BELIEVE: Does God Care?
Devotions this week based on the Message: “BELIEVE: Week 2: God is Personal 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.)
Sometimes I don’t think he does.
Just glance through the headlines this week:
“Christians on edge in Afghanistan”
“75 dogs die in fire in Georgetown”
“Three die in train derailment in Montana”
“Covid cases continue to affect millions”
And the list goes on.
These headlines may cause us to pause and ask, “God where are you?” “Do you care?”
But it becomes more personal when my life is challenged.
I or someone I love gets CoVid.
I get in a car accident.
I get a serious medical diagnosis.
I lose a loved one.
Does God care about…me?
This is where it gets personal. When hard or challenging events occur in my life, it is tempting and often times reality that I blame God. I make him the cause of all my hardship. I question God. I wonder if he loves me or even knows what I am going through. I abandon God. After all, these situations seem to indicate that God has abandoned me. My thinking leads me to wondering, “Why should I stay with you God if you leave me when I need you most.”
Here’s the irony. When life is going well and I have what I want and life is going the way I want it to, God is perhaps a secondary thought. But the moment that life brings challenges, I believe God is personally responsible and involved in my life…and blame him for causing trouble.
So which is it.
The truth is God is a personal God who loves and cares for you very much. We will explore how we know that this week.
Here is the other truth…Satan is a liar and he gets us to believe lies about God and misjudge how much God cares for us. How so? Here’s how I would summarize it:
Satan leads me to believe this lie: “God doesn’t care about me when I don’t get what I want, or God doesn’t do what I want him to do.”
The problem? I think I can define and mandate HOW God should care for me. As a result when he doesn’t do what I think he should, I conclude, “God doesn’t care.”
For your day today, consider this:
Matthew 10:29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. 30 And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. 31 So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.
Apply: When do you feel/think that God doesn’t care? Evaluate what led you to think that way.
Prayer: Lord, thank you for still caring for me, even when I think or feel that you don’t. AMEN.
BELIEVE: Why is it critical to believe in the true God of the Bible?
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.)
“We all believe in the same God and call him by different names.”
“There are many paths to heaven.”
Ever heard these phrases? Thought them?
Are they true?
Is every person named “Mike” the same? Is every restaurant the same?
The answer is no.
Ask Burger King if they are happy when someone says, “You’re just like McDonalds”
Ask Ruth Chris Steakhouse if they find a review that says, “The steaks taste just like one from Ponderosa.”
Just like not all people are the same, not all restaurants are the same, not all gods are the same.
If one just looks at similarities we create with our knowledge of nature, our conscience or the feelings of the soul, perhaps we see similarities, but the true God, the Lord stands out as different. One of many examples, the Lord was not “OK” with people saying “Baal and the Lord are the same thing.”
21 Elijah went before the people and said, “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.”
But the people said nothing.
22 Then Elijah said to them, “I am the only one of the Lord’s prophets left, but Baal has four hundred and fifty prophets. 23 Get two bulls for us. Let Baal’s prophets choose one for themselves, and let them cut it into pieces and put it on the wood but not set fire to it. I will prepare the other bull and put it on the wood but not set fire to it. 24 Then you call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of the Lord. The god who answers by fire—he is God.”
Then all the people said, “What you say is good.”
At the end of the challenge, while Baal remained silent, the Lord consumed the sacrifice with fire and power.
It makes a difference to believe in the God of the Bible.
Because he is the ONLY true God!
Baal won’t get you to heaven. Allah won’t get you to heaven. Buddha won’t get you to heaven. NO OTHER God has invested IN you as the God of the Bible has. No other god LOVES you like the Father. No other God gave himself FOR you like the Son. No other God lives IN you like the Spirit.
5 I am the Lord, and there is no other;
apart from me there is no God.
I will strengthen you,
though you have not acknowledged me,
6 so that from the rising of the sun
to the place of its setting
people may know there is none besides me.
I am the Lord, and there is no other. (Isaiah 45:5-6)
It matters to believe not just in a god, but the true God of the Bible. Your eternity in heaven depends on it!
John 17:3 “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”
Apply: Take time to investigate another “god” – how are they similar or different than the true God. What does the true God do for you that this other god can’t?
Prayer: Lord God, thank you for revealing yourself as the true, loving and saving God. Apart from you there is no other and we are blessed to know you and believe in you! AMEN.
BELIEVE: What do you believe about the true God?
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.)
I really didn’t know that about you!
Have you ever been in a conversation with someone you thought you knew pretty well only to have them reveal some part of them or their past that you never knew?
Perhaps it was the “missing link” to really understand a person and how they view the world and interact with it. Perhaps it was just a fun trivial fact.
I wonder…no, I know…that there are many people who would be surprised if they really got to know the true God as he’s revealed himself in the Bible.
Too many go through life with a perception about God based on movies they’ve seen, people they’ve talked to, or even bad church experiences they’ve gone through.
As a result, they have an incomplete at best or a completely wrong perception of God altogether.
Getting to know God is a lifetime opportunity. Even after being a life long Christian (50 years) and pastoring for 25 of those years, I am still uncovering and marveling at who the true God is and what impact he has in a very real and personal way on my life.
I could claim great diligence in uncovering and discovering God, but it is the opposite. God reveals himself to us as we spend time in his Word of truth.
What do we uncover? What does he reveal to us about himself that we can believe with 100% certainty?
This short concluding verse of Second Corinthians summarizes it well:
May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” (2 Cor. 13:14)
In this brief verse, God reveals a lot about himself we won’t find in nature, our conscience or our soul.
- He is a God of free and faithful grace.
He willingly gave his Son Jesus Christ to come to this earth to do what you and I could not do for ourselves so that we might be restored into a right relationship with God after our sin broke it. Jesus lives a perfect life, which he credits to our account. Jesus died an innocent death which pays for all the debt our sin accumulated. Jesus rose again to prove the payment was paid in full and we too will live with him forever. ALL of this he gives to us as a gift of grace!
You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. You know that he gave up his heavenly riches for you. He gave up everything so that you could be richly blessed. (2 Corinthians 8:9)
- He is a God of free and faithful love.
The fact that the true God would put his name on us and claim us as his own…true love. The fact that God would show his love to individuals who have rejected and pushed him away all too often…true love. The fact that he has made us part of his family through baptism and called us his children…true love!
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! (1 John 3:1)
- He is a God of free and faithful fellowship
God the Holy Spirit loves to build unity in the hearts of people. He is the one who works faith in our heart to trust what Jesus did for the world is ours personally. He is the one that builds unity of faith among people that we might enjoy the relational fellowship of the Church. He is the one that solidifies and strengthens our relationship with God and opens our heart to allow God himself to dwell with in us. He is God the Holy Spirit, the god of free and faithful fellowship or unity!
3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. (Ephesians 4:3-6)
Nature tells us of God’s power and knowledge. Our conscience tells us of God’s justice and accountability. Our soul seeks the divine and the presence of God. The Bible completes the picture by revealing the Triune God as the Father who loves us, the Son who saves us and the Spirit who restores our relationship with God.
God wants you to know this about him!
Apply: Open your Bible and read a chapter…any chapter. What does that chapter teach you about God? What insight about God might you say, “I never knew that before!”
Prayer: Lord God, thank you for revealing yourself to us through the pages of the Holy Bible. Lead us on a lifetime of learning and fascination to learn and experience things about you that we have never known or experienced before. AMEN.
BELIEVE: Who do you believe God is?
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.
BELIEVE: Do you believe in God?
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.)
Did anyone ever stop and ask nature if it believes in God?
What would a star or a bee or a prickly pear cactus say about its origin?
I wonder what nature would say to the theory that predominates the “science” field that says everything has evolved over billions of years and by a series of random and natural selective processes.
Would the heavens agree that they are billions of years old?
Would the earth and all that lives on it affirm those that propose evolutionary beginnings?
Not at all. Here’s what they do in their own way:
1 The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
3 They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
4 Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world. (Psalm 19:1-4)
All creation knows its Creator. All creation, if it could, believes in the God who is introduced in Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
Creation’s statement of God’s existence were not just inventions of primitive man, but observations of every man. Creation’s testimony hasn’t changed. Man’s willingness to hear it has.
Romans 1:20 “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.”
The testimony of creation about God is what is called the “natural knowledge of God.” It’s one way apart from the revealed knowledge of God in the Bible that people can know a) that there is a God and b) that that God is a God of power, order, and simply God. This leaves people without excuse. Evolution is not the end of God, it is merely man’s “excuse” to have a need for God.
The Bible puts it pretty bluntly: Psalm 14:1 “The fool says in their heart there is no god.”
To be clear, creation won’t tell us fully who the true God is, that is why we need all the pages that follow Genesis 1:1 as God interacts with people and reveals himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
But if we are simply wrestling with the question, “Does God exist?” or “Do I believe there is a God?” Perhaps the answer isn’t to go outside and get “in touch with” nature, but to go outside and hear the testimony of nature. Perhaps you would hear God say to you similar to the words he confronted Job:
4 “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
6 On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone—
7 while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels shouted for joy?
8 “Who shut up the sea behind doors
when it burst forth from the womb,
9 when I made the clouds its garment
and wrapped it in thick darkness,
10 when I fixed limits for it
and set its doors and bars in place,
11 when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;
here is where your proud waves halt’? (Job 38:4-11)
There was only one that was there: God himself. All creation testifies to it.
Apply: Read Job 38-39. As Job questions God’s ways, God answers with his resume of creative and directive acts. Consider ALL the ways God created, ordered and orchestrates nature to work. All of it testifies to his existence!
Prayer: Lord, Creator of all, let me hear the testimony of the world you created speak to your power and glory. Let this testimony strengthen my conviction and confidence of who you are and your love for me. AMEN.