Our theme for this month: “Knowing God”

Our Bible verse for today: “For his invisible attributes, that is, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what he has made.” Romans 1:20 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “An attribute helps us to know God.”

In his great little book “The Knowledge of the Holy”, A.W. Tozer explains, “An attribute of God is whatever God has in any way revealed as being true of himself.” So an attribute of God is something that is true of God and which we are able to conceive of and understand. God’s attributes are ways in which He shows Himself to us so that we can begin to comprehend who He is and what He is like.

God has many attributes and He has chosen to reveal some of them to us, such as love, mercy, compassion, righteousness, justice, etc. Each attribute reveals to us something that is true of God and it therefore helps us to understand Him a little better. The attributes He has chosen to reveal to us are on display first and foremost in the person of Jesus Christ. Second, they are described in the Bible. And third, as Paul stated in Romans 1:20, many of God’s attributes (such as His majesty), are even clearly seen in the creation itself.

The way in which we can most benefit from God’s self-revelation of His attributes is to take them one at a time, study the attribute and mediate on it. We do this by choosing an attribute of God (perhaps mercy, as an example), find passages of Scripture which display or describe that attribute, consider the context in which the passage showcases that attribute for us, and then think prayerfully and meditatively about what it teaches us about God. This is what we will do in the days to come through these devotional messages.

God has created us with a deep, innate desire to know and experience Him. He then has revealed truth about Himself in multiple ways. We can come to know Him and experience Him to ever-increasing degrees, but the joy of that experience is reserved for those who want it and who will seek it. This requires time and effort from us. The great Christian poet Frederick Faber once described the meditative seeking of God in this way:

“Only to sit and think of God, Oh what a joy it is! To think the thought, to breathe the Name, Earth has no higher bliss.”

I encourage you to spend some extra time thinking about God today. Choose just one of His many attributes and prayerfully consider what it teaches you about God.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Knowing God”

Our Bible verse for today: “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NIV)

Our thought for today: “God has created us with a desire to know Him.”

It may seem odd to you that in these first few days I have begun our discussion about “knowing” God by saying that He is incomprehensible. In other words, He is unknowable. To a very great extent that is true, but not entirely. He has chosen to reveal to us some things about Himself – just enough to keep us desiring more.

In a previous message in this series I referred to this as the great adventure of living the Christian life. We can and should be in a constant process of learning more and more about Him, and therefore growing in spiritual maturity. In that same devotional I left you with a quote from author Jim Peterson which explained that however much we have learned about God, there is always more to learn. He is always beckoning us to go deeper with Him. Today I want to conclude our thinking about the incomprehensibility of God by exploring that idea just a little more.

In Ecclesiastes 3:11 Solomon tells us that God has created human beings with a sense of eternity in our hearts. In other words, deep down inside every person knows intuitively that there is more than just this physical world and that this life is not all there is. That’s why virtually every culture that has ever existed has had a belief in the supernatural. They have had gods that they worshipped, and they have believed there were means available to them by which they could interact with the spirit world.

More than 1500 years ago the great Christian writer Saint Augustine expressed it like this: “You have created us for yourself, oh God, and our hearts are restless, searching, until we find our rest in you.” A thousand years later the French philosopher Blaise Pascal expressed it this way: “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of man that can only be filled by God.” In Psalm 42:7 the Psalmist described this great desire of the human heart to connect with God as “deep calls out to deep”.

God created us with a natural inborn desire to want to know Him. Our responsibility is to respond to that innate desire and to actually seek Him. When we do, we will find Him. In Jeremiah 29:13 He told us: “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all of your heart.”

God is mostly incomprehensible, but not entirely. He has created us with a natural desire to know Him and to connect with Him in a deep way, and He has promised that if you will seek Him you will find Him. So I encourage you to seek Him this morning. Spend some extra time exploring the deep mysteries of God.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Knowing God”

Our Bible verse for today: “I have sought you with all my heart; don’t let me wander from your commands. I have treasured your word in my heart so that I may not sin against you.” Psalm 119:10-11 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “God is incomprehensible and yet He can be known.”

This morning I want to continue our discussion from yesterday about the incomprehensibility of God. As we learned yesterday, there is far more to God than our human understanding can possibly come to terms with. There is much about Him that is, and which will remain, a mystery to us. But for all the reasons explained yesterday, the mystery is a good thing not a bad thing. God delights in progressively revealing more and more of the mystery about Himself to us as we continue to seek Him.

The primary way God reveals Himself to us is through the Bible. The Bible is more than just words on paper. It is a supernatural book divinely inspired by the Holy Spirit and infused with insights which can only be discerned spiritually. Part of the ministry of the Holy Spirit in our lives is to give us spiritual understanding so that as we seek God, as we diligently study His word, our mind will be opened and we will gain deeper glimpses into the person of God. Therefore how often and how effectively we study the Bible determines to a very great degree how much, how well, and how accurately, we come to comprehend God.

The great Bible teacher J.I. Packer offers these four simple guidelines for effectively using the Bible to progressively learn more and more about God:

1. Pray. Remember that you are in the presence of God, reading the Word of God, and you need the Spirit of God to give you understanding. So pray before, during, and after your Bible reading.
2. Read the whole Bible. Packer urges us to be familiar with what he calls “the full landscape of the Bible”. Read it everyday, read it cover-to-cover, and when you’re done, read it again.
3. Give special attention and focus to the richer books. All the books of the Bible are important and helpful, but not all the books are equally important and helpful. Leviticus is helpful to us for a variety of reasons, but it pales in compassion to the importance of the Gospel of John. Packer urges us to read the entire Bible, but to give special attention to the Gospels and to the Psalms.
4. Linger in those books that have a special resonance with you at this time in your life. If you’re struggling with maintaining sound doctrine, then you will want to spend extra time in Romans. If you need to put some feet to your faith, then go visit James for a while. If you just need some extra time in worship, the Psalms would be a good place to spend some time.

God is incomprehensible to a very large degree. But He has revealed Himself to us in different ways and to varying degrees. His primary means of self-revelation is through the Bible and so that’s where we need to spend most of our time looking for Him.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Knowing God”

Our Bible verse for today: “Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and incomprehensible things you do not know.” Jeremiah 33:3 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “God delights in revealing mysteries.”

God is incomprehensible. There is much more about Him than we can possibly begin to understand. God far exceeds the limits of the human brain’s ability to process and understand. Think about it, if God could fit into my little pea-brain then He wouldn’t be much of a God because He would have to be something less than the limits of my brain. But the truth is that He far exceeds me and my ability to understand. All of creation cannot contain Him, much less the limits of my brain.

Since that is the case, when we think about God we find ourselves wrestling with concepts and ideas that are beyond our ability to fully comprehend. This is the mystery of God. But the mystery isn’t a bad thing, it’s a good thing. First of all it means that God is the greatest reality that exists. There is no one and no thing greater than God. Second, His very greatness makes all of His other attributes possible. As we will see in days to come, in addition to being incomprehensible He is All-powerful (Omnipotent), All-knowing (Omniscient), and All-present (Omnipresent) – just to name a few of His other attributes.

Another reason the mysteries of God are so important and so helpful is that discovering new truths about Him is a big part of the adventure of living the Christian life. This is what He was telling us in Jeremiah 33:3. If we call to Him, and if we come to Him, and if we prayerfully and devotionally apply ourselves to learning about Him, He will reveal to us great, divine, spiritual mysteries that we did not know.

Tomorrow we will think a little more about how the revelation of mysteries happens but to close today, I want to share with you one of my all-time favorite observations about this marvelous adventure of spending a lifetime learning more and more about God. It comes from author Jim Peterson in his book “Lifestyle Discipleship”. Jim writes,

“One of the greatest gifts God has given us is the infinite opportunity for spiritual growth. But however much we have matured, there is always more beyond. It is in this that we find the adventure of living. There will always be new, unexplored dimensions of His person beckoning to us. The possibilities go off the chart.”

Spend some time this morning with God. Ask Him to reveal to you something new about Himself that you didn’t know before.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Knowing God”

Our Bible verse for today: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” Proverbs 9:10 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Knowing God as He really is changes us.”

Tomorrow we will begin exploring some of the most important attributes of God. We will then begin to see how it is that gaining a better understanding of Him has a direct impact on the quality of our lives. But before we get to that, I want to spend one more day thinking about why it’s so important for us to think rightly about God.

In Proverbs 9:10 Solomon says that right thinking about God is the beginning of true wisdom, and gaining knowledge about Him is the beginning of true understanding. Why is that so important? A.W. Tozer offers this thought: “We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.”

This is what I was talking about in yesterday’s devotional with respect to having a high or low view of God. Having a high view of God helps to keep us in awe of His majesty, and it helps us to maintain a sense of reverence in His presence. That impacts our thinking and our conduct. A low view of God leads us to be casual in our thinking about Him, and it also leads us to minimize and rationalize sinful conduct.

The person who achieves right thinking about God is relieved of a thousand earthly problems, because right thinking leads to right conduct. This is the reason we must elevate our understanding of who God is and what He is like. We must also then teach that higher view of God to others – especially to the younger generations. The greatest service we can do for our children and grandchildren is to pass on to them a high view of God.

The fear (awe and reverence) of God is the beginning of true wisdom. Accurate knowledge of who He is and what He is like is the beginning of true understanding. Right thinking leads to right conduct.

Seek God this morning. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you see Him high and mighty, exalted and honored, magnified and supreme. Then spend some time worshiping Him.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Knowing God”

Our Bible verse for today: “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne, and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphim were standing above him; they each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Armies; his glory fills the whole earth.” Isaiah 6:1-3 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “God is majestic”

A.W. Tozer once wrote, “What comes into our mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” I believe he is right. What you think about God will ultimately determine everything else about you.

So what is the first thought that comes into your mind when you think about God? Many people think of God in irreverent ways like “The big guy in the sky”, or “The man upstairs”. Some think of Jesus as their good buddy, greeting Him with the equivalent of a fist-bump and a pat on the back. Many others think of God as a celestial scorekeeper and a stern disciplinarian. He’s always watching you, He’s keeping score, and when you get home He’s going to give you a good spanking.

I’ve always loved the passage in Isaiah chapter six. I’m deeply grateful that early in my Christian life my pastor directed my attention to it, because it helped to form my initial understanding of God. Over the years since then I’ve learned about many of God’s other attributes, like His love and mercy, His compassion and kindness, His goodness and grace, but one of my earliest impressions of God came from Isaiah’s image in this passage of God as majestic – high and holy, lifted up and exalted.

Isaiah’s vision helps us to remember that when we approach God’s throne of grace it is indeed a throne we are approaching, and the One upon that throne is the mighty and majestic God of the universe. We are welcome at that throne because we are His children. He loves us deeply, He is kind and gracious, and He takes great pleasure in our presence there with Him. So we need not cower or crawl on our bellies, but let’s also not be casual about it.

One of the great tragedies in modern Christianity is our low view of God. We have become entirely too casual in His presence. Tozer contends that that low view of God is the cause of a thousand lesser evils. When you have a low view of God you will easily minimize and excuse sin. If you have a high view of God you will see Him as majestic, exalted, holy and lifted up, and that high view of God will change a lot of things in the rest of your life.

I encourage you to spend some extra time this morning slowly reading Isaiah 6:1-6. Mediate on it, pray over it, and ask the Holy Spirit to help you see God the Father as He really is.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Knowing God”

Our Bible verse for today: “Be still, and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10 (NIV)

Our thought for today: “We need to know God as He really is.”

A.W. Tozer (1897-1963) was a Christian and Missionary Alliance Pastor. He was also a popular conference speaker, retreat leader, and the author of more than thirty books. His most important work was written and published in 1961 and was called “The Knowledge of the Holy”. It’s a small book written for the average Christian and it is intended to help us get a better understanding of God’s basic attributes, as well as what those attributes mean for us in a real and practical way as we live our everyday Christian lives.

It’s essential for us to know God as he really is; that’s a critical factor in living the Christian life well. Unfortunately, many Christians today have a distorted and inaccurate understanding of God.  To a large extent our Christian culture has formed a god in our own image and to our own liking. Many people have ideas about God which bear little resemblance to the God of the Bible. Tozer writes, The Church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshiping men.”

Even in our day we are still technically a “religious” people. Even considering how far our culture has drifted from God, we still have lots of “religious” activity in America. In many towns there is a church on almost every corner. The airwaves are filled with Christian radio and television broadcasts. There are Christian bookstores. Bibles are easily available to anyone who wants one (or two, or ten, or twenty). There are Christian concerts, and Christian conferences, and Christian bowling nights. We have bumper stickers, fish symbols, a dashboard Jesus, and John-the-Baptist soap-on-a-rope. Quantity isn’t the problem. Quality is.

Tozer goes on, The words ‘Be still, and know that I am God,’ mean next to nothing to the self-confident, bustling worshiper in the middle period of the twentieth century.” What was true when Tozer wrote those words in 1961 is even truer today in 2018. Our knowledge of God is too often superficial and inaccurate.

This month we will take the time to get to know God as He really is. We will consider some of God’s most important attributes, we will talk about what those supernatural truths mean for us, and we will think about how they impact our everyday lives.

We need to know God as He really is. We won’t have full knowledge of God until the day we arrive in heaven, but the Bible reveals enough about Him that we can know Him now, much better than we do.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “A life well spent”

Our Bible verse for today: “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?” Mark 8:36 (NIV)

Our thought for today: “Don’t spend your life pursuing things that won’t matter in eternity.”

There was a time in by “BC” days (before Christ), when I was a bit of a gambler. I enjoyed playing poker, blackjack, slot machines, and the lottery. For a couple of years during that period my family and I lived in Florida where greyhound dog racing was popular. So from time-to-time Linda and I would go to the dog track, which is similar to horse racing tracks in other states.

The way it works is that the greyhounds are all lined up in a starting gate and there is an electronic rabbit on a circular metal rail that goes around the edge of the entire track. The dogs have been trained from birth to chase the rabbit. At the start of the race the bell rings, the rabbit takes off, the gates come up, and the dogs charge out like they were shot out of a cannon – and the race is on. The rabbit is programmed to move just a little faster than the dogs can run. The dogs race madly around the track trying in vain to catch the rabbit, but they never do.

However, one day the rabbit broke down part way through the race and suddenly stopped. When it did, the dogs caught it. But once they did catch it, they had no idea what to do with it. This had never happened before and the dogs were totally confused. Instead of tearing the rabbit apart, the dogs started barking and yelping and running around in circles snapping at each other. After all those years they finally caught the rabbit and when they did, they discovered it wasn’t what they thought it would be.

Many people spend their lives chasing the rabbit. Year after year they race through life chasing things that always seem to remain just beyond their grasp. It’s exhausting, it’s frustrating, and for the most part, it just leaves them tired and dissatisfied. In the unlikely event they finally catch the thing they were chasing, they often discover it wasn’t what they thought it would be and they end up discouraged and disillusioned.

In Mark 8:36 Jesus asked the provocative question, “What will it benefit you if you gain the whole world but lose your soul?” You see, when it’s all said and done, when your body is buried and your soul is facing eternity, the only thing that will matter is your relationship with Jesus.

As we end this series about “A life well spent”, I encourage you to stay focused on the most important pursuit in life – a close relationship with the Lord. Don’t waste your life chasing after things that won’t matter two seconds after you’re dead. As the poet C.T. Studd once wrote, “Only one life; will soon be past; only what’s done for Christ will last.”

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “A life well spent”

Our Bible verse for today: “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” Proverbs 4:23 (NIV)

Our thought for today: “What’s in your heart determines everything else about you.”

Henry Ward Beecher was a well-known and widely respected pastor, speaker, writer, and social reformer in the mid-1800s. In much of his teaching and preaching Beecher asserted that the quality of any person’s life is determined by what’s in their heart. Commenting on Proverbs 4:23 he once wrote, “It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has.”

Of course, that kind of thinking flies in the face of human wisdom. People are usually considered rich based upon what they have. If you make a lot of money, own a big house, drive a nice car, wear expensive clothes, go on exotic vacations, and have a lot of money in the bank, then you are rich. And if not, then you are poor. So says the world.

Beecher’s point in the quote above, and Solomon’s point in Proverbs 4:23, is that it is what’s in your heart that makes you rich or poor. A happy poor man is better than a miserable rich man. A small apartment filled with love and joy is better than a large mansion filled with anger and strife. A content man of modest means is better off than a greedy man who is rich but never satisfied.

And so, Solomon warns us to carefully guard the condition of our heart. Prayerfully consider the things that are most important to you. What is it that you crave, and what captures and holds your attention? The condition of your heart will ultimately determine everything else about you – it will determine the quality of your life.

One of the best places to go to get your heart right is church. A good worship service can be a powerful tool in the hands of the Holy Spirit. Through the prayers, scripture reading, music, and preaching, as well as through the powerful spiritual dynamic created by a group of worshipers all seeking God together, the Holy Spirit can often break through a calloused heart faster and better in a worship service than anywhere else.

I would like to invite you to visit with us this Sunday at Oak Hill Baptist Church. Sunday school is at 9:00 and the worship service begins at 10:00. Give your heart to Jesus and everything else in your life will quickly begin to fall into place, because it’s the condition of your heart that determines everything else about you.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “A life well spent”

Our Bible verse for today: “Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him …” Luke 24:31 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Living the ‘with-God’ life is possible.”

Please excuse me if I make this devotional message very personal. As I write this it is the morning of my sixty-fourth birthday. Now-a-days birthdays always put me in a reflective mood. They cause me to think back over the life I’ve had up to this point, and to think forward about the life I hope to have in the years to come. That’s where my mind is at this morning.

One theme that has become increasingly important to me at this stage in life is what Dallas Willard termed “The with-God Life”. That phrase, “The with-God Life”, became the theme around which Dallas’ lifework as a Christian thinker, philosopher, and writer, revolved.

“The with-God Life” is a life that is literally lived “with God” in a very real, very practical, and very experiential way. Through his own life experience, and as a result of his own close walk with the Lord, Dallas discovered that it is possible to know, hear, experience, and interact with God as the most important person in your life.

As we learn to live with God in this manner, we progressively experience what the disciples on the road to Emmaus experienced, “Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him …” We learn to hear God speaking to us in a thousand different ways; we learn to experience Him through the events of our lives; we sense His presence with us; and we come to know Him in ways we never have before. Our eyes are opened and our hearts are burning.

Dallas’ lifework of explaining, teaching, and modeling “The with-God Life” is so intriguing and compelling that his books not only became best sellers, but they have become classics of modern Christian literature. Beyond that, so many Christians over the last thirty years have had a hunger for that kind of life with God, that two graduate level schools have been created based upon the work of Dallas Willard. They are “The Dallas Willard Center for Christian Spiritual Formation” at Westmont College in California, and the “Renovare Institute for Spiritual Formation.” (You can Google both of them).

One of my remaining life goals is to participate in the two-year spiritual formation program sponsored by the Renovare Institute. I have had a vision for doing this for almost twenty years since I first learned of it. It is mostly online classes, video conferences, lots of private personal study, research projects, and four one-week on-campus sessions over the two years. It is an intensive two year program of deep spiritual development and it is done with a small group of students, living in different locations around the country, all working together and helping each other. Each year the program only accepts 45 students nationwide. The 2018-2020 class, which begins in August, is already full. I am applying for the 2019-2021 class and would appreciate your prayers. It is a highly competitive application process and only a small percentage of applicants are accepted. As I said, this would fulfill one of my remaining life goals.

We are all works in progress (me especially), and we should all be in a constant state of learning, growing, and developing in our spiritual maturity. A life well spent is a life lived in a close relationship with Jesus – the closer the better. I pray that will turn out to have been true for me, and I pray it will be true for you too.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is: