Month: September 2025

How do you know me?  

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It has been my observation while reading scripture that word meanings matter. We rest our salvation on the twist of a phrase or a deeper understanding of a few terms. Words matter. I think it is useful to invest time in the meaning of terms we encounter in scripture if we are to have a reasonable chance of understanding the truth in Scriptures. Let us begin at the beginning. Our key words and terms gleaned from scripture should express God’s ideas, we are not idea creators, we are interpreters. The words, themselves should not be the endgame. We say that God is love; we say that God is light; or we say that Christ is truth; we are conveying a truth about God the Father and Jesus. Consider the implications of this example sentence — “My friend is patient.” By making this statement, we are not saying that the sum total of my friend is patience, i.e., patience and my friend are equal; we are merely saying our subject (my friend) exhibits a tremendous amount of patience. The term – is, are, and be all express a similar idea and are used in a similar way. Our subject (my friend) is more than just patience, but he is very patient. The differentiation is an important distinction, one that requires thought.

The attributes of God are collective, together they help us to know something about God and about how he will respond to things. If we impair the concept of personality in God and reduce His attributes to one, then, by inference, we are relegating that specific attribute as our God. We could say God is power. If we were defining God, with the notion that God equals power, would we not also have to say power is God? What if we said, God is mercy. Would we not also have to say mercy is God? When we start accidently limiting God by our terms, the God we have left is not the God of Abraham; He is not the God and Father of Jesus; He is not Elohim, the power behind the prophets and the apostles; He is not the Redeemer of his church, nor the God of the new covenant, and he is not the God of the universe..

Let us push a little deeper into the notion of God’s attributes.  What we are talking about is quiescent attributes vs active attributes. Quiescent attributes define God’s essence. Active attributes define how God interacts all the time with the things around Him. Please understand, this differentiation of attributes is not an easy thing to discuss. Ask three people about this, you will get three different answers. In my view, the quiescent attributes of God are eternal, omniscience, indivisible, sovereign, holy, immutable, omnipotent, and infinite. The active attributes are love, knowledge, wisdom, truth, righteousness, goodness, grace, mercy, justice, and power.

Why does this matter – because when we limit our view of God to only one or two of these attributes, we render Elohim impotent – we limit his activities. If you were part of the community trying to negate the impact of God (progressive theologians), I think this would be a primary goal of this community – limit God’s sphere of operations. Negate the effect of as many active attributes as possible. Deny the existence of all quiescent attributes with a simple theorem – nothing stays true forever. Reduce God to a few active attributes, choose the attributes carefully and then lament of his inability to act or his inconsistent actions over time. This is the underlying goal of the liberal theologian.

When John says, ‘God is Love’, he is defining an essential, active attribute of God (see 1 John 4:8). Love as well as life reveals its presence by its actions. Love is a powerful characteristic of God but is not the sole attribute of God. Love is the underpinning for holiness, justice, faithfulness, mercy, kindness, and truth – to name a few. Because God is immutable, He acts consistently with love. He never stops being himself – ever. In context, John is saying, if we cannot or do not love the people around us, then we do not have God in us, for he loves the people around us – God is love, God is embodiment of the type of love we should and will have for others.  IF WE ARE FILLED with God, He will exude from us, why? He is love. We cannot hold him back.   Therefore, I choose Jesus.

While We Work for Jesus

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C. E. Leftwhich

1890

1 All around is bright and fair,
While we work for Jesus;
Joy and peace are everywhere,
While we work for Jesus.

Refrain:
Come, O come, this cheerful, happy day;
Come, O come, to Sunday School away.

2 Every face with pleasure beams,
While we work for Jesus;
Every heart with rapture teems,
While we work for Jesus. [Refrain]

3 Nearer seem the realms above,
While we work for Jesus;
Dearer seems our Saviour’s love,
While we work for Jesus. [Refrain]

Abraham and Sarah

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Once there was a man named Abram.  One day the Lord came to talk to Abram, and Abram asked, “Who will have all my things when I die”. 

God promised Abram and his wife Sarai that one day they would be parents, even though they were old and had no children.

God wasn’t sure that Abram understood.  So that night He took him outside, and said, “Do you see all the stars that are in the sky”?  When Abram looked up, the whole night sky was full of stars,  so many in fact that he would never be able to count them.  Then God said, “That is how many children you will have”.

Quite a few years later when Abram was ninety-nine years old (older than even your grandparents)  the Lord decided to change Abram’s name to Abraham, which means “father of many.”  He also changed Sarai’s name to Sarah.

God told them again that they would be parents and that they would have a boy.  This time Abraham laughed so hard he fell on his face!  It was hard to believe that he and Sarah would have a child in their old age.

One day three visitors came to Abraham’s house.  He hurried to meet them.  “May I get you something to eat and drink?”  Abraham asked.  “Please come in and join us, and have a rest on the couch.”

The visitors agreed, so Abraham brought them some fresh bread, milk, and hamburgers.

While the visitors were eating, they asked Abraham, “Where is your wife Sarah?”  Abraham thought this was a little  strange, but he replied, “She’s in the other room”.

Then one of the men spoke and said, “I will come back to see you at this time next year, and Sarah will have a son.”

Now Sarah was listening behind the living room door.  She started to laugh, but covered her mouth and laughed to herself because she didn’t want to be heard.  Then she said to herself, “How can I have a child, I’m almost one hundred years old?”

Later when the visitors had left,  Abraham and Sarah realized that the man who had told them this was indeed God.

A year later Sarah did have a son.  She and Abraham named him Isaac, which means “he laughs.”  

They were very excited, and remembered to thank God for Isaac.

Friday Quote

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“There is no peace like the peace of those whose minds are possessed with full assurance that they have known God, and God has known them, and that this relationship guarantees God’s favor to them in life, through death and on forever.”  — a quote from JI Packer

Those who Escape will Remember Me

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It was my observation that Israel had been the Jewel in God’s eye, but Ezekiel (chapter 6) declares they were polluted in their thinking and their actions. Their worship of the most high had become wallowing in the mud of idolatry. For reasons that seemed foolish they had rejected the realness and beauty of the one true living God for wooden and stone models of a god ‘made up’ by humans.

You might think the Hebrew nation is going to crash and burn. A sad ending indeed. But this is not the ending. God’s grace will prevail. There will be a remnant. A few will remain faithful, they will suffer along with the rest of the Hebrews, but they will not perish. Their heart will not be extinguished. God will shelter them from the deepest troubles. They will pass through the fire unblemished.

Ezekiel 6:8-10 says — But I will spare some, for some of you will escape the sword when you are scattered among the lands and nations. Then in the nations where they have been carried captive, those who escape will remember me—how I have been grieved by their adulterous hearts, which have turned away from me, and by their eyes, which have lusted after their idols. They will loathe themselves for the evil they have done and for all their detestable practices. And they will know that I am the Lord; I did not threaten in vain to bring this calamity on them [NIV].

If you take a look at Isaiah 1:9 we see the same theme. The entire group deserves to be cut off, but by grace, God maintains a remnant. Some will die by the sword but some will escape. None of the people marked to fall by the sword escaped, they put their trust in the walls of the city rather than the God of the city. Their shame of trusting wood, mud and stone was their fall.  Those who trusted God, were spared and their seed became the new inhabitants of the City of God.

God’s patience left them room for repentance and for receiving forgiveness. Those who repented, escaped death, he gave them life for their repentance. This story is an encouragement to us that repentance matters. We mess up, we repent, we find forgiveness and restoration. We find a path to weather the storm and find the eye of the hurricane. It is clear this remnant was marked for salvation. God, in his foreknowledge knew who was trusting the walls of the city and who was trusting God. They were made safe by God’s mercy through their repentance.

Please understand, they did suffer, they were carried off as captives, but this was better than death. They were driven out of the promised land but not out of God’s hand. We need to learn from this small patch of history. True repentance shall be accepted by the one true living God. In this light, our troubles are permitted by God who uses the troubles to bring us back to him. Our troubles reinforce the need to repent and demonstrate the depth of his grace and mercy. We make a mess, he cleans it up, but we are wise to never think that repenting is a ‘get out of jail’ card. Sometimes we are simply placed in the eye of the hurricane while the storm rages on. We walk through the valley of death, our God is with us, even there in our deepest troubles. We rest in his peace.

Sin starts when we lose sight of God (implied Jeremiah 3:21). Repentance starts when we restore our gaze upon him. His mercy brings himself to our mind. We respond. Grace finds us in our deepest mess, he brings us hope, he brings us mercy, he brings us out. We resist, he persists. We take the role of the prodigal, we head home, and he runs out to meet us. My friends, make no mistake. God will cause us to know we are in deep trouble, that he is Lord of all, and then provide the opportunity (our choice) for repentance (and a safe haven) or complete chaos. What do you pray for? A safe haven. Let God manage the problems. Find his peace. Move towards his peace. This leads to life. I choose Jesus.