Hurting

Last week I went to a course on treatment in adult neurogenics. As I sat and listened to the presenter speak way over my head in an area that I am supposed to have great knowledge in my thoughts were turned to God. Think a moment about all the different professions that study how God made us. Cardiologists, dentists, podiatrists, neurologists, pathologists, oncologists…this list goes on and on. All different fields that go to years and years of schooling and spend a life time learning about how God made us when he “formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed life into his nostrils”(Genesis 2:7)

I sit back in awe that we can not even begin to grasp the complexity of how God made us. We have to have a specific field to specialize in. There is no way to even begin to understand them all in full. God breathed and man was created. That is a glimpse at just how powerful God is. We have to rest in the truth that God is not like us and that is a good thing and quit trying to compare him to anything.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8)

We can not comprehend and we need to rest in that and let that fuel worship. If one was ever able to fully comprehend God then God would some how have some kind of measurement and therefore have limits. And if God has limits then He would not be worthy of worship for all eternity.

One truth about God that my small group talked about tonight is how God does not change. Think about this truth about God for a moment. God does not change his mind. We however change constantly. God never changes his love for you poured out in Christ. In fact today God feels about sinners “exactly as He did when He sent His only-begotten Son into the world to die for mankind!”(Tozer)  Wow!!! We also have to see that God does not change in His just wrath.

We will all stand before the Lord one day and God will not change His mind about His plans and purposes in Christ. There will be no excuse for anyone. There will be no telling God I went to church, my grandfather was a pastor, I lived on a deserted island and never heard about you, or I was a good person. The truth is every single person in this world is without excuse for worshipping God for who He is.  “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” Our only right response is worship and thanksgiving. We all have gone our own way though and fallen short of His glory therefore are separated from Him deserving his full wrath for all eternity. There is no one innocent not one.

But God has reconciled sinners to himself through Jesus Christ our Lord who took the full wrath of God in our place. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21). “Jesus says “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14)

God will not change his mind about this as God can not change. It is only by grace you are saved through faith in Christ alone. This is such good news but should bring the follower of Christ to great urgency!!!!! Currently there are billions of people that have never heard the gospel. And “How, then can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without preaching to them?” (Romans 10:14)

There is a football stadium full of people daily dying without ever hearing the good news that Jesus has come to reconcile sinners who receive him to a Holy God while we sit in church pews week after week. May the follower of Jesus walk in reckless abandon to make known the mysteries of His gospel because Jesus is worthy of all praise.

Hurting deeply for the unreached tonight,

Lane

Some Scripture references: Isaiah 55 8-11, Isaiah 46: 9-10, James 1:17, Romans 1-3, Romans 10, John 14, Colossians 1

Recommended book reading that goes along with this post:

Radical by David Platt

None Like Him (Jen Wilkin)

Knowledge of the Holy (A.W. Tozer)