Tag Archives: Creation

About God

Posted on by
Reply

Continuing my posts on a Statement of Faith, I now turn to a brief statement on what I believe about God:

I believe in the one true God, who is the author, creator, and source of all life, goodness and blessing. 

God is one, yet exists and has revealed Himself as three distinct persons—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  There are numerous ways to describe this Triune nature of God (a three-leaf clover, a triple-helix, a triangle, etc), but no one example is complete.  The fact is, the One and Three nature of God is a mystery, but it is Biblical (see Matt. 3:13-17, 2 Cor. 13:14, 1 Cor 12:4-6; Matt. 28:19-20, Eph 4:4-6; John 14:26, and more).

God, who exists outside of space and time, stepped into space and time, cre­ating everything that is for His own purposes, to demonstrate His own glory, power, wisdom and goodness.  God continues to provide for and sustain His creation.  As the sovereign over all of creation, there is nothing that is beyond God’s control, nothing that is beyond His power to redeem, and no one that is beyond God’s saving reach.  God has a plan for all things (Eph 1:10), and His sovereign will cannot be thwarted.

God is a God of love. In grace God chooses to show love and mercy. When we were dead in trespasses and sin, God made us alive with Christ, saving us by grace through faith, as a sheer gift of sovereign love.  However, God’s gracious loving kindness did not compromise His justice.  God remains perfectly just and holy in the salvation of sinners by placing the judgment and wrath for our sins upon His sinless Son, Jesus Christ, who is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  Proving His love for us, He sent Christ to die for us, so that by His grace, we may live righteous and holy lives in the power of His Holy Spirit.

God, and God alone, is worthy of worship.  Worship is what God deserves, simply because of who God is.  Worship is our rightful and joyful response to God’s love.  Indeed, our purpose in life is to “glorify God and enjoy Him forever” (Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q. 1).  Worship is not merely something that we do when we gather as a congregation on a Sunday morning, it is a way of life that proclaims the gospel, celebrates the goodness and majesty of God, and submits to His righteous and gracious lordship over all of creation, and over every aspect of our individual and corporate lives. 

Saving Daylight

Posted on by
Reply

“And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb.”
(Revelation 21:23 ESV)

Daylight Savings has ended, and the long dark nights of winter are upon us.  Last week, late afternoons in my office I could still see the bright and joyful light of the sun pouring through my colored glass office windows.  Now, all I see is a grim grey darkness.  Times like these I begin to wish for snow again, if just to brighten up the landscape.

I get the whole idea behind Daylight Savings – in an industrial age the shifting of time allowed for greater productivity.  What I always find amazing is the way we talk about the time change.  We say we lose or gain an hour.  We complain about how dark it gets, and how early it gets dark.  We say the days are shorter, when technically, it’s just the “day-time,” we still have 24 hours in the day.  It’s almost as though each year we forget that this all happened the year before, and the year before that, and so on.

Days like this I am reminded of John’s vision of the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21.  There, as the city of God descends out of heaven from God, we find the perfect city, the dwelling place of God with His people.  We are told in verses 21 and 22, “And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.  And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb.”  What a vision.  No temple.  There’s no place you’ll have to go to meet with God, for we will be in His presence, we will see the Lord face to face.  There will be no need for the sun or the moon.  They may still exist, but they will pale in comparison to the radiant glory of God and the Lamb. 

It will be a restoration of creation.  Remember back in Genesis 1, on the first day of creation God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light, but it wasn’t until day 4 that God created the sun and the moon and the stars in the heavens.  Before there was a sun, there was the Son, who is the light of the world (John 8:12).  When Christ returns, and God’s Kingdom is fully realized in all its glory and wonder, the light of His glory shall shine on us, and we will never walk in darkness again.

Now that will be a Daylight Saving.

SDG