Tag Archive for Transcendent God

Face-to-face with the Living God

2020-07-03 Devotional with Hymn No comments

To You I lift up my eyes,
O You who are enthroned in the heavens!
Behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master,
As the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress,
So our eyes look to the Lord our God,
Until He is gracious to us.
(Psalm 123:1-2, NASB)

I remember clearly when I first trusted Jesus Christ. It was the last night of a revival in our local church with evangelist Rev. Jay Budd. All week a fear of hell had been building in my 10-year-old mind, but I was too shy to go forward during the altar call. So when we arrived home after church on that Sunday night, April 10, 1960, I went into my parents’ bedroom and told them I wanted to pray to become a Christian.

I still remember my burning desire not to lose the amazing new feeling that filled my heart.

But my deepest and most formative memory of that evening is my new awareness of the Living God. I had the sensation of Him standing right in front of me, looking straight into my eyes. The reality was stark and gripping. He filled my heart’s vision. I could not ignore Him or look past Him. But His look was not threatening. He was not angry with me. His look was love…nothing but love.

I think of that when I read the account of Paul’s conversion in Acts 9. Paul was making a career of trying to stamp out Christianity, and suddenly, in a moment in time, he turned around 180 degrees and became one of its most fervent advocates. Within a few days he was publicly contending for the truth he had violently opposed. The change did not happen through years of studying and thinking. Like me, he simply came face-to-face with the Living Christ. Few words were exchanged. The gripping reality of Jesus Christ transformed him completely in a moment in time, and he was never the same.

Like Paul, my life and ministry continues to be energized by the stark reality of Father God, revealed so vividly and personally in Jesus Christ. To my ears, so much of our Christian talk is about religion, and religion can be such a human thing. It pales before the Living God. He still fills my heart’s vision, as He did on that evening over 55 years ago. He draws me. He drives me. My relationship with Him shapes every aspect of my life. When He speaks, all other voices are just background noise. When He commands, my path is clear, regardless of opposition. My heart has room for nothing and no one else.

As with Noah, Abraham, Isaiah, and Paul, God Himself, in His person, makes all other considerations irrelevant. He is the Source and Center of all reality. He is all wisdom, all power, and all love. He calls, I answer. What else matters but Him?

We spend our lives
fearfully holding God at arm’s length,
not realizing that His only goal is
to fulfill us completely,
to make us happy,
loving,
wise,
fruitful,
glorious, and
at peace with Himself and all creation.

Hymn: Lord, May Our Thoughts Begin with You

Earth Crawlers

2020-06-26 Devotional with Hymn No comments

Do you not know? Have you not heard?
Has it not been declared to you from the beginning?
Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
It is He who sits above the circle of the earth,
And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers,
Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain
And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.
He it is who reduces rulers to nothing,
Who makes the judges of the earth meaningless.
Scarcely have they been planted,
Scarcely have they been sown,
Scarcely has their stock taken root in the earth,
But He merely blows on them, and they wither,
And the storm carries them away like stubble.
(Isaiah 40:21-24, NASB)

We were staying in Mackinaw City, on the shore of Lake Huron. Looking out over the waters, to the left was a beautiful view of the Mackinac Bridge.

From that distance, the vehicles seemed to be just creeping across the bridge. It reminded me of Genesis 1:24 where it talks about the “creeping things” God created on earth. From a higher perspective, our human race is among those creatures creeping across the surface of this tiny planet. How small and lowly we are! Only the image of our Creator makes us special. And how little we value that image, so arrogantly discarded long ago.

We crawl across the surface of this speck of dust, small, earthbound, in the grip of space and time. We are so small in mind that we mock the possibility of any reality beyond our own.

It reminds me how foolish we are to live for the glory that comes from our fellow earth crawlers. We were created for so much more! Father, raise my eyes. Lift my heart to crave the glory that comes only from You, the Eternal God of all truth, beauty, light, and life. You call me to be Your own child, holy in You, complete in You, forever one with You. Lord, help me to long for nothing else!

Father, we small, weak, short-lived creatures
puff ourselves up and
prance across this little stage,
pretending we are in charge,
pretending we are invincible.
How foolish we must look to You!
Sovereign God, You are our Father.
We trust in You.

Hymn: Hungry for God

How to Be Sure about God

2019-07-05 Devotional with Hymn, Magnificent God No comments

Genesis 1; Psalm 8; Isaiah 40:12-31

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old gained approval.

By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.

By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous, God testifying about his gifts, and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks.

By faith Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death; and he was not found because God took him up; for he obtained the witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God.

And without faith it is impossible to please Him. (Hebrews 11:1-6a, NASB)

We cannot have a casual relationship with God. He claims to be Creator, sovereign Lord of all reality, Father, Redeemer, and Fountain of Life. If His claim is false, we should ignore Him along with all the other fakes and fictions in our world. If He is who He says He is, He is the reality that shapes every other reality. We owe Him everything, and more. There is no halfway. He is All-in-all, or He is nothing.

Since God is the ultimate question, how can we know that He exists? How can we be sure about Him? Our entire lifespan is a mere moment in time. We perceive and understand so little of reality, and He is by His very nature beyond our senses and imaginings. If we could completely encompass Him with our perceptions and expectations, we would be God, not Him.

Any objective observer of the human situation would come to this conclusion: understanding all reality is beyond human ability. It is beyond our perspective, beyond our brevity, beyond our wisdom, beyond the blindness and smallness of our self-centered pride. We can only know a Sovereign, transcendent God as He intentionally reveals Himself to us and as we respond by trusting Him.

That is the path to knowing God that is laid out in His Word, the Bible. What is our proof or evidence for the things we cannot see? Faith is our proof. Faith is our evidence. Faith is our assurance (Hebrews 11:1).

Creation itself nurtures this faith in what is beyond our senses. All its vastness, its matter, its detail, its pattern and order, came from nothing. It truly is a creation. Everything we see came from what we cannot see (Hebrews 11:3). Creation is but one of many testimonies God has provided, one of many signposts pointing to His reality (Other signposts include His written Word, His Spirit speaking within, the testimony of other human beings, and the man Christ Jesus).

But there is no objective proof that makes faith unnecessary. Our ultimate decision is always this: do we trust God or not? That decision is God’s design. To come to Him, we must realize our smallness and dependence, then trust Him as our Creator, Father, and Lord. To know Him, we must humbly acknowledge Him for who He is and acknowledge ourselves for who we are. Until then, we are foolishly exalting our small selves above the greatness displayed all around us. That can never lead us to the truth. The truth begins with God, not with us. Certainty requires our humble, trusting commitment to Him.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. (Proverbs 9:10, NASB)

But further, how can we frail and flawed creatures ever hope to please such a God or fellowship with Him? We please Him the same way we come to know Him: by faith—that is, by humbly, simply, actively trusting Him (Hebrews 11:2, 4-6a).

We are blind until we trust God.
He works His mightiest wonders right in front of us—
creation,
Jesus Christ, and
the glories of life in Him—
and we see nothing.
Trusting Him opens our eyes to His magnificence.

Hymn: Transcendent God

We Need to See You

2019-06-28 Devotional with Hymn, Magnificent God No comments

In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted. (Isaiah 6:1, NASB)

Father, we are flooded with so many needs,
but our real need is
You.
We need to know You for all You are,
the One true God,
high and lifted up,
the Holy One,
our Source and Goal,
the All-in-all,
our Eternal Father.
We need to see You for all You are.
We need to trust You always for all You are.

Lift our eyes, Father.
Help us to see You.

God wants us to know Him.
His most intricate and detailed works—
creation,
the Bible,
even the Old Testament tabernacle—
are those that fill our mind and senses with Him.
Father, I want to know You.
Open me to receive You.

Hymn: Simply God

In His Presence

2019-06-07 Devotional with Hymn, Magnificent God No comments

O Lord my God, You are very great;
You are clothed with splendor and majesty.
(Psalm 104:1, NASB)

Some of the most profound and moving moments of my life have been spent under the clear night sky. Looking up from my backyard, I feel I am in a great hall of eternity. I see the stars and think of the unfathomable distances of time and space there before me.

I am awestruck by the vastness of God. He is there, filling all space, all eternity, and beyond. I sense that I’ve walked into His holy temple, and the only proper response is to stand in total silence.

I am one of billions of life forms on this planet, which is little more than a pebble orbiting the sun. And each of those tiny stars there in the sky is roughly the size of our sun. There are a billion trillion of them scattered like grains of sand through the vastness of space.

The total life span of one of those stars, millions or billions of years, is only an episode in the life of the universe, to say nothing of His unimaginable eternity. And my life…my life is the tiniest fraction of a heartbeat. One breath.

Lord God, why do I matter to You? Why do You even notice me? God, why should You care about me?

I stand here wrapped up in my own little world, so anxious and dark. But I am in Your world, in Your domain, in all its vastness and serenity. Your skies are singing, “He is good, and His mercy endures forever.” Your trees, so stately against the sky, are silently chanting, “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic You are in all the earth.” The whole world is a symphony to Your name. I listen, and I can hear it.

God, my Father, I don’t know why, but I know that You love me. I see Your love in my life. I hear You whisper it in my heart.  And I don’t want to ignore Your love. I don’t want to ignore You, my God.

There is so much I don’t understand about You. But I know that when I admit that You are God–that You are my God–I am embracing the truth.

I know that when I believe You love me and start to trust Your love, it pleases You. It pleases You very much.

And I sense that when I open myself to You, I am opening myself to Your goodness and wisdom and to a wonderful future with You.

Lord God, I am nothing in myself. I am significant for only one reason: You, Great Creator, love me. Teach me to love You in return.

O Father,
if only everyone recognized You for
who You are,
the sovereign Creator,
the Source and Goal of all that is!
How different our world would be, and
will be!
How blessed we are to know You,
serve You, and
live every moment in Your care!

Listen and sing:
Hymn: Lord, You Are My Home
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What Do You Worship?

2019-05-10 Devotional with Hymn, Magnificent God No comments

“I am the Lord your God. . . . You shall have no other gods before me.”
(Exodus 20:2-3, NIV)

“The sorrows of those will increase who run after other gods.”
(Psalm 16:4, NIV)

We all seek security. We want our lives to have significance. We want to achieve. We crave a sense of meaning and fulfillment.

How are we seeking those things? On what are you focusing your hopes and energies? A house? A job? Comfort? The praise of other people?

What are you worshiping? Who are you serving?

We are children of the Creator. We have His life within us. He has patterned us after Himself. And He has planted in our hearts a yearning for something beyond what we can touch. He has given us a deep longing for the eternal.

He wants us to know Him. He wants us to share His life fully. He keeps prodding us to seek Him, to love Him and trust Him as our Father. Of all the guidance He has given us, He says that the most important thing in life is this: 

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. (Mark 12:30, NIV)

That is the key to happiness.

Yet we worship the temporary. We devote ourselves to what can’t possibly satisfy our deep desires. We fashion gods from created things. What was written 2,700 years ago still applies to us: 

They pour out their money. They hire a craftsman to make a god for them, then they bow down and worship it. They lift it up and carry it – it cannot carry them. They care for it – it does not care for them. They put it in its place, and there it stays – it cannot move. Though they cry out to it, it does not answer. It cannot save them from their troubles. 

Remember this, fix it in your minds: I am God, and there is no other. I am God, and there is none like me. (Isaiah 46:6-9, para.)

We are like selfish, rebellious children. Anxious to have complete “freedom,” impatient to fulfill our every desire, we turn our backs on the love that gave us life. We reject the wisdom that taught us and nurtured us. Instead we chase things that can’t possibly help us and can only drag us down. Our “gods” are a burden and a false hope. They don’t carry us. We carry them.

As a result, we are out of balance. Look around you. Our lawns are better manicured than our lives. We have nearly every material resource this world can offer. Yet we are unhappy and unfulfilled. We have no peace.

We are worshiping gods that are not gods. We are ignoring the one true God – our Creator, our Father.

Turn to the One who can truly help you. Seek Him. Talk to Him. It’s not at all difficult – He hears each word, each murmur of your heart. Discover your Creator. He is the security, the significance, the fulfillment that you crave.

My God, I want to know You. I want to obey You. I’m sorry for all my wrongness. Forgive me and fill my life as I believe in You now.

Father,
when I begin to realize who You are,
Your lavish gifts are not enough.
I want to know You and
please You and
worship You.
I want to love You and
walk with You and
trust You every moment.
I want to live
in You and
for You and
to You alone.

Listen and sing:
Hymn: Come
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The Immensity of God, Part 1

2019-04-26 Devotional with Hymn, Magnificent God No comments

O Lord, our Lord,
How majestic is your name in all the earth!
When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers,
The moon and the stars, which you have ordained;
What is man that you take thought of him,
And the son of man that you care for him?
(Psalm 8:1, 3-4, NASB)

Have you ever been out under the clear night sky and
looked up at the stars and
the vastness of the heavens?
Have you marveled that the Creator of all this has any interest in you?
Consider this:

Light travels so fast that a beam of light can circle the earth
more than 7 times in a second.
The moon is a quarter of a million miles away, and
its light reaches the earth in less than a second and a half.
The sun is 93 million miles away, and
its light arrives in only 8 minutes.

Our group of stars, our galaxy, is called the Milky Way.
How long do you think it takes light to travel across this one galaxy?
100,000 years!
Light travels around the earth 7 times in a second and
93 million miles in only 8 minutes.
But our galaxy is so vast that even light takes 100,000 years to cross it.

Galaxies are vast beyond our imagination.
But ours is only one galaxy.
How many galaxies do you think there are in the universe?
One recent estimate says there are
125 billion galaxies in the universe.
Try to imagine that:
93 million miles in only 8 minutes;
100,000 years to cross our galaxy;
125 billion galaxies.

We are so very small.
Reality dwarfs us.
It dwarfs the human race.
It dwarfs all that we can imagine.

But there’s more:
This vast universe is only the smallest taste of the Living God.
He overflows all physical existence.
Job 26 says that in all God’s mighty creation,
we see only the fringes of His robe.
We hear only a faint whisper of Him.

Father,
Your Word,
Your creation, and
the presence of Your Son here
all proclaim that there are
realities beyond our earthly reality.
But You are
the Creator and Sovereign King over all reality, and
I am secure in You.

Listen and sing:
Hymn: Everlasting Father
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Knowing the Transcendent God: My Personal Story 4

2019-04-19 Devotional with Hymn, Magnificent God One comment

As we begin looking at our magnificent, transcendent God, I am reflecting on how He has patiently drawn me toward Himself. Here is the last of four major turning points.

On February 20, 2015, our thirty-eight-year-old son, David, took his own life. I will not recount the shock and trauma and the depths of grief that have gripped our lives in the aftermath. But within months, I began trying to process my struggle the way I had always processed my struggles: by writing about them. But as I wrote about my grief, I found myself overwhelmed. The river of sorrow that normally flows quietly within me would overflow and flood my heart. Writing about my grief proved counterproductive. It dragged me down. It only made my grief worse.

The Lord then told me that instead of focusing on my grief, I should focus on my joy in Him. Instead of dwelling on my loss, I should dwell on all that is mine in Him – permanently, completely, joyfully, irrevocably. I should fix my eyes on Him. He is the joy that never changes.

Each day as I began to pray “Our Father in heaven,” I found myself hungry to see Him and know Him again. I needed to fix my eyes on Him again. I craved it the way I crave a refreshing morning shower. Only by refocusing on Him could I regain a true perspective. Only by seeing Him could I see everything else clearly (Psalm 36:9).

Over the years I have become increasingly aware that being a Christian is not obeying a set of rules. It is living as Jesus lived: in loving, wholehearted response to the Father. Our son’s death brought this need into focus. As I remember who God is, I remember who I am. Only then can I live in response to Him – simply and naturally, in humility, trust, and joy. Only then can I live in that ongoing connection with Him that Jesus enjoyed, and that I deeply desire more than anything else in heaven or earth.

Each and every day I want to walk in the full light of all He is. Each and every day I need to connect with the Transcendent God.

That is why all the reflections that follow were written. I want to draw you and myself to the Magnificent God who longs for us to know Him, love Him, trust Him completely, and walk in Him forever.

Listen and sing:
Hymn: We Need You, Holy God
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Knowing the Transcendent God: My Personal Story 3

2019-04-12 Devotional with Hymn, Magnificent God No comments

As we begin looking at our magnificent, transcendent God, I am reflecting on how He has patiently drawn me toward Himself. Here is the third of four major turning points.

In my mid-forties, God challenged me to begin spending more time with Him in prayer. He specifically asked me to begin using the Lord’s Prayer as the pattern for my praying. I had heard speakers suggest that before, and it had struck me as artificial. So when God asked me to do it, it took me by surprise. But I began to obey.

Then a few years later, in 1998, I reduced my work load to half-time in order to have more time to write. That schedule change took away my long-established means of daily exercise, so I found myself looking for another exercise routine. In early 1999, at age 49, I began taking long daily walks – an hour or more every weekday. Those walks soon became my prayer time.

Those extended prayer times have done more to enrich my life and my relationship with the Living God than anything else. The first half of the Lord’s Prayer, applied to my daily situation and prayed from the heart, has been deeply formative in the way I think of God and relate to Him.

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven. (Matthew 6:9-10, NIV)

In the early years of those walks, I usually walked outside, alone, in nature. Spending all that time speaking with God the way Jesus taught us to pray, while immersed in His creation, continued God’s process of drawing me into Himself.

Listen and sing:
Hymn: As I Pray
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Knowing the Transcendent God: My Personal Story 2

2019-04-05 Devotional with Hymn, Magnificent God No comments

As we begin looking at our magnificent, transcendent God, I am reflecting on how He has patiently drawn me toward Himself. Here is the second of four major turning points.

In my early-to-mid-twenties, as I was entering adulthood, I longed to be all God wanted me to be. But I didn’t really know how, despite a thorough grounding in the Church’s teachings. I tried self-discipline, thinking that it held the answer to a productive and fruitful life. I tried in-depth Bible study, suspecting that somewhere in its pages were hidden secrets that only the astute could discover. Both self-discipline and Bible study are important, but neither proved to be the answer I was seeking.

Over time I realized that God doesn’t reserve His blessings only for the spiritual elite. In fact, I learned the opposite. God graciously showed me that the secret to a satisfying life was the simple truth I had learned as a young child in Sunday School: God is a real Being, and He is constantly, personally with us. What’s more, what He wants from us is amazingly, stunningly simple: He only asks that we trust Him, one step at a time.

Even as I say this now, the words seem so plain. But the personal realization of an ever-present God and a relationship of simple faith began to change me.

Listen and sing:
Hymn: You Are Near, O Lord
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