READING AND SAVORING GOD'S VOLUME OF CREATION REVISED

“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. 2 Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. 3 There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. 4 Their measuring line goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent for the sun, 5 which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy. 6 Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat.” Psalm 19:1-6 ESV

During this season of much quietness, solitude, and reflection I have come to savor God's creation like never before. Sometimes I will sit in my garden and feel overwhelmed with praise as I watch the birds bathe in my bird bath. I will be quiet and feel the gentle ocean breeze that reminds me of the breath of God bringing life to my soul. I will look at the colors of my flowers and trees and reflect on the God's gift of color, variety, shape, and form. Did any of this have to be? In simplicity I become thankful to Him that it simply is. So, in thinking about all of this, I decided to post an updated and edited version for those who are new readers and to re-inspire old readers to be awakened in this busy and noisy world to God's revelatory book of nature. I pray that God will open your eyes to His creation for His glory and your joy.

Last November I was sitting on a blanket on my Crazy Creek chair watching the sunset in Joshua Tree National Park. It was truly a sacred moment for me. You could see the alpine glow on the peaks of the distant mountains as the sunlight gradually faded away. If you looked at the sky you would see an amazing pallet of ever changing colors. The upper half of it in clear blue color and the lower half a light violet. My chair was placed in such a way that in front of me was a Joshua Tree, to the right was a hill covered with big smooth round rocks (unique to this national park) and in the middle between them was a huge rising Harvest moon. At that moment I felt so alive and at peace. Here I was in the presence of such beauty of God's creation, savoring each moment and feeling a profound sense of my Creator’s presence and His amazing grace. Here and now nothing else mattered to me in the whole world, it was well with my soul.

As I was basking in the glory of my Maker’s creation my heart began welling up with a deep sense of gratitude to God both for the moment and for the fact that the moon, the sky, the mountains, the rocks, the Joshua trees, and the desert were just there. I was blessed and privileged to drink in of their beauty and glory. I thought of how many moments like this have taken place throughout the created world where no one was there to see and enjoy it but God Himself.

While gazing at the splendor and beauty of the moment, wonder and gratitude began welling up inside and out of my lips came deep, heartfelt praise. I exulted in the beauty and wonder of God, His workmanship in the created world, and His creating and sustaining grace over the world that He made. It was simply amazing to me that God is God.

At that moment I realized that God had surprised me with the gift of another gift. He gave me anew the gift of amazement at what I see. He gave me the gift of sight that awakened me to the reality that every day, every moment, if I open my eyes and look, that there is always more to see in what I see.

The Psalmist tells us that Creation is telling us stupendous things about God! “The heavens are telling the glory of God and the firmament declares his handiwork" (Verse 1). Creation is a gift from God (and by creation, I mean all that God has made, not just mountains, birds, and trees). It is meant to display and communicate his glory. The voiceless, visual, universally available knowledge is that behind it all is a glorious God as maker of the world. The world is his handiwork, and he is glorious.

I love what Spurgeon says about the revelation of God in nature,

The Great Master Author has sent forth several volumes; among the rest is one called the "Book of Revelation," and another styled the "Volume of Creation." We have been reading the Word-volume and expounding it for years, we are now perusing the Work-volume, and are engrossed in some of its most glowing pages. Our love for the sacred book of letters and words has not diminished but increased our admiration for the hieroglyphics of the flood and field. That man perversely mistakes folly for wisdom who persists in undervaluing one glorious poem by a famous author, in order to show his zeal for a second epic from the same fertile pen. It is the mark of a feeble mind to despise the wonders of nature because we prize the treasures of salvation. He who built the lofty skies is as much our Father as he who hath spoken to us by his own Son, and we should reverently adore HIM who in creation decketh himself with majesty and excellency, even as in revelation HE arrayeth himself in glory and beauty.

Modern fanatics who profess to be so absorbed in heavenly things that they are blind to the most marvelous of Jehovah's handiwork, should go to school, with David as the schoolmaster, and learn to "consider the heavens," and should sit with Job upon the dunghill of their pride, while the Lord rehearses the thundering stanzas of creation's greatness, until they cry with the patriarch, "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee; wherefore, I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes." For our part, we feel that what was worth the Lord's making, richly deserves the attention of the most cultivated and purified intellect; and we think it blasphemy against God himself to speak slightingly of his universe, as if, forsooth, we poor puny mortals were too spiritual to be interested in that matchless architecture which made the morning stars sing together and caused the sons of God to shout for joy.

John Piper, one who has taught me much about reading the Volume of Creation says,
God means for us to be stunned and awed by his work of creation, but not for its own sake. He means for us always to look at his creation and say: If the work of his hands is so full of wisdom and power and grandeur and majesty and beauty, what must this God be like in himself! These are but the backside of his glory seen through a glass darkly. What will it be to see the Creator himself! Not his works! Not even a billion galaxies will satisfy the human soul. God and God alone is the soul's end.

I think I can say that I the experience of delighting in some awesome natural phenomena—the moon rise at Joshua tree, a night sky in the clear pollution free Zion National Park, the astonishing Yosemite Falls, or a sunrise over the hills of San Clemente, where I live-is as Piper says, “the prep-school of our affections, readying them to delight in God.”

Christians ought to have better eyes than people in general for seeing the knowledge that every day and night pours forth. We ought to be the kind of people who walk out of the house in the morning with the same sense of suspense and expectancy.

John Piper mentions often the influence of the late Wheaton College professor Clyde Kilby. He says that Professor Kilby “plead with us to stop seeking mental health in the mirror of self-analysis, but instead to drink in the remedies of God in nature.”

I agree. Oh how nature is God’s great gift to our mental health! The moment on that evening in Joshua Tree I can honestly say that I had virtually no thoughts about myself and my problems because I was drinking in the remedy of God’s presence, His greatness, His glory, His power, His majesty, His beauty, and His peace.

In order to glimpse the glory of God in creation we actually have to engage with creation. It means to intentionally, “BE HERE NOW”. That is in obedience to “Be still and know that I am God.” When I practice “BEING HERE NOW”, I consciously stop, look, and listen to God speaking to me though His Volume of Creation, and quietly become alive to nature, alive to life, and most of all, alive to my Creator and Friend at that moment. At that moment I experience what is called “Transcendence” where I rise above myself, my life, my problems, my little thoughts, and enter into a world so wonderful, so vast, and so much bigger than little me that God has graced me to be an active part of.

Jonathan Edwards describes one of his experiences communing with God in nature:

As I was walking there, and looking up on the sky and clouds, there came into my mind so sweet a sense of the glorious majesty and grace of God, that I know not how to express.... The appearance of everything was altered; there seemed to be, as it were, a sweet calm cast, or appearance of divine glory, in almost everything. God's excellency, his wisdom, his purity and love, seemed to appear in everything; in the sun, moon and stars; in the cloud, and blue sky; in the grass, flowers, trees; in the water and all nature.

Clyde Kilby recommends that we consider nature simply because it is. That is, simply because God has made it. His plea was that we stop being unamazed by the strange glory of ordinary things.

"I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person. I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are but simply be glad that they are. I shall joyfully allow them the mystery of what Lewis calls their "divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic" existence."

I invite you, with Clyde Kilby and myself, to open your eyes and ears, to BE HERE NOW” and to look and listen to the “heavens declaring the glory of God.

Amazed at God again!
Pastor Bill

I AM WITH YOU

"I am the God of Abraham your father. Fear not, for I am with you..." Genesis 26:14 ESV

"Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God;I will strengthen you, I will help you,I will uphold you with my righteous right hand." Isaiah 41:10 ESV

"Then Haggai, the messenger of the LORD, spoke to the people with the LORD’s message, "I am with you, declares the LORD." Haggai 1:13 ESV

"Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." Matthew 28:20 ESV

Are you feeling the desire to sin right now? Are you feeling very alone in this world? Are you feeling alone in your inner struggles? Are you feeling alone in your loss, in your pain, or in your sorrow and grief? Are you facing circumstances where you feel weak, powerless, and overwhelmed? I have been feeling all of those feelings these past few months. That is why I desire to write to you out of my own battles and let you know who and what has helped me over and over again in and through my own struggles. I pray that it will help you as well dear reader.

The very God who made the universe and came to the earth in Jesus and is present at this very moment by His Holy Spirit says, “I am with you”(Genesis 26:24; Isaiah 41:10;Haggai 1:13; Matthew 28:20). Those are his exact words. Now make this personal for whatever is going on in your life if you think no one knows, no one is watching you, no one cares, no one can help, and you are all alone. Listen to his words as you apply this to the now of your life:

(Put you name here)_______________ I AM WITH YOU!

Would you listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking the truth of God into your soul? How does taking this to heart help if you are facing a temptation? First, it reminds you that you are being watched by the God who is present at this moment while you are being tempted. begin to realize that nothing is private, no secrets are possible before God: “I am with you.” “I . . . am . . . with . . . you.”

When tempted say it to yourself: "I am with you." Say it out loud back to God: “You are with me, Lord.”

Because you are aware of His presence when tempted you will begin to be free to say more to Him, like, “Help me. Save me. Deliver me. Have mercy on me. I need you. Make me understand that you are with me. Help me to know and believe that You are with me.” I have found that there are many competing voices in my head that are devious, sly, and argumentative all the time with the truth; but when I begin to listen to the voice of God and preach to myself "I am with you", I have come to find that that the competing voices become more obvious to me. The more I remember and sense the Lord's presence with me, then what those other voices say will sound contrary, lies, devious, hostile to God's will and your welfare and happiness. I begin to wonder how did they ever sound so appealing! The contrast and battle between flesh and the spirit, God's will and our will, right and wrong, good and evil, will become more and more evident.

Slowly I begin to find that the choice that I make in listening to His voice causes my choice to listen to the other voices become less and less.I begin to realize how much I am kidding myself when I do secretive things. Most of us have secret thoughts and do secret deeds that we would never want to be exposed in public. Every time you remember that you are out in public, then you live an out-in-public life. “I am with you” means you’re always out in public. You’ll never get away with anything.

But there is also great assurance because if you would open your eyes, be still, be quiet, and listen, He is right with you to strengthen you, empower you, and to help you. Remember that this one who is with you was tempted in all points. He is familiar with your trouble and "a bruised reed He will not break and a trembling wick He will not quench" (Matthew 12:28), He loves you and is aware of your weakness and is able and more than willing to help you. After all, He who loves you says, “I am with you.”

“I am with you” means that the person who can help you right now knows and is watching. He is not just any person, He is the living God and creator and sustainer of the universe and your life! In fact, He is watching over you to protect you. He will help you escape darkness, because he has transferred you into the kingdom of the Son whom he loves.

What if you face a different struggle today? What if you feel overwhelmed with loneliness and fear, inconsolable grief and sorrow, feelings of abandonment and betrayal? Let's not get religious here. Christan's feel and experience all of these things don't they? Listen again to the sweet, kind, empathetic, compassionate, merciful voice of God:

“I am with you.” “I am with you.”

When I really hear that, and take it to heart, I know That I am not alone. I am safe. I am secure. I am comforted. I am helped. I will not be abandoned. i will not be rejected. I have a friend. I have help. I have someone who knows me and understands me, yet loves me anyway fully and completely. He will not reject me or forsake me.

What if you’re overwhelmed by the guilt, rejection, and shame rime of past failures? “I am with you.” God is not shocked by the ugliness of your past. He came to die for the worst of sinners (as Paul twice refers to himself—1 Timothy 1:15-16). Whatever your struggle, “I am with you” changes everything. It means that I am forgiven and that God holds absolutely nothing against you.

Micah 7:8-9 is a picture of what you say to your enemy when he scoffs at your failures. Here is what you say. John Piper summarizes these words by calling them gutsy guilt. This is because the believer admits that he has done wrong. But he will not surrender his hold on the truth that God is with Him and on his side. Listen to these amazing words. Mark them. Memorize them. Use them whenever Satan comes to accuse you or condemn you.

Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me. I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him, until he pleads my cause and executes judgment for me. He will bring me out to the light; I shall look upon his vindication. (Micah 7:8-9)

"I AM WITH YOU"

Let these precious words be on the forefront of your thoughts, your meditations, your drive to work, as you lay in bed, where the battle rages, and in your loneliness, fears, anxieties, pain, and sorrows. Let these words begin filling your soul with comfort, assurance, peace, faith, and joy.

Try this week to get alone with Him in a quiet place and come into his presence and begin to release to Him all of your past sins, all of your present burdens and temptations, and all your fears and anxieties and worries about your future. Then begin allowing His word to fill your mind, your heart, and you soul with the comforting words I AM WITH YOU. Don't rush, allow the reality of His presence fill you with a sense and awareness of His presence with at this moment. Listen to His kind and loving voice breath assurance, faith, and hope like rivers of living water:

I AM WITH YOU RIGHT NOW. I AM HERE FOR YOU. I WILL HELP YOU. I LOVE YOU.

Pastor Bill

Blaise Pascal on Our Addiction to Distraction and Diversion

I have been in a season where God has graced me with a time of learning to be quiet, contemplative, and reflective. I read this article on Justin Taylor's blog (http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/) that really struck me. We are a very busy, entertainment oriented, low attention span, distracted people. I wonder if we are really becoming better or just becoming a mile wide and an inch deep as human beings who were created for glory. Take the time to read this and ask yourself questions about you and your soul.
Bill

The issues of multi-tasking, Internet skimming, social-media addiction, etc. is only going to become more acute. So it’s helpful to remember that, on a certain level, there is nothing new under the sun. I thought it might be helpful to repost a couple of blog entries on distraction and the heart—written hundreds of years before the Age of ADD.

Pascal, to my mind, has written the most profound reflections on God, man, and “diversion.” I’d recommend getting Peter Kreeft’s edition, Christianity for Modern Pagans, Pascal’s Pensees Edited, Outlined, and Explained, where the relevant thoughts are all gathered in one section (pp. 167-187). Kreeft writes that when he teaches this material, his “students are always stunned and shamed to silence as Pascal shows them in these pensees their own lives in all their shallowness, cowardice and dishonesty.”

Here is one line from Pascal (from #136) that it worthy of a lot of meditation::
I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.

Kreeft’s restatements and commentary are also worth reading. For example, here is an excerpt from pp. 167-169:
We ought to have much more time, more leisure, than our ancestors did, because technology, which is the most obvious and radical difference between their lives and ours, is essentially a series of time-saving devices.
In ancient societies, if you were rich you had slaves to do the menial work so that you could be freed to enjoy your leisure time. Life was like a vacation for the rich because the poor slaves were their machines. . . .
[But] now that everyone has slave-substitutes (machines), why doesn’t everyone enjoy the leisurely, vacationy lifestyle of the ancient rich? Why have we killed time instead of saving it? . . .
We want to complexify our lives. We don’t have to, we want to. We wanted to be harried and hassled and busy. Unconsciously, we want the very things we complain about. For if we had leisure, we would look at ourselves and listen to our hearts and see the great gaping hold in our hearts and be terrified, because that hole is so big that nothing but God can fill it.
So we run around like conscientious little bugs, scared rabbits, dancing attendance on our machines, our slaves, and making them our masters. We think we want peace and silence and freedom and leisure, but deep down we know that this would be unendurable to us, like a dark and empty room without distractions where we would be forced to confront ourselves. . .
If you are typically modern, your life is like a mansion with a terrifying hole right in the middle of the living-room floor. So you paper over the hole with a very busy wallpaper pattern to distract yourself. You find a rhinoceros in the middle of your house. The rhinoceros is wretchedness and death. How in the world can you hide a rhinoceros? Easy: cover it with a million mice. Multiple diversions.

Douglas Groothuis (Professor of Philosophy at Denver Seminary) has written wisely on these issues. In his essay “Why Truth Matters Most: An Apologetic for Truth-Seeking in Postmodern Times” (JETS, September 2004) he takes his cues from Pascal:

In the middle of the seventeenth century in France, Blaise Pascal went to great lengths to expose those diversions that kept people from seeking truth in matters of ultimate significance. His words still ring true. In his day, diversion consisted of things like hunting, games, gambling, and other amusements. The repertoire of diversion was minute compared with what is available in our fully-wired and over-stimulated postmodern world of cell phones, radios, laptops, video games, omnipresent television (in cars, restaurants, airports, etc.), extreme sports, and much else. Nevertheless, the human psychology of diversion remains unchanged.

Diversion consoles us—in trivial ways—in the face of our miseries or perplexities; yet, paradoxically, it becomes the worst of our miseries because it hinders us from ruminating on and understanding our true condition. Thus, Pascal warns, it “leads us imperceptibly to destruction.” Why? If not for diversion, we would “be bored, and boredom would drive us to seek some more solid means of escape, but diversion passes our time and brings us imperceptibly to our death.” Through the course of protracted stupefaction, we learn to become oblivious to our eventual oblivion. In so doing, we choke off the possibility of seeking real freedom.

Diversion serves to distract humans from a plight too terrible to encounter directly—namely, our mortality, finitude, and failures. There is an ineluctable tension between our aspirations and our anticipations and the reality of our lives. As Pascal wrote,
Despite [his] afflictions man wants to be happy, only wants to be happy, and cannot help wanting to be happy. But how shall he go about it? The best thing would be to make himself immortal, but as he cannot do that, he has decided to stop thinking about it.

Pascal unmasks diversion as an attempt to escape reality, and an indication of something unstable and exceedingly out-of-kilter in the human condition. An obsession with entertainment is more than silly or frivolous. It is, for Pascal, revelatory of a moral and spiritual malaise begging for an adequate explanation. Our condition is “inconstancy, boredom, anxiety.” We humans face an incorrigible mortality that drives us to distractions designed to overcome our worries:
Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. Now the order of thought is to begin with ourselves, and with our author and our end. Now what does the world think about? Never about that, but about dancing, playing the lute, singing, writing verse, tilting at the ring, etc., and fighting, becoming king, without thinking what it means to be a king or to be a man.

Pascal notes that “if man were [naturally] happy, the less he were diverted the happier he would be, like the saints and God.” Diversion cannot bring sustained happiness, since it locates the source of happiness outside of us; thus, our happiness is dependent on factors often beyond our control, so that we are “liable to be disturbed by a thousand and one accidents, which inevitably cause distress.” The power may go off, the screen freeze, or the cell phone connection may break up. Worse yet, our own sensoriam may break down as sight dwindles, hearing ebbs, olfactory awareness fades, and all manner of bodily pleasures become harder to find and easier to lose. As the Preacher of Ecclesiastes intones, “Remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come, and the years draw near when you will say, ‘I have no pleasure in them’ ” (Eccl 12:1).

Diversions would not be blameworthy if they were recognized as such: trivial or otherwise distracting activities performed in order to temporarily avoid the harsh and unhappy realities of human life. However, self-deception often comes into play. In the end “we run heedlessly into the abyss after putting something in front of us to stop us seeing it.” According to Pascal, this condition illustrates the corruption of human nature. Humans are strangely not at home in their universe. They cannot even sit quietly in their own rooms. “If our condition were truly happy we should feel no need to divert ourselves from thinking about it.” Woody Allen highlights this in a scene from the movie “Manhattan.” A man speaks into a tape recorder about the idea for a story about “people in Manhattan who are constantly creating these real unnecessary neurotic problems for themselves because it keeps them from dealing with more unsolvable, terrifying problems about the universe.”

The compulsive search for diversion is often an attempt to escape the wretchedness of life. We have great difficulty being quiet in our rooms, when the television or computer screen offers a riot of possible stimulation. Postmodern people are perpetually restless; they frequently seek solace in diversion instead of satisfaction in truth. As Pascal said, “Our nature consists in movement; absolute rest is death.” The postmodern condition is one of oversaturation and over-stimulation, and this caters to our propensity to divert ourselves from pursuing higher realities.

THE HAPPINESS THAT GOD GIVES AND ENLARGES YOUR SOUL

In the midst of some of the most difficult times of my life I have found great comfort in reading Jonathan Edwards. I love him because he helps me get my eyes off of myself, my problems, and my circumstances which bring me no comfort, no peace, no joy, no faith, and no hope. Instead, he reminds me of a God who is full of glory and who brings me great happiness, peace, hope, and life when I see Him in all the glory of who He is.

Edwards wrote, "It appears that all that is ever spoken of in scripture as the ultimate end of God's works is included in that one phrase, THE GLORY OF GOD...God in seeking His glory, therein seeks the good of His creatures"

Oh what a wonderful and amazing being our God is! God had made us to know Him intimately, to see Him, to enjoy him, and to treasure Him above all things. It is an amazing truth that God finds pleasure and joy in our knowledge and experience of Him in His glory and that our knowledge and experience of Him is the means of our supreme happiness that He lovingly has purposed for us.

Have you noticed how empty and fleeting are other means that we use to try to find happiness? I have never been able to find any happiness in my attempts to find happiness outside of Him. Happiness has especially not come from my the gratification of my own selfish and self centered instincts. Is it no wonder why Jesus said that "whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, but whoever looses his life for My sake will find it" (Matthew 16:25).

Augustine, in the year 386, found his freedom from the pleasures of lust in the superior pleasures of God. "How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I had once feared to lose! . . . You drove them from me, you who are the true, the sovereign joy. You drove them from me and took their place, you who are sweeter than all pleasure."

Lately, many of the things that once made me happy in this world have been taken away from me.My natural reaction has been to try to get them back or to sink into despairing sorrow and grief. I have discovered that God's fundamental gift is not a life without great pain and challenges and sorrow, but a state of happiness rooted in Himself that can help me to rise above all situations good or bad in this life. This is a happiness that is not a mood or an emotional high. It is a persevering, bold happiness that is sorrowful, but always rejoicing, deeply rooted by faith in a glorious God.

It is so easy living in this world to be disconnected from Him and the very reason that we were made by Him. I want to be staggered and wooed by the amazing glory of God in my life; not by stuff, people, ministry, popularity, low level pleasures, trite, trivial, banal, empty, and silly things. The secret of true happiness and pleasure is to gain a new and fresh vision of the infinite, everlasting, astonishing, amazing, lovely, magnificent, liberating, comforting, unconditional loving, grace giving and mercy showing, powerful glory of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

The soul enlarges or shrinks based upon the magnitude of its source of happiness. Life, if you let it, can diminish and shrink your soul.Both prosperity and adversity can do this. I have seen in my own life that bad things that happen to me can be given the power to kill me inside as well. Death outside can be used to bring death within our soul if we let it. Only a vision of Jesus Christ can enlarge our soul and rob adversity and prosperity of their soul killing power.

I am sick and tired of letting my soul shrink by pursuing pleasures outside of Christ alone. I am learning to reorient my thoughts, my words, and my actions on this God who is glorious and wants me to find my greatest pleasure and happiness in Him no matter what is going on in my life whether from prosperity to painful adversity. I daily keep telling myself that He truly has my happiness in mind because He loves me and that communing with Him and serving Him no matter what will bring me ultimately the greatest joy and pleasure while bringing Him glory.

Let me close by speaking of why a vision and experience of this God will bring you such joy and happiness. I quote John Piper's breathtaking description of the supremacy of Christ.

I am praying for you and myself that the risen, living Christ would come to us (even now) by His Spirit and through his Word and reveal to us:

—the supremacy of His deity, equal with God the Father in all his attributes—the radiance of his glory and the exact imprint of his nature, infinite, boundless in all his excellencies;

—the supremacy of His eternality that makes the mind of man explode with the unsearchable thought that Christ never had a beginning, but simply always was; sheer, absolute reality while all the universe is fragile, contingent, like a shadow by comparison to his all-defining, ever-existing substance;

—the supremacy of His never-changing constancy in all his virtues and all his character and all his commitments—the same yesterday, today, and forever;

—the supremacy of His knowledge that makes the Library of Congress look like a matchbox, and all the information on the Internet look like a little 1940’s farmers almanac, and quantum physics—and everything Stephen Hawking ever dreamed—seem like a first-grade reader;

—the supremacy of His wisdom that has never been perplexed by any complication and can never be counseled the wisest of men;

—the supremacy of His authority over heaven and earth and hell, without whose permission no man and no demon can move one inch, who changes times and seasons, removes kings and sets up kings; does according to His will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; so none can stay His hand or say to him, “What have you done?”

—the supremacy of His providence without which not a single bird falls to the ground in the furthest reaches of the Amazon forest, or a single hair of any head turns black or white;

—the supremacy of His word that moment by moment upholds the universe and holds in being all the molecules and atoms and subatomic world we have never yet dreamed of;

—the supremacy of His power to walk on water, cleanse lepers and heal the lame, open the eyes of the blind, cause the deaf to hear and storms to cease and the dead to rise, with a single word, or even a thought;

—the supremacy of His purity never to sin, or to have one millisecond of a bad attitude or an evil, lustful thought;

—the supremacy of His trustworthiness never to break his word or let one promise fall to the ground;

—the supremacy of His justice to render in due time all moral accounts in the universe settled either on the cross or in hell;

—the supremacy of His patience to endure our dullness for decade after decade; and to hold back His final judgment on this land and on the world, that many might repent;

—the supremacy of His sovereign, servant obedience to keep his Father’s commandments perfectly and then embrace the excruciating pain of the cross willingly;

—the supremacy of His meekness and lowliness and tenderness that will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick;

—the supremacy of His wrath that will one day explode against this world with such fierceness that people will call out for the rocks and the mountains to crush them rather than face the wrath of the Lamb;

—the supremacy of His grace that gives life to spiritually dead rebels and wakens faith in hell-bound haters of God, and justifies the ungodly with His own righteousness;

—the supremacy of His love that willingly dies for us even while we were sinners and frees us for the ever-increasing joy in making much of him forever;

—the supremacy of His own inexhaustible gladness in the fellowship of the Trinity, the infinite power and energy that gave rise to all the universe and will one day be the inheritance of every struggling saint;

And if he would grant us to know him like this, it would be but the outskirts of his supremacy. Time would fail to speak of the supremacy of his severity, and invincibility, and dignity, and simplicity, and complexity, and resoluteness, and calmness, and depth, and courage. If there is anything admirable, if there is anything worthy of praise anywhere in the universe, it is summed up supremely in Jesus Christ.

He is supreme in every admirable way over everything:

over galaxies and endless reaches of space;
over the earth from the top of Mount Everest 29,000 feet up, to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean 36,000 feet down into the Mariana Trench;
He is supreme over all plants and animals, from the peaceful Blue Whale to the microscopic killer viruses;
over all weather and movements of the earth: hurricanes, tornadoes, monsoons, earthquakes, avalanches, floods, snow, rain, sleet;
over all chemical processes that heal and destroy: cancer, AIDS, malaria, flu, and all the workings of antibiotics and a thousand healing medicines.
He is supreme over all countries and all governments and all armies;
over Al Qaeda and all terrorists and kidnappings and suicide bombings and beheadings;
over bin Ladin and al-Zarqawi;
over all nuclear threats from Iran or Russia or North Korea.
He is supreme over all politics and elections;
over all media and news and entertainment and sports and leisure;
and over all education and universities and scholarship and science and research;
and over all business and finance and industry and manufacturing and transportation;
and over all the Internet and information systems.

As Abraham Kuyper used to say, “there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’” And rule with absolute supremacy. And though it may not seem so now, it is only a matter of time until he is revealed from heaven in flaming fire to give relief to those who trust him and righteous vengeance on those who don’t.

Oh, that the almighty God would help us see and savor the supremacy of his Son. Give yourself to this with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Pray for this vision.

Pastor Bill

BROKENNESS AND WEAKNESS, THE TRUE PATH OF CHRISTIAN GROWTH

"The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." Psalm 51:17 ESV

"But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. " 2 Corinthians 4:7

What makes for a strong Christian? What is the secret of being mightily used of God? What kind of person does God use? What makes for an authentic minister? Too many people say, "I'm so ordinary, so average and undistinguished. I can't do anything significant." 2 Corinthians 4:7 shows that this argument is wrong and why. It says, "We have this treasure in jars of clay(or clay pots!) to show us that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us."

God's concept of ministry is so different from the world's concept. The world stresses the classy container. It emphasizes power and strength that come from physical beauty, brains, success, togetherness, acquired wealth, accomplishments,popularity, reputation, admiration, education,and brilliance; but God sees His glory in human weakness. God's purpose is to make sure that we see that the surpassing power belongs to Him and not to us. How does he do it? He puts the treasure of His grace, power, gifts,and His gospel in fragile, damaged, imperfect, broken, and cracked clay pots like you and me. Your ordinariness,weakness, and brokenness is not a liability; it is an asset, if you really want God to get the glory in your life. No one is too poor, too weak, too shy, too inarticulate, too disabled, too sinful, and too broken to do what God wants you to do with you and through you.

For Paul, weakness was his badge of apostleship and authority from God. Listen to his words:

"So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. " (2 Corinthians 12:7-10 ESV)

Paul argues for the authenticity of his ministry by appealing, not to his visions and revelations nor to his successes and gifts, but instead to his weakness! He attributed all of his ministry to his brokenness, neediness, and weakness. That is the ground by which the power and glory of Jesus flowed through him. It was in that lowly place of utter dependency that God moved in his life.

I have discovered that brokenness is the design and will of God for our lives. The Psalmist writes that "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise" (Psalm 51:17 ESV). God finds pleasure in us when we are in the place of brokenness, humility, poverty of spirit, and neediness. These places of brokenness and weakness are not desired in this world. Nobody wants to be known as weak, needy, poor, or inadequate. Paul sure didn't! He asked the Lord repeatedly to take away whatever it was that handicapped him.He did not want to have to live and serve God in this lowly state. The Lord, refused."Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong."

Paul came to see that this weakness, this brokenness, this neediness was indeed a precious gift from God. This was the place that released the true flow of God's power, strength, and grace in his life and ministry and it will be the same for you. God knows where His power and glory thrive and where it is diminished.

What are your weaknesses and handicaps that God has given you? Every one of us is united in this reality whether we realize it or not. In my own life I have struggled with fear, insecurity, drivenness, loneliness, depression, and relational difficulties. I am coming to see that God wants to have me serve him out of those. He is not looking for a few good men. He is looking for broken, humble, and contrite clay pots to fill with His heavenly treasure.

Paul's growth as a Christian is remarkable in that his growth increased as his own sense of his weakness and sinfulness increased. In 1 Corinthians 15:9, Paul calls himself "the least of the apostles." Five years later, in Ephesians 3:8 he calls himself "the least of all God's people." Finally, two years before his he calls himself after walking with Jesus for thirty years, "The worst of all sinners" in 1 Timothy 1:15. For Paul, the way up in God's kingdom was down! The less he saw of Himself, the more he saw of Christ. The greater awareness of his brokeneness and sinfulness before God, the more he was amazed by God's gift of grace towards someone like him. He became stronger by becoming weaker. He became rich by becoming poor. He became successful by becoming a failure. Oh dear reader, do not despise those gifts.

That is what Paul boasted about in his life. He was not afraid to speak truth about himself and truth about Jesus. I will boast about my failings, weaknesses, struggles, and inadequacies because when I am weak I am strong. We are great sinners and Jesus is a great savior! No wonder why Peter tells us that the key to ministry is speaking the oracles of God and serving in the strength that God provides so that in all things GOD GETS THE GLORY! (1 Peter 4;10-11).

I encourage all of you to begin living at the foot of the cross and seeing yourself in truth as sinners, broken, poor, helpless, and needy before God. Then receive His sufficient grace and love for every weakness as a gift that He takes pleasure in giving to you. In the light of that truth, be willing to freely share with other Christians your weakness and speak often of God's love, grace, and mercy. Watch what begins happening among you when you are all free to be ordinary, flawed, and broken together instead of pretending to be what you are not. There will be such freedom, such transparency, such honesty and openness, such safety and security, and such healing when all are humbly living together out of failure and pain at the foot of the cross of Jesus. There you will begin to see the healing power of the Holy Spirit work as God takes weak people like you and me, clay pots, and then fills them up with His strength and the gift of his heavenly treasure, adequately equipped by Him for His use and glory.

The only kind of people who God uses are those who depend not on their own gifts and resources. You can only become a strong Christian when you finally admit to the fact that you are weak. You can only become whole by being broken and vulnerable before God and others. Let this prayer encourage you my fellow broken ones.

“I asked God for strength that I might achieve. I was made weak that I might learn humbly to obey.
I asked for health that I might do greater things. I was given infirmity that I might do better things.
I asked for riches that I might be happy. I was given poverty that I might be wise.
I asked for power that I might have the praise of men. I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God.
I asked for all things that I might enjoy life. I was given life that I might enjoy all things.
I got nothing that I asked for, but everything I hoped for.
Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered. I am, among all men, most richly blessed.”

Learning more and more to cherish the gift of brokenness,
Pastor Bill

JESUS KNOWS YOU

“But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man” John 2:24b-25

Do you ever feel that nobody understands you? Do you ever feel the loneliness of being around people who think that they know you but you know that they really don't? Do you ever feel misunderstood by others? Judged by others? Ignored by others? Do you ever feel reduced by others in their perceptions of who you are? Do you ever feel that people do not know the person that you are now and only relate to you as the person that you once were? Are you in the middle of some trial or have you suffered a personal loss and you feel that nobody understands what you feel or a re going through?

I find great comfort in my life meditating on the attributes of Jesus. In Jesus there is one person who you can relate to who knows everything about you inside and out. It is truly remarkable! All of our relationships are based upon ignorance. When I think about all of my relationships and acquaintances I realize that there are some people I don’t know at all and others I have known for many years. There are those who I have come to know deeply and intimately and others I hardly know at all. In your best relationships, the fact is that you don’t know 10,000 things that could be known about them and they do not know 10,000 things about you. Massive levels of not knowing form our relationships!

But there is one relationship in the universe that is not like that; yours with Jesus. Do you recall Peter’s three answers to Jesus’ question after the resurrection, “Do you love me?” Jesus asked him three times, probably because Peter had denied Jesus three times. Peter said the first time, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said the second time, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said the third time, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you” (John 21:15–17). There is always one person who knows your heart perfectly. Knows it better than you do. Jesus Christ. Jesus does not just know about my circumstances or environments or relationships on the outside, He knows about the inside.

There is an old African American spiritual that goes like this,“Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen. Nobody knows but Jesus...” There are two senses in which you can mean that. One is: Nobody has experienced my circumstances. That’s not true. Every one of us have gone through difficulties, suffered loss, or experienced the consequences of bad decisions. But the other is that nobody has ever been me in these circumstances. Nobody has ever brought your weaknesses,sins, and experience to your moments of difficulty, loss, sorrow, brokenness, failure, or pain. the fact is that nobody has been you in this experience,nobody can be you, and nobody can know this. When I think of that, it frightens me how alone I am in this particular trial,loss,pain,or sorrow. The circumstances may be as old as the world, but your experience of them is utterly unique. Nobody has ever been in your skin bringing your personality, temperament,feelings, sins, weaknesses, family and personal history, and your emotional constitution to this moment of personal loss and sorrow. How comforting it is to know that when you think about the knowledge of Jesus, you can tell yourself, "I am not alone in this experience; Jesus knows."

At those moments I can hear Jesus say to me “I know it. I know it better than you know it. I’m there. I am with you." I find this a huge relief to my soul! He knows all of my burdens and it is wonderful. Jesus knows my heart and my mind and my body and everything about me and there comes a sense of relief that in this utterly unique brokenness, pain, and sorrow, that nobody else can share or understand, Jesus perfectly, totally, fully, and completely understands.

It also means that there are no complete secrets in your life. You may have succeeded in hiding something all your life from everyone on this earth, but you have not hidden it from Jesus. The person who matters most knows most. The person whose judgment about you is all important knows all. Let that sink in. You are totally known. Totally. There is not the slightest part of your heart unknown to Jesus, at this hour, and every hour. Therefore, there is always at least one person you must relate to who knows everything about you. You may be able to look at others in the face and know that they do not know certain things about you. This shapes your relationship, but there is one who when you look him in the face sees totally through you. If you relate to Him at all, you relate as one utterly laid bare, and utterly known. Yet, in that perfect knowledge Jesus loves you unconditionally. Jesus is full of empathetic compassion for you. Jesus is full of mercy towards you and He is infinitely wealthy with grace to help you in your moment that nobody knows or understands.

What an amazing relationship! There is one, and only one, who actually and totally knows you. Nobody else even comes close. Your spouse’s knowledge of you, or your best friend’s knowledge of you, compares to Jesus’ knowledge of you like first-grade math to quantum mechanics. You are fully known by one person, Jesus Christ. Therefore, you always have a person who loves you, knowing absolutely everything about you. Is it no wonder that God's knowledge of David led him to cry in Psalm 139:23-24, “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” God knows you and in that knowledge knows your pain, your weaknesses and sins, and can help you, make you clean,and in that wonderful knowledge bring healing to my soul.

Jesus is the one you can always go to for help in knowing who you are and He will not reject you in that knowledge but in spite of that knowledge says that He "forgives you", "loves you", is "for you", and invites us in that knowledge to "come to me" "cast your cares upon me" and Jesus who knows you is both willing and able to give you the help that you need.

So remember my friend, you are not alone. You are perfectly known and understood. You are loved! Let that be a great source of comfort to your lonely soul. Let it be the bread that you feed on and the water that you drink each day.

Pastor Bill

THE END OF SELF AND THE BEGINNING OF GOD

"He brought me to the banqueting house,and his banner over me was love." Song of Solomon 2:4

Who are you? What defines you as a person? Are you defined by your relationships? Are you what you have accomplished? Are you what you wear? Are you what you do? Are you what you own? Are you who you know? Are you defined by what roles you play? Our sense of personal identity is largely shaped by these kinds of things.These relationships, activities,and roles contribute very significantly in the way we come to understand who we are. That is, until we lose the very things that defined out identity. What if I lose my job, my spouse, my child, my friend, my house, my reputation, my possessions, my health, my good looks, or my dreams?

Loss leads to confusion of our identity, our sense of who we are. When we lose something like a job, a spouse, or our health it can lead to a real crises in our self defining. What do I do when I am no longer doing what I did, being with who I was with, looking how I once looked? In my own life, I have felt like a stranger to myself.I am not quite sure what to do with me. It is like I have gone to sleep in the familiar surroundings of my home only to wake up in a strange new house where I have not the slightest sense where anything is.

Anyone who has endured loss understands the confusion.Loss causes us to see the dominant role that environment, people, activities,and other things play in determining our happiness and sense of self. I have discovered how much successful ministry, good health, being loved by others, happy relationships, and so many other things have been the pillars by which I find my sense of purpose and meaning in my life. Loss strips away all the props that we rely on for our well being and happiness. Loss knocks us off of our feet and puts us on our backs. In experiencing loss, we come to the end of ourselves.

Loss for me has brought me to the place where George Mueller once said: "The end of ourselves is the beginning of God." My friend Don once told me that "when Christ is all you have, you discover that Christ is all you need." Loss can lead to the beginning of a deeper and more vital relationship with God. Loss reminds us how fragile we really are, how weak we are, and how easily we can take favorable circumstances for granted. When we lose these things we see that our identity is easily based on external, not internal things.

So I am searching for a new life that depends upon not the old ways of how I have defined myself. For me, that self is dead and gone. But, the end of me has led to a new beginning with Him. Augustine said, "Oh Lord, you have made us for yourself and our hearts find no rest except in you." Oh what joy and freedom there is in forging a new identity in someone greater than me and the world, people, and things all around me. God is the one who says to us "YOU ARE MY BELOVED!" He does not say I am pastor Bill, father Bill, husband Bill, educated Bill, surfer Bill; instead He just calls me His beloved. God does not determine our worth by all these paradigms of performance, accomplishments, and power. We are free to simply be (Put your name here)________________ beloved of God.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer helps me so much in this quest by writing:
Who am I? They often tell me
Am I then really all that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
Struggling for breath, as though hands were
compressing my throat,
Yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
Thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,
Tossing in expectation of great events,
Powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
Weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
Faint, and ready to say farewell to it all?
Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person today and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
And before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army,
Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, 0 God, I am Thine!

"Whoever i am, I am thine! That's it! This is what Solomon said in Song of Solomon 2:4, "I am my beloveds and He is mine. His banner over me is love."

Perhaps today you have suffered loss or have lost something dear in the past. Whether you are working or unemployed; married, widowed, divorced, or single; healthy, sick, or dying; let God define you this day. YOU ARE LOVED BY GOD. YOU ARE HIS CHILD. Be free to simply let Him define you and "be". Let His love shape you and your identity. Move toward Him and be free from the tyranny of letting all these other things define you today.

Oh what a joy it is in being freed to simply be His beloved today, tomorrow, and forever!

Pastor Bill