. Not the literal word because the Bible is written in prose, poetry, parable, metaphor and allegory. But I believe every word is there for a purpose, written to a specific people at a specific time, but the principle of truth contained in the message is absolute and timeless. It’s on that revelation of truth we can build (or rebuild) our lives.
When a book makes such a hefty claim as to be the Word of God (or the Holy Bible), it immediately sets itself up for challenge and criticism. Such has been the case with the Bible! It has been challenged by the greatest minds in history: philosophers, scientists, scholars, academics, atheists, agnostics, and a plethora of those just like the “old me”: those ignorant of the truth. To my knowledge no one has disproven the truth found in the Bible. I make that statement because had anyone been able to disprove it, I believe we all would have heard about it! Think about this…suppose today someone made a discovery that could prove the bible was not what it claims to be. Every TV show, every radio show would be interrupted with that all-important announcement; every headline in our newspapers and our news magazines would be ablaze with the bold-faced, all caps proclamation: “THE BIBLE IS A FRAUD!” To my knowledge, that has never happened.
What has happened, however, is people will read the Bible then make a choice to close the covers and decide that is not the way they want to live. (without a doubt, the truth can be inconvenient to the lifestyle many of us have chosen! Believe me…I can relate to that.) Therefore they exercise their God-given free will and make a choice to turn away from the light. John 3: 19-21 says, “God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil. All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be exposed.” (But there is also good news: the opposite has also happened. There are many cases when people have set out to disprove the Bible only to be converted when they began to connect the unmistakable dots of truth they find throughout the scriptures.)
I know from my own experience, if anyone opens the book with an open mind and a desire to find God, He will meet you right where you are. Jeremiah 29: 13 says “he who seeks me wholeheartedly will find me”. God does not want to be a distant God or an unknown God, that’s why he chose to reveal himself to all of us through his word, the Holy Bible. (FYI: the root word from which comes our term “word”, is the Greek word “logos”, meaning logic, rational thinking or the truth” The Holy Bible, or The Word of God IS God’s logic, his rational thinking and the truth.)
I’ll look forward meeting you with you again next Monday. The question to ponder for this week is…Have you been exposed to the truth of the Bible? Have you experienced the transforming power of The Word? Drop me a note and tell me about your experience. drpresgr@gmail.com
God bless Ya…
Dan Presgrave (a.k.a. Pastor Dan)
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