How GREAT is our
GOD
T I M E L E S S D A I LY READING S ON THE N ATURE OF GOD
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NavPress is the publishing ministry of The Navigators, an international Christian organization and leader in personal spiritual development. NavPress is committed to helping people grow spiritually and enjoy lives of meaning and hope through personal and group resources that are biblically rooted, culturally relevant, and highly practical. For a free catalog go to www.NavPress.com or call 1.800.366.7788 in the United States or 1.800.839.4769 in Canada.
Compiled by The Navigators, © 2011 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without written permission from NavPress, P.O. Box 35001, Colorado Springs, CO 80935. www.navpress.com NAVPRESS and the NAVPRESS logo are registered trademarks of NavPress. Absence of ® in connection with marks of NavPress or other parties does not indicate an absence of registration of those marks. ISBN-13: 978-1-61521-730-4 Text compiled by Thomas Womack Cover design by Studiogearbox Cover image by istockphoto Scripture quotations in this publication are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (esv) © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved; the Holy Bible, New International Version® (niv®). Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved; New American Standard Bible® (nasb) ©1960, 1977, 1995 by the Lockman Foundation. Used by permission; the New King James Version (nkjv). Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved; the Holman Christian Standard Bible (hcsb)® Copyright © 2003, 2002, 2000, 1999 by Holman Bible Publishers. All rights reserved; and the King James Version (kjv). Excerpts taken from Experiencing God Revised and Expanded by Henry Blackaby, Richard Blackaby and Claude King. © 2008, B&H Publishing Group. Used by permission. Excerpts from Trusting God by Jerry Bridges, © 1988, 2008, NavPress, used by permission. Excerpts taken from Loving God by Charles W. Colson. Copyright © 1987, 1996 by Charles W. Colson. Used by permission of Zondervan. Excerpts from A Heart for God by Sinclair Ferguson, © 1987, Banner of Truth Trust, used by permission. www.banneroftruth.org. Excerpts from Waiting on God and Working for God by Andrew Murray, public domain. Excerpts taken from Knowing God by J. I. Packer. Copyright © 1973, 1993 by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515. www.ivpress.com. Excerpts taken from Knowing God by J. I. Packer, © J. I. Packer, reproduced by permission of Hodder and Stoughton Limited. Excerpts taken from Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist by John Piper, copyright © 1986, 1996, 2003 by Desiring God Foundation. Used by permission of WaterBrook Multnomah, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc. Excerpts from Pleasing God by R. C. Sproul, © 1988, Hendrickson Publishers, used by permission. Excerpts from The Pursuit of God by A. W. Tozer, public domain. Excerpts taken from Hearing God by Dallas Willard. Copyright © 1984, 1999 by Dallas Willard. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515. www.ivpress.com. Printed in Canada 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 / 16 15 14 13 12 11
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Foreword The collection you hold in your hands is a gathering in one place of some of the best writing of our time — as well as of earlier days — on the nature of God. These are stunning and memorable words that have deeply influenced generations in the movement of discipleship to Jesus. The best books are timeless, and most often they cross cultural barriers. Created by a dozen outstanding authors, the selections in this book have stood the test of time and have shown the power to touch a new generation of disciples in many settings around the world. Jesus said, “Every teacher of the law who has been instructed about the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old” (Matthew 13:52, niv). At NavPress, we are conscious of both the old and the new, and we treasure both. We live in a world of profound change in publishing, and NavPress is at the forefront of keeping up with the new media. But we are also looking to our faith’s heritage for classic writing that never lets us forget where we have come from and to pass along those timeless messages that have proven to change lives. That’s the kind of writing you hold in your hands — some of the greatest selections on the nature of our God. The ministry of The Navigators began in the 1930s through the call of God to Dawson Trotman. Trotman’s vision was to teach others, one-toone, the biblical principles of discipleship he found beneficial in his own life. He began to teach high school students and local Sunday school classes. In 1933, he and his friends extended their work to reach out to sailors in the U.S. Navy. From there, Trotman met and established a partnership with the then up-and-coming evangelist Billy Graham. One of the men Trotman chose to lead the work with Billy Graham was Lorne Sanny. Sanny went on to become Trotman’s successor and served The Navigators for thirty years as its president. This book contains writing that is what Lorne Sanny used to call “life-borne” messages. These
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are messages that grow out of a life steeped in the Scriptures and lived out in passionate love and obedience to God. They are tested in real life, and they have a practical authenticity that prompts genuine transformation. Over the years, I personally have been touched by all the messages in this collection. Each one is part of the fabric of my own discipleship. Now I’m convinced that you, too, will find in them an abundance of godly stimulation and transformative guidance for your own walk with God. DR. MICHAEL D. MILLER president, NavPress chief business officer, The Navigators
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Week 1 / Monday
God’s Invitation Those who know your name put their trust in you, for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you. (Psalm 9:10, esv )
God is not a concept or a doctrine. He is a Person who seeks a close, oneon-one relationship with you and me. God does not want us to merely believe in Him, He wants to relate to us on a personal level. He does not just want to hear us recite prayers. He wants to converse with us. God’s plan is not to abandon Christians once we are born again, leaving us to build the best life we can. He does not intend that we simply use our wits to “get by,” to bravely “survive” until we are finally ushered into heaven. God wants to be actively involved in our lives each day. God knows what your life can become. Only He understands your full potential as His child. He does not want you to miss out on anything He has for you. I believe that within the heart of every Christian is an innate desire to know God and to do His will. When you became a Christian, you were immediately adopted as a child of the heavenly King. The King’s business became your business. And now, as your Savior and Lord, Christ wants to bring your life into the middle of His activity, which offers salvation to every person on earth. God Himself will give you the desire to serve and obey Him. The Holy Spirit will create within you a longing to know the Father’s will and to become involved in what God is doing around you. Yet God has far more in store for your life than merely giving you an assignment to accomplish for Him. He wants you to have an intimate love relationship with Him that is real and personal. Jesus said: “This is eternal life: that they may know You, the only true God, and the One You have sent — Jesus Christ” (John 17:3, hcsb).
Henry Blackaby and Richard Blackaby, in Experiencing God
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Week 1 / Tuesday
Meeting Our Greatest Need God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8, esv )
In times of prolonged adversity, we can begin to entertain thoughts that essentially assert that we’re more concerned about goodness than God is. Even righteous Job came to the place where he questioned the goodness of God. He said, “I am in the right, and God has taken away my right,” and “It profits a man nothing that he should take delight in God” (Job 34:5,9, esv). If God is perfect in His love and abundant in His goodness, how do we take a stand against our own doubts and the temptations of Satan to question the goodness of God? What truths about God do we need to store up in our hearts to use as weapons against temptations to doubt His love? There’s no doubt that the most convincing evidence of God’s love in all of Scripture is His giving His Son to die for our sins. “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:9-10, niv). Our greatest need is not freedom from adversity. No calamity in this life could in any way be compared with the absolute calamity of eternal separation from God. In like manner, Jesus said no earthly joy could compare with the eternal joy of our names written in heaven (see Luke 10:20). God showed His love by meeting our greatest need — a need so great that no other can come close to it in comparison. If we want proof of God’s love for us, then we must look first at the Cross where God offered up His Son as a sacrifice for our sins. Calvary is the one objective, absolute, irrefutable proof of God’s love for us. Jerry Bridges, in Trusting God
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Week 1 / Wednesday
Following Hard After God My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me. (Psalm 63:8, niv )
Christian theology teaches the doctrine of prevenient grace, which briefly stated means this, that before a man can seek God, God must first have sought the man. Before a sinful man can think a right thought of God, there must have been a work of enlightenment done within him; imperfect it may be, but a true work nonetheless, and the secret cause of all desiring and seeking and praying which may follow. We pursue God because, and only because, He has first put an urge within us that spurs us to the pursuit. “No man can come to me,” said our Lord, “except the Father which hath sent me draw him” (John 6:44, kjv), and it is by this very prevenient drawing that God takes from us every vestige of credit for the act of coming. The impulse to pursue God originates with God, but the outworking of that impulse is our following hard after Him; and all the time we are pursuing Him we are already in His hand: “Thy right hand upholdeth me” (Psalm 63:8, kjv). In this divine “upholding” and human “following” there is no contradiction. All is of God, for as Baron von Hügel teaches, God is always previous. In practice, however, (that is, where God’s previous working meets man’s present response) man must pursue God. On our part there must be positive reciprocation if this secret drawing of God is to eventuate in iden tifiable experience of the Divine. In the warm language of personal feeling this is stated in the forty-second Psalm: “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?” (kjv). This is deep calling unto deep, and the longing heart will understand it.
A. W. Tozer, in The Pursuit of God
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Week 1 / Thursday
Can You Trust God? Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring. (Proverbs 27:1, esv )
For most of us, life is filled with frustrations, anxieties, and disappointments that tempt us to fret, fume, and worry. One author has aptly captured the flavor of this in a devotional book for high schoolers entitled, If God Loves Me, Why Can’t I Get My Locker Open? We may smile a little at that, but the fact is, this is the plane of adversity on which many of us live each day. And it is in the crucible of even this minor level of adversity that we are tempted to wonder, “Can I trust God?” Even when life seems to be going our way and our daily path seems pleasant and smooth, we do not know what the future holds. Someone has described life as like having a thick curtain hung across one’s path, a curtain that recedes before us as we advance, but only step by step. None of us can tell what is beyond that curtain; none of us can tell what events a single day or hour may bring into our lives. Sometimes the receding curtain reveals events much as we had expected them; often it reveals events most unexpected and frequently most undesired, filling us with anxiety, frustration, heartache, and grief. God’s people are not immune from such pain. In fact it often seems as if theirs is more severe, more frequent, more unexplainable, and more deeply felt than that of the unbeliever. The problem of pain is as old as the history of man and just as universal. Even creation itself, Paul tells us, has been subjected to frustration and groans as in the pain of childbirth (see Romans 8:20-22). So the question naturally arises, “Where is God in all of this?” Can you really trust God when adversity strikes and fills your life with pain? Does He indeed come to the rescue of those who seek Him? Can you trust God? Jerry Bridges, in Trusting God
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Week 1 / Friday
Always This Way Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people. (Jeremiah 7:23, esv )
What God wants from His people is obedience, no matter the circumstances, no matter how unknown the outcome. It has always been this way — God calling His people to obedience and giving them at best a glimpse of the outcome of their effort. Most of the great figures of the Old Testament died without seeing the fulfillment of the promise they relied upon. Paul expended himself building the early church, but as his life drew to a close he could see only a string of tiny outposts along the Mediterranean, many weakened by fleshly indulgence or divided over doctrinal disputes. In more recent times, the great colonial pastor Cotton Mather prayed for revival several hours each day for twenty years; the Great Awakening began the year he died. The British Empire finally abolished slavery as the Christian parliamentarian and abolitionist leader William Wilberforce lay on his deathbed, exhausted from his nearly fifty-year campaign against the practice of human bondage. Few were the converts during Hudson Taylor’s lifelong mission work in the Orient; but today millions of Chinese embrace the faith he so patiently implanted and tended. Some might think this divine pattern cruel, but I am convinced there is a sovereign wisdom to it. Knowing how susceptible we are to success’s siren call, God does not allow us to see, and therefore glory in, what is done through us. The very nature of the obedience He demands is that it be given without regard to circumstances or results. The centurion in Luke 7:5-13 rightly perceived Jesus’ authority as that of a military commander to whom one gives unquestioning allegiance. The Bible makes clear that unquestioning acceptance of and obedience to Jesus’ authority is the foundation of the Christian life. Everything else rests upon this. Charles Colson, in Loving God
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Week 1 / Weekend
Blessed Dependence For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation. (Psalm 62:1, esv )
If salvation indeed comes from God and is entirely His work, just as creation was, it follows as a matter of course that our first and highest duty is to wait on Him to do the work that pleases Him. Waiting becomes then the only way to the experience of a full salvation, the only way, truly, to know God as the God of our salvation. All the difficulties that are brought forward as keeping us back from full salvation have their cause in this one thing: the defective knowledge and practice of waiting upon God. All that the church and its members need for the manifestation of the mighty power of God in the world, is the return to our true place, the place that belongs to us, both in creation and redemption — the place of absolute and unceasing dependence upon God. Let us strive to see what the elements are that make up this most blessed and needful waiting upon God: it may help us to discover the reasons why this grace is so little cultivated and to feel how infinitely desirable it is that the church, that we ourselves, should at any price learn its blessed secret. The deep need for this waiting on God lies equally in the nature of man and the nature of God. God, as Creator, formed man to be a vessel in which He could show forth His power and goodness. Man was not to have in himself a fountain of life, or strength, or happiness: the ever-living and only living One was each moment to be the Communicator to him of all that he needed. Man’s glory and blessedness was not to be independent, or dependent upon himself, but dependent on a God of such infinite riches and love. Man was to have the joy of receiving every moment out of the fullness of God. This was his blessedness as an unfallen creature.
Andrew Murray, in Waiting on God
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Week 2 / Monday
Consent to Dependence Our eyes look to the Lord our God, till he has mercy upon us. (Psalm 123:2, esv )
When man fell from God, he was even more absolutely dependent on Him. There was not the slightest hope of his recovery out of his state of death, except in God, His power and mercy. It is God alone who began the work of redemption; it is God alone who continues and carries it on each moment in each individual believer. Even in the regenerate man there is no power of goodness in himself: he has and can have nothing that he does not each moment receive; and waiting on God is just as indispensable, and must be just as continuous and unbroken, as the breathing that maintains his natural life. It is because Christians do not know their relation to God of absolute poverty and helplessness that they have no sense of the need of absolute and unceasing dependence, or the unspeakable blessedness of continual waiting on God. But when a believer begins to see it, and consent to it — that he by the Holy Spirit must each moment receive what God each moment works — waiting on God becomes his brightest hope and joy. As he apprehends how God — as God, as Infinite Love — delights to impart His own nature to His child as fully as He can, how God is not weary of each moment keeping charge of his life and strength, he wonders that he ever thought otherwise of God than as a God to be waited on all the day. God unceasingly giving and working, His child unceasingly waiting and receiving: this is the blessed life. “Truly my soul waiteth upon God: from him cometh my salvation” (Psalm 62:1, kjv). Waiting on God is the ascribing to Him the glory of being All; it is the experiencing that He is All to us.
Andrew Murray, in Waiting on God
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Week 2 / Tuesday
A Response of Wonder As one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. (Romans 5:18, esv )
The doctrine of justification by faith — a biblical truth, and a blessed relief from sterile legalism and unavailing self-effort — has in our time fallen into evil company and been interpreted by many in such manner as actually to bar men from the knowledge of God. The whole transaction of religious conversion has been made mechanical and spiritless. Faith may now be exercised without a jar to the moral life and without embarrassment to the Adamic ego. Christ may be “received” without creating any special love for Him in the soul of the receiver. The man is “saved,” but he is not hungry nor thirsty after God. In fact he is specifically taught to be satisfied and encouraged to be content with little. The modern scientist has lost God amid the wonders of His world; we Christians are in real danger of losing God amid the wonders of His Word. We have almost forgotten that God is a Person and, as such, can be cultivated as any person can. It is inherent in personality to be able to know other personalities, but full knowledge of one personality by another cannot be achieved in one encounter. It is only after long and loving mental intercourse that the full possibilities of both can be explored. All social intercourse between human beings is a response of personality to personality, grading upward from the most casual brush between man and man to the fullest, most intimate communion of which the human soul is capable. Religion, so far as it is genuine, is in essence the response of created personalities to the Creating Personality, God. “This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3, kjv).
A. W. Tozer, in The Pursuit of God
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Week 2 / Wednesday
Eternal Life — Now I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. (John 10:10, esv )
The essence of eternal life is for you to personally know God the Father and Jesus Christ, His Son. Knowing God does not come through a program, a study, or a method. It is the result of a vibrant, growing, one-on-one relationship with God. Within this intimate connection, God will reveal Himself, His purposes, and His ways so you can know Him in deeper and profound dimensions. As you relate to Him, God will invite you to join in His activity where He is already at work. When you obey what God tells you, He will accomplish through you things only He can do. As the Lord works in and through your life, you will come to know Him ever more closely. Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life and have it in abundance” (John 10:10, hcsb). Would you like to experience life in its fullest and richest dimensions? You may, if you are willing to respond to God’s invitation to enjoy an intimate love relationship with Him. Anything of spiritual significance that happens in your life will be a result of God’s activity in you. He is infinitely more concerned with your life and your relationship with Him than you or I could possibly be. Let God’s Spirit bring you into an intimate relationship with the Lord of the universe “who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think — according to the power that works in you” (Ephesians 3:20, hcsb). Would you pray and surrender your life to God so He may guide and instruct you in any way He pleases? As you prepare to obey Him, trust that God who has already begun a good work in you will complete it in His time (see Philippians 1:6).
Henry Blackaby and Richard Blackaby, in Experiencing God
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Week 2 / Thursday
The Keynote of Life When the Lord restores the fortunes of his people, let Jacob rejoice, let Israel be glad. (Psalm 14:7, esv )
“I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord!” (Genesis 49:18, kjv). It is not easy to say exactly in what sense Jacob used these words, in the midst of his prophecies in regard to the future of his sons. But they do certainly dictate that both for himself and for them his expectation was from God alone. It was God’s salvation he waited for; a salvation that God had promised and that God alone could work out. He knew himself and his sons to be under God’s charge. Jehovah the Everlasting God would show in them what His saving power is and does. The words point forward to that wonderful history of redemption, which is not yet finished, and to the glorious future in eternity whither it is leading. They suggest to us how there is no salvation but God’s salvation, and how waiting on God for that, whether for our personal experience, or in wider circles, is our first duty, our true blessedness. God cannot part with His grace, or goodness, or strength, as an external thing that He gives us, as He gives the raindrops from heaven. No; He can only give it, and we can only enjoy it, as He works it Himself directly and unceasingly. And the only reason that He does not work it more effectually and continuously is that we do not let Him. We hinder Him either by our indifference or by our self-effort so that He cannot do what He would. What He asks of us, in the way of surrender, and obedience, and desire, and trust, is all comprised in this one word: waiting on Him, waiting for His salvation. It combines the deep sense of our entire helplessness of ourselves to work what is divinely good, and our perfect confidence that our God will work it all in His divine power.
Andrew Murray, in Waiting on God
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Week 2 / Friday
Surveying a Great Mountain And many peoples shall come, and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord.” (Isaiah 2:3, esv )
Recognizing that the study of God is worthwhile, we prepare to start. But where shall we start from? How do we plot our course? Five basic truths, five foundation-principles of the knowledge about God that Christians have, will determine our course throughout: 1. God has spoken to man, and the Bible is His Word, given to us to make us wise unto salvation. 2. God is Lord and King over His world; He rules all things for His own glory, displaying His perfections in all that He does, in order that men and angels may worship and adore Him. 3. God is Savior, active in sovereign love through the Lord Jesus Christ to rescue believers from the guilt and power of sin, to adopt them as His sons, and to bless them accordingly. 4. God is Triune; there are within the Godhead three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and the work of salvation is one in which all three act together, the Father purposing redemption, the Son securing it, and the Spirit applying it. 5. Godliness means responding to God’s revelation in trust and obedience, faith and worship, prayer and praise, submission and service. Life must be seen and lived in the light of God’s Word. In light of these general and basic truths, we examine in detail what the Bible shows us of the nature and character of the God of whom we have been speaking. We are in the position of travelers who, after surveying a great mountain from afar, traveling round it, and observing how it dominates the landscape and determines the features of the surrounding countryside, now approach it directly with the intention of climbing it. J. I. Packer, in Knowing God
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Week 2 / Weekend
Personal and Conscious Let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me. (Jeremiah 9:24, esv )
God is a Person, and in the deep of His mighty nature He thinks, wills, enjoys, feels, loves, desires, and suffers as any other person may. In making Himself known to us He stays by the familiar pattern of personality. He communicates with us through the avenues of our minds, our wills, and our emotions. The continuous and unembarrassed interchange of love and thought between God and the soul of the redeemed man is the throbbing heart of New Testament religion. This intercourse between God and the soul is known to us in conscious personal awareness. It is personal: that is, it does not come through the body of believers, as such, but is known to the individual, and to the body through the individuals who compose it. And it is conscious: that is, it does not stay below the threshold of consciousness and work there unknown to the soul (as, for instance, infant baptism is thought by some to do), but comes within the field of awareness where the man can “know” it as he knows any other fact of experience. You and I are in little (our sins excepted) what God is in large. Being made in His image we have within us the capacity to know Him. In our sins we lack only the power. The moment the Spirit has quickened us to life in regeneration our whole being senses its kinship to God and leaps up in joyous recognition. That is the heavenly birth without which we cannot see the kingdom of God. It is, however, not an end but an inception, for now begins the glorious pursuit, the heart’s happy exploration of the infinite riches of the Godhead. That is where we begin, I say, but where we stop no man has yet discovered, for there is in the awful and mysterious depths of the Triune God neither limit nor end. A. W. Tozer, in The Pursuit of God
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Week 3 / Monday
Moving Forward with God The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things. (John 14:26, esv )
I have found that God always has a fresh and deeper truth He wants us to learn about Him. So once He has taught you one thing, get ready for the next marvelous truth God will soon introduce! God’s Holy Spirit is your personal teacher. He will draw you into a closer walk with God as He reveals God’s purposes and ways to you. Jesus said, “If anyone wants to do His will, he will understand whether the teaching is from God or if I am speaking on My own” (John 7:17, hcsb). The Holy Spirit, who resides within you, will always confirm in your heart the truth of Scripture. You can depend on the Holy Spirit to affirm whether any teaching comes from God or not. Always ask the Holy Spirit to verify — through Scripture — what others teach. Be sure to nurture your relationship with God through prayer, meditation, and Bible study so you will be able to receive and obey everything God tells you. I urge you to allow the Holy Spirit to take your life to a new, higher, dynamic level in your walk with God. You may be presently enjoying a vibrant Christian life. But I can assure you, there is still much more God wants you to experience of Him, for He is an infinite being. You may have been disappointed in the past. Perhaps you made attempts to grow spiri tually, but your enthusiasm eventually waned and your growth fizzled. I encourage you: Don’t let any previous failure or disappointment stop you from confidently moving forward with God. No matter where we are, why would any of us ever become satisfied with the current status of our walk with God when there is so much He wants to do in and through our lives?
Henry Blackaby and Richard Blackaby, in Experiencing God
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Week 3 / Tuesday
One Deep Blessed Cry The salvation of the righteous is from the Lord; he is their stronghold in the time of trouble. (Psalm 37:39, esv )
Our heart is the scene of a divine operation more wonderful than Creation. We can do as little toward the work as toward creating the world, except as God works in us to will and to do. God only asks of us to yield, to consent, to wait upon Him, and He will do it all. Let us meditate and be still, until we see how right and blessed it is that God alone do all, and our soul will of itself sink down in deep humility to say (with Jacob): “I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord” (Genesis 49:18, kjv). And the deep blessed background of all our praying and working will be: “Truly my soul waiteth upon God” (Psalm 62:1, kjv). There can be no good but what God works; to wait upon God, and have the heart filled with faith in His working, and in that faith to pray for His mighty power to come down, is our only wisdom. Our private and public prayer is our chief expression of our relation to God: it is in them chiefly that our waiting upon God must be exercised. If our waiting begins by quieting the activities of nature and being still before God; if it bows and seeks to see God in His universal and almighty operation, alone able and always ready to work all good; if it yields itself to Him in the assurance that He is working and will work in us; if it maintains the place of humility and stillness, and surrenders until God’s Spirit has quickened the faith that He will perfect His work: it will indeed become the strength and the joy of the soul. Life will become one deep blessed cry: “I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord.”
Andrew Murray, in Waiting on God
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Week 3 / Wednesday
Christian Hedonism Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. (Psalm 37:4, esv )
Many objections rise in people’s minds when they hear me talk of Christian Hedonism. Perhaps I can defuse some of the resistance by making a few brief, clarifying comments. First, Christian Hedonism as I use the term does not mean God becomes a means to help us get worldly pleasures. The pleasure Christian Hedonism seeks is the pleasure that is in God Himself. He is the end of our search, not the means to some further end. Our exceeding joy is He, the Lord — not the streets of gold or the reunion with relatives or any blessing of heaven. Second, Christian Hedonism does not make a god out of pleasure. It says that one has already made a god out of whatever he finds most pleasure in. The goal of Christian Hedonism is to find most pleasure in the one and only God and thus avoid the sin of covetousness, that is, idolatry (see Colossians 3:5). Third, Christian Hedonism does not put us above God when we seek Him out of self-interest. A patient is not greater than his physician. Fourth, Christian Hedonism is not a “general theory of moral justification.” In other words, nowhere do I say: An act is right because it brings pleasure. My aim is not to decide what is right by using joy as a moral criterion. My aim is to own up to the amazing, and largely neglected, fact that some dimension of joy is a moral duty in all true worship and all virtuous acts. Fifth, I do not say that the relationship between love and happiness is this: “True happiness requires love.” This is an oversimplification that misses the crucial and defining point. The distinguishing feature of Christian Hedonism is not that pleasure seeking demands virtue, but that virtue consists essentially, though not only, in pleasure seeking. John Piper, in Desiring God
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Week 3 / Thursday
The Ease of Mistrust Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. (Hebrews 3:12, esv )
I sympathize with those who find it difficult to trust God in adversity. I’ve been there often enough myself to know something of the distress, despair, and darkness that fills our souls when we wonder if God truly cares about our plight. I have spent a good portion of my adult life encouraging people to pursue holiness, to obey God. Yet, I acknowledge it often seems more difficult to trust God than to obey Him. God’s moral will given to us in the Bible is rational and reasonable; the circumstances in which we must trust God often appear irrational and inexplicable. God’s law is readily recognized to be good for us, even when we don’t want to obey it; the circumstances of our lives frequently appear dreadful and grim, perhaps even calamitous and tragic. Obeying God is worked out within well-defined boundaries of God’s revealed will; trusting God is worked out in an arena that has no boundaries, where we’re always coping with the unknown. Yet it is just as important to trust God as it is to obey Him. When we disobey God we defy His authority and despise His holiness. But when we fail to trust God we doubt His sovereignty and question His goodness. In both cases we cast aspersions upon His majesty and His character. God views our distrust of Him as seriously as He views our disobedience. When the people of Israel were hungry, “they spoke against God, saying, ‘Can God spread a table in the wilderness? . . . Can he also give bread or provide meat for his people?’” The next two verses tell us, “When the Lord heard, he was full of wrath . . . because they did not believe in God and did not trust his saving power” (Psalm 78:19-22, esv). In order to trust God, we must always view our adverse circumstances through the eyes of faith, not of sense. Jerry Bridges, in Trusting God
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Week 3 / Friday
All the Sweeter Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory! (Psalm 24:10, esv )
To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul’s paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart. Saint Bernard stated this holy paradox in a musical quatrain that will be instantly understood by every worshipping soul: “We taste Thee, O Thou Living Bread, and long to feast upon Thee still: we drink of Thee, the Fountainhead and thirst our souls from Thee to fill.” Come near to the holy men and women of the past, and you will soon feel the heat of their desire after God. They mourned for Him, they prayed and wrestled and sought for Him day and night, in season and out, and when they had found Him the finding was all the sweeter for the long seeking. Moses used the fact that he knew God as an argument for knowing Him better. “Now therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, shew me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight”; and from there he rose to make the daring request, “I beseech thee, shew me thy glory” (Exodus 33:13,18, kjv). God was frankly pleased by this display of ardor, and the next day called Moses into the mount, and there in solemn procession made all His glory pass before him. David’s life was a torrent of spiritual desire, and his psalms ring with the cry of the seeker and the glad shout of the finder. Paul confessed the mainspring of his life to be his burning desire after Christ. “That I may know Him,” was the goal of his heart, and to this he sacrificed everything. “Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ” (Philippians 3:8-10, kjv). A. W. Tozer, in The Pursuit of God
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Week 3 / Weekend
Foundation of Happiness Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases. (Psalm 115:3, esv )
If God is sovereign and can do anything He pleases, then none of His purposes can be frustrated (see Psalm 33:10-11), and He must be the happiest of all beings. This infinite, divine happiness is the fountain from which the Christian Hedonist drinks and longs to drink more deeply. Can you imagine what it would be like if God were given to grumbling and pouting and depression? What if God were frustrated and despondent and gloomy and dismal and discontented and dejected? Could we join David and say, “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water” (Psalm 63:1, esv)? I don’t think so. We would all relate to God like little children who have a frustrated, gloomy, dismal, discontented father. They can’t enjoy him. They can only try not to bother him, or maybe try to work for him to earn some little favor. Therefore if God is not a happy God, Christian Hedonism has no foundation. For the aim of the Christian Hedonist is to be happy in God, to delight in God, to cherish and enjoy His fellowship and favor. But children cannot enjoy the fellowship of their Father if He is unhappy. Therefore the foundation of Christian Hedonism is the happiness of God. But the foundation of the happiness of God is the sovereignty of God. If God were not sovereign, if the world He made were out of control, frustrating His design again and again, God would not be happy. Just as our joy is based on the promise that God is strong enough and wise enough to make all things work together for our good, so God’s joy is based on that same sovereign control: He makes all things work together for His glory. John Piper, in Desiring God
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Week 4 / Monday
Our Original Destiny These all look to you, to give them their food in due season. (Psalm 104:27, esv )
Psalm 104, in praise of the Creator, speaks of the birds and the beasts of the forest; of the young lions, and man going forth to his work; of the great sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts. And it sums up the whole relation of all creation to its Creator, and its con tinuous and universal dependence upon Him in the one word: “These wait all upon thee” (Psalm 104:27, kjv). Just as much as it was God’s work to create, it is His work to maintain. The whole creation is ruled by the one unalterable law of — waiting upon God! The one object for which God gave life to creatures was that in them He might prove and show forth His wisdom, power, and goodness, in His being each moment their life and happiness, and pouring forth unto them, according to their capacity, the riches of His goodness and power. And just as this is the very place and nature of God, to be unceasingly the supplier of every want in the creature, so the very place and nature of the creature is nothing but this — to wait upon God and receive from Him what He alone can give, what He delights to give. If we are at all to apprehend what waiting on God is to be to the believer, to practice it and to experience its blessedness, it is of consequence that we begin at the very beginning and see the deep reasonableness of the call that comes to us. We shall understand how the duty is no arbitrary command. We shall see how it is not only rendered necessary by our sin and helplessness. It is simply and truly our restoration to our original destiny and our highest nobility, to our true place and glory as creatures blessedly dependent on the All-Glorious God.
Andrew Murray, in Waiting on God
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Week 4 / Tuesday
Hearing God Let me hear what God the Lord will speak. (Psalm 85:8, esv )
Hearing God? A daring idea, some would say — presumptuous and even dangerous. But what if we are made for it? What if the human system simply will not function properly without it? There are good reasons to think it will not. The fine texture as well as the grand movements of life show the need. Is it not, in fact, more presumptuous and dangerous to undertake human existence without hearing God? Among our loneliest moments, no doubt, is the time of decision. There the weight of our future life clamps down upon our hearts. Whatever comes from our choice will be our responsibility, our fault. Good things we have set our hearts on become real only as we choose them. But those things, or those as yet undreamed of, may also be irretrievably lost if our choices are misguided. We may find ourselves stuck with failures and dreadful consequences that must be endured for a lifetime. Then quickly there follows the time of second thoughts — and third, and fourth: Did I do the good and wise thing? Is it what God wanted? Is it even what I wanted? Can I live with the consequences? Will others think I am a fool? Is God still with me? Will He be with me even if it becomes clear that I made the wrong choice? While we are young, we just do what we have to do or whatever turns us on. How simple it is! After collecting a few disasters, however, and learning that actions are forever, that opportunities seldom return and that consequences are relentless, we hungrily cry, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven!” More than reflecting a mere general concern for world affairs to conform to His will, our prayer expresses the burning need for God to be a constant guiding presence in our individual lives.
Dallas Willard, in Hearing God
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Week 4 / Wednesday
Only Through Experience O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you. (John 17:25, esv )
Scripture is filled with descriptions of God’s character. You can read these accounts and believe them to be true about God. Yet God does not merely want you to read about Him, He wants you to know Him. For the Greeks, to know something meant you understood a concept in your mind. It was an academic process. In contrast, for a Hebrew person — like Jesus — knowing something entailed experiencing it. In fact, you could not truly say you knew something unless you had dealt with it personally. So it is significant that, when Jesus spoke about knowing God, He was speaking as a Hebrew. When Jesus said eternal life is knowing God — including God the Son, Jesus Christ — He did not mean that eternal life is knowing about God. He was not referring to someone who has read many books and attended numerous seminars about God. He was talking about a firsthand, expe riential knowledge. We come to truly know God as we experience Him in and around our lives. Many people have grown up attending church and hearing about God all their lives, but they do not have a personal, dynamic, growing relationship with God. They never hear His voice. They have no idea what God’s will is. They do not encounter His love firsthand. They have no sense of divine purpose for their lives. They may know a lot about God, but they don’t really know Him. Merely knowing about God will leave you unsatisfied. Truly knowing God comes only through experience as He reveals Himself to you through His word and as you relate to Him. Throughout the Bible we can see that God took the initiative to disclose Himself to people through their life events. Henry Blackaby and Richard Blackaby, in Experiencing God
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Week 4 / Thursday
The Great Mystery For we walk by faith, not by sight. (2 Corinthians 5:7, esv )
Obedience to Jesus’ authority provides the key to understanding what is for many the great mystery of Christianity: faith. Saving faith — that by which we are justified, made right with God — is a gift of God; and yes, it involves a rational process as well because it comes from hearing the Word of God. “All right,” the struggling Christian may say, “but practically speaking, how does my faith become real? How do I get that vibrant, strong faith of Christian maturity?” That’s where obedience comes in. For maturing faith — faith that deepens and grows as we live our Christian life — is not just knowledge, but knowledge acted upon. It is not just belief, but belief lived out — practiced. James said we are to be doers of the Word, not just hearers. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor martyred in a Nazi concentration camp, succinctly stated this crucial interrelationship: “Only he who believes is obedient; only he who is obedient believes.” This may sound like a circular proposition, but many things are — in truth and in practice. Faith is a state of mind that grows out of our actions, just as it also governs them. So obedience is the key to real faith — the unshakable kind of faith so powerfully illustrated by Job’s life. Job clung to the assurance that God is who He is. Job confirmed his obedience with those classic words of faith: “Though he slay me, I will hope in him” (Job 13:15, esv). This is real faith: believing and acting obediently regardless of circumstances or contrary evidence. After all, if faith depended on visible evidence, it wouldn’t be faith. It is absurd for Christians to constantly seek new demonstrations of God’s power, to expect a miraculous answer to every need. True faith, as Job understood, rests on the assurance that God is who He is. Indeed, on that we must be willing to stake our very lives. Charles Colson, in Loving God
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Week 4 / Friday
Measuring His Love Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost. (Ezekiel 37:11, esv )
The extent of God’s love at Calvary is seen in both the infinite cost to Him of giving His one and only Son and in the wretched and miserable condition of those He loved. God could not remove our sins without an infinite cost to both Himself and His Son. And because of their great love for us, both were willing to pay that great cost — the Father in giving His one and only Son, and the Son in laying down His life for us. One of the essential characteristics of love is the element of self-sacrifice, and this was demonstrated for us to its ultimate in God’s love at Calvary. Consider also the miserable and wretched condition of those God loved. Paul said, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8, esv, emphasis added). It’s sometimes difficult for those of us who grew up in morally upright or Christian homes to appreciate the force of that statement. Because we were generally upright and morally decent people in the eyes of society around us and in our own eyes, it’s difficult for us to see ourselves as God saw us — as wretched, miserable, rebellious sinners, spiritually dead in our transgressions and sins (see Ephesians 2:1). Ezekiel’s vision of Israel as a valley of thoroughly dry bones (see Ezekiel 37) would be an apt description of all of us before our salvation. One day a friend and I were marveling about the conversion of one of the more notorious white-collar criminals of our time. I said to my friend, “How dead is dead? Weren’t we just as spiritually dead before our salvation as he was?” Regardless of how morally upright we appeared in our unsaved state, to God we were like the house of Israel, nothing more than a pile of dry and brittle bones.
Jerry Bridges, in Trusting God
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Week 4 / Weekend
The Necessity of Waiting When you open your hand, they are filled with good things. (Psalm 104:28, esv )
If once our eyes are opened to the precious truth that the whole creation is ruled by the unalterable law of waiting upon God, all Nature will become a preacher, reminding us of the relationship which, founded in creation, is now taken in grace. As we read Psalm 104 and learn to look upon all life in Nature as continually maintained by God Himself, waiting on God will be seen to be the very necessity of our being. As we think of the young lions and the ravens crying to Him, of the birds and the fishes and every insect waiting on Him, till He gives them their meat in due season, we shall see that it is the very nature and glory of God that He is a God who is to be waited on. Every thought of what Nature is, and what God is, will give new force to the call: “Wait thou only upon God� (Psalm 62:5, kjv). It is God who giveth all: let this faith enter deeply into our hearts. Before we fully understand all that is implied in our waiting upon God, and before we have even been able to cultivate the habit, let the truth enter our souls: waiting on God, unceasing and entire dependence upon Him, is the one only true religion in heaven and earth, the one unalterable and allcomprehensive expression for the true relationship to the ever-blessed one in whom we live. Let us resolve at once that it shall be the one characteristic of our life and worship, a continual, humble, truthful waiting upon God. We may rest assured that He who made us for Himself, that He might give Himself to us and in us, that He will never disappoint us. In waiting on Him we shall find rest and joy and strength, and the supply of every need.
Andrew Murray, in Waiting on God
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