God Only Asks That We Believe In Him - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, and majestic in his radiant splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him today and what came to my heart and mind in 1 John 5:1a,

“Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God…”

This is really astonishing to me as I look at things from a "bird’s eye” perspective!

In Genesis three I read of Adam and Eve, our progenitors, turning their backs on the God who created them. God told them if they ate from the tree in the garden or even touched it they would die. Rather than taking God at his word, Eve, and then Adam, rejected what God had to say and followed the serpent’s temptation.

Paul’s observation on this act is found in Romans 5:12, 16b, “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned… The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation…” As Adam’s offspring, we are now under condemnation as we all face death in the judgment of God. Adam and Eve were given fair warning by God, they turned their backs on him in spite of it, and that resulted in death for them as well as all their offspring.

“But…” as Paul wrote Titus, in 3:4-5, “when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.”

And just what does he require of us to be saved from our eventual certain eternal death? To simply believe in him! To just acknowledge his existence (imagine that!) and what he has to say. As John puts it in his gospel, 1:12, “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”

As I say, to me this is just astonishing! Look at it from God’s perspective… having given us existence, he now asks those he has created to acknowledge his existence! Having provided truth and light in his creation he now asks us to believe in him! Having sent his Son to die a miserable death to pay for the penalty of our sins, that is, to satisfy his own sense of justice, he asks us to believe in him!

I just find it truly remarkable! He could have asked us to measure up to certain standards, that he would take only the best, the brightest, the most beautiful, the most talented of us to be his. He might have established standards of behavior for us to earn our way into eternal life, to demonstrate we really “deserve” it. But he doesn’t. He holds his arms out to us and simply asks us to believe in him!

I don’t think that is too much for our creator to ask of us! What do you think?

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!

If you have someone you would like to receive these ruminations, send me their email address. I'm happy to add them to the list. If you are receiving this and would like to be removed from the list, just reply and let me know.

God Conforms Us To The Likeness Of His Son - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, and majestic in his radiant splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him today and what came to my heart and mind in 1 John 4:16b-17,

“Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him.”

John says God's love is made complete in us “because in this world we are like him”! Fashion that! In the previous chapter John made the point that we live a different kind of lifestyle (we no longer continue in a lifestyle of sin) because God’s seed remains in us.

If we listen to what John is telling us, as opposed to a preconceived template of what we might expect to find as we read our Bibles, John is not telling us to love to be good Christians – he is telling us we love because we are Christians. God is love, therefore, because we are like God in this world, we love too!

“In this world we are like him.” Such an incredible thing! Paul tells us in Romans 8:29, “For those God foreknew [believers] he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.” Not just in the sweet bye and bye, but right here in the now! In this world we are like him!

My thought this morning is that since “in this world we are like him” and we love because he is love, Christians are the most interesting and fascinating people in the world. Our God certainly is interesting and fascinating and if we are like him in this life. it stands to reason. I’m not saying we take on deity as Christians, neither does John or Paul. What they say is that our character and nature conforms, over a period of spiritual growth, to that which is like God. It is his seed that remains in us and because God has foreordained we be conformed to the likeness of Jesus Christ, we do just that.

John talks of the confidence we have in this verse. We have confidence as we look ahead to judgment day. Why? Because we know what lays ahead for us as believers. In this life we are the most confident of people. Because God knows the end from the beginning and has revealed some of that to us, we are confident. Our God we serve is a transcendent, sovereign, omniscient and all powerful God. He has no wrinkle of insecurity and as we mature in him, we grow in our confidence as well. Not because we are transcendent, sovereign, omniscient and all powerful, but because he is and we are his. We reflect the confidence our faith in God brings us.

In my mind there are so many other aspects of God that are reflected in his people here on earth today. Our God is a joyful and happy God, and so are his people. Our God is a kind, caring and merciful God, and so are his people. Our God is an honest and fair God, and so are his people. I challenge any believer to take a hard look in the mirror and honestly answer the question, “Since I have become a follower of Jesus Christ and now indwelt with the Holy Spirit do I not see these changes within me?”

As I say, I think Christians are the most interesting and fascinating people in the world because our God is interesting, fascinating and beautiful in character and nature.

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!

If you have someone you would like to receive these ruminations, send me their email address. I'm happy to add them to the list. If you are receiving this and would like to be removed from the list, just reply and let me know.

Whoever Lives In Love Lives In God, And God In Him - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, and majestic in his radiant splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him today and what came to my heart and mind in ,

“God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.”

Just what is meant by “living in God”? John here is providing us an insight that only those who love know God, so “whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.”

I suspect that many of us have differing perceptions of what it means to “live in God.” Some may view living in God as living a life that God finds acceptable, “good behavior” so to speak. Moral and ethical behavior, “victory” over the particular sins or temptations one finds himself beset with. Others may view living in God as having done a great work for God as in participating in establishing a mega-church sized fellowship complete with multimillion dollar facilities, a successful praise and worship band, etc. Or possibly establishing a missions board that fields workers in third world countries spreading the gospel message.

While these kinds of things might demonstrate hard work and zeal for the gospel and reflect efforts to do those things thought to be pleasing to God, my thoughts drift elsewhere this morning as I consider what it means to live in God. It seems to me that to live in God is life itself. Living in God to me carries the notion of living life in a “God-centric” framework as opposed to “me-centric” – what I accomplish, what I am doing. Life in God seems to me to be not so much about me, my accomplishments and what I do but more about God – who he is and what he does, his purposes, his desires, his joy. Not that what we do is not important. After all, it is the things we do that express what is in the heart. Heartfelt love and devotion to God finds its expression in the things we do for him.

To live in God also seems to me to be tuned into God himself. I suspect many of us have known those who have done things for God but for some reason don’t seem to experience an intimacy with him, even as they set themselves to a task for him. Maybe we have been that person at times in our own lives. I know I have. Living in God surely carries the idea of knowing what God is thinking as we immerse ourselves in his self-disclosure to us in the pages of Scripture. Communing with him in prayer in a way that we begin to sense, as we are guided by the Scriptures, what he might be feeling about things. We grieve when we sense God is grieved over something. We rejoice when we encounter that which we know brings joy to God’s heart. We desire what it is that God desires, not just for ourselves but for him and those around us.

John presents living in God as a fact, not a goal, not something to pursue. Either we live in God or we don’t. Either we belong to God or we don’t. From what John says here, we as believers do live in God and if we can take a break in beating ourselves up for a moment, I think we all would acknowledge that our hearts are drawn hopelessly to him. We love and adore our Savior and it is he we seek to please, it is his desires we are drawn to and his purposes we long to labor at.

Truly our lives are lived in him, we live in God and he lives in us!

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!

If you have someone you would like to receive these ruminations, send me their email address. I'm happy to add them to the list. If you are receiving this and would like to be removed from the list, just reply and let me know.

We Can Rely On The Love God Has For Us - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, and majestic in his radiant splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him today and what came to my heart and mind in 1 John 4:13-16a,

“We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

This is such a rich passage with so much contained in it. In just three and a half verses John tells us: how we can know we are a child of God (God has given us his Spirit), that within the Trinity, the Father has sent his Son for us as the Savior, that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the whole world (not just a select few – although we learn only those who will embrace him in faith by acknowledging he is the Son of God will be saved from God’s judgment), that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that he dwells in believers (through his Spirit) and that we know of the love of God and rely on it.

As is typical of John he speaks of profound truths in few words.

The depth and complexity of theology that John presents in his writings is enormous. Pregnant with the deep things of the faith, his writings leave us with a mountain of truth to digest.

What strikes me this morning is his comment that we know and rely on the love God has for us. We know he loves us and has demonstrated this by sending his Son to us as our Savior from his own judgment for our sins. But John goes on to say that we rely on the love of God. Just how reliable is the love of God? What does that mean and what kind of confidence and assurance does it provide us as we look to the future?

This morning I listened to Max McLean recite Psalm 136. Each of the 26 verses of this psalm end with the stanza “His love endures forever.” As I listened to it I couldn’t help but think that our God takes particular effort to ensure we know of his love and to take confidence in it. God’s love will never shrink, never fade. He will love us as much at the end of our lives as he has at any time. He will love us just as much ten thousand years into the resurrection as he does today. His love never wavers, it is not performance based and it doesn't rely on me. It relies on God alone and he never changes.

Truly his love endures forever! We can take great confidence and rely entirely upon it!

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!

If you have someone you would like to receive these ruminations, send me their email address. I'm happy to add them to the list. If you are receiving this and would like to be removed from the list, just reply and let me know.

God Has Given Us His Spirit! - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, and majestic in his radiant splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him today and what came to my heart and mind in 1 John 4:13,

“We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.”

A very important and large part of the mystical aspect of our new life in the Kingdom of God is a new presence in our lives: the third member of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit has been given us. He comes to us and dwells within each of us the moment we embrace Jesus Christ in faith.

As I think of it from time to time, I find I become increasingly astonished and amazed at such a thing! God’s very presence resides within each of us believers!

He has an impact on our lives. In Galatians 5:17-18, Paul tells us he takes up conflict with our sin nature and brings new things into our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control and things like these.

Believers are the most pleasurable folks to be around! He equips us to participate in the things he does in the world. He does this so that we have the opportunity to serve him and one another demonstrating what a wonderful God of grace he is. Peter encourages us to use these “gifts” in 1 Peter 4:10, “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms.”

It is the Holy Spirit himself who leads us into truth, as Jesus foretold his coming in John 14:16-27. He is the guarantee of our participation in the resurrection of life, Ephesians 1:14. He is an abiding companion, a wonderful encourager of us, and as Jesus called him, our Counselor.

As I say, such an astonishing and wonderful thing is his presence in our lives!

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!

If you have someone you would like to receive these ruminations, send me their email address. I'm happy to add them to the list. If you are receiving this and would like to be removed from the list, just reply and let me know.