I have been hearing a phrase repeatedly over the last few days and I find it so important as a defining point in the process of who we need to become in Christ.
“God, I praise You for who You are.”
When we are able to truly say to God “I praise you for who You are”, we unleash His blessings. We cease to hold God hostage to who we think He should be and the attributes we have pinned on Him and we accept Him, in Faith, as Creator and Redeemer and First Cause to all that is. We trust His judgment to finish our life rightly and purposefully. We stop making excuses for His Word. It is what it is, it says what it says and we have no right to excuse it away.
We look for answers and listening for voices but God is not often heard in the storms and we can be easily mislead by deceiving spirits or left wanting for the lack of a response. Do we want confirmation or truth? In the storm pray for strength, in the calm pray for wisdom.
He often, I believe, rewards our faith with fact. Because we trusted Him in the storm He, in return, trusts us with His secrets, and the humble grow wise. Please know and remember this there are no “great men of God”. There are only pitiful, weak, sinful men of a Great and Merciful God. God owes us no explanations, He owes us nothing. What He gives us He gives out of love and out of His desire to bless us, and we should be doing our work for the same reason relating to Him.
Evangelist Paul Washer said he was asked what the greatest sin is. His answer was brilliant; wisdom from God. The greatest sin is to break the greatest commandment. The greatest commandment is to love the Lord you God with all you are; with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength – and not ONE of us does that. We are incapable of loving perfectly. Perhaps that is the root of our sin nature that we cannot love as God can.
That may be one of the greatest things about our Savior; that He loved and loves, perfectly. There was never a moment – not the twinkling of an eye – when Jesus did not love His Father in Heaven with all His heart, mind, soul, and strength. As you sit and ponder that reflect also that Jesus did not live one moment for Himself. Man is not truly able to love unless he is living and loving beyond himself.
This is the thing, to love God for who He is with all that you are; making no demands for yourself but praying only that God’s will be done and God be glorified in your suffering or blessing.
God made man out of His abundance, not out of His lacking. God did not need someone to love and care for like a pet. He created us to share in His abundance. The Triune God is more than sufficient within to exist in fullness without us. But God is pleased to share and rejoice with us in the truth and righteousness and beauty that He is.
Love Him for who He is!
All of creation moans for that Day of Judgment when things will be set right. When the lawless are forever accursed; creation will rejoice at that moment that the Justice of God has finally come to the earth.
At the Judgment we will not look upon those who are cast into the Lake of Fire and wonder how a loving God can do that. We will see them as they are…as WE are without Christ. We will look on in wonder and broken heartedness at how a Just God could allow us to escape judgment by laying that judgment on His only Son.
Having doubts that Jesus did literally die in your place? Think about this. The Jesus who knew the will of the Father and knew when men reviled Him and knew the heart of Judas and knew not to trust the people; the Son of Man with all the answers who knew what kind of death awaited Him hung from that cross and asked the Father “WHY?”! “My GOD! WHY have You forsaken ME!? He had lost the blessing and received the curse; the curse deserving of a rebel handed down by the Father…His Father…the one whom He had LOVED with every fiber of His being had handed the Son the curse that belonged to me and you…
Don’t try to explain it, love God for who He is…