Devotions this week based on the Message: “BELIEVE: Week 1: Believe in God!”
(NOTE: This sermon series and devotional series is based on a book by Randy Frazee entitled, “BELIEVE.”
You may choose to download or purchase the book as a supplement to your worship and devotional emails.)
This video is telling. Take a look: https://vimeo.com/116967898
How would you define God?
I have observed something. Every definition or description of God that mankind comes up with are the same…or at lease very similar. They fall into one of three categories:
- Something to do with nature (i.e. sun god, moon god, fertility god, etc.)
- Something to do with conscience (i.e. angry god, god who wants us to do good, etc.)
- Something to do with our soul (i.e. a feeling, a force, an energy, etc.)
Why this makes sense is because the true God instilled all those aspects around us so that we might perhaps reach out and find him.
Acts 17:26-28 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
As we looked at yesterday, nature testifies to the glory and power of God. Our conscience testifies to the justice and accountability to God. Our soul yearns for a connection with the divine.
So without the revealed knowledge of God we find in the Bible, it would make sense that every iteration of God found around the world comes from one or more of these inner realities God put in us.
But all that which is called god and not based on how God reveals himself in the pages of Scripture will fall short of a full definition and understanding of God.
That’s why we need the Bible to build on what our natural knowledge tells us to fill out the reality of who God is.
God is not just known from the glories of nature, he is the Almighty Father in heaven who designed, ordered and created all of nature…including us, as the ancients said, “We are his offspring.”
God is not just known for his justice and the one to whom we are accountable, but the one who came as a person into this world, Jesus, to appease the justice and give forgiveness for a clean conscience.
God is not just an impersonal force found in the universe around us, he is the power of his Holy Spirit who is found in the hearts of people like you and me.
As God who is one and yet three persons, he desires us to know him as he is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Nature, our conscience and our soul get us close…the very words of God reveal who he really is.
Apply: Consider other religions or definitions of God. Do you notice which category it falls into?
Prayer: Lord, thank you for revealing yourself in the pages of Scripture so we may know you more fully than just what nature, our conscience and our soul reveal. AMEN.