Thinking Right Thoughts About God

Exodus 15:11 says, “Who is like you, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?” (ESV)

 

II Samuel 7:22 says, “Therefore you are great, O LORD God. For there is none like you, and there is no God besides you, according to all that we have heard with our ears.” 

 

More than a generation ago, A. W. Tozer wrote, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” 

 

If that statement were true and worthy of consideration in Tozer’s time, it is more than true today and even more worthy of consideration today. What people think of and about God has undeniable and consequential ramifications. People live out their various thoughts, philosophies and opinions about God in their everyday life. 

 

Knowing and understanding God therefore is not to be relegated merely to theological or theoretical musings. The knowledge of God and the understanding of God is very practical to every area of our lives. It is of great importance what you conceive God to be in your heart.

 

Tozer also wrote, “A god begotten in the shadows of a fallen heart will quite naturally be no true likeness of the true God.” 

 

Psalms 50:21 says in part, “…you thought that I {Or that the I AM} was one like yourself.” (ESV)

 

We have the tendency due to our fallen nature to conceive of a god in our own heart that we can, both love and feel comfortable with. This must grieve our God tremendously. He alone is unique in every area of His being. He alone is the sole epitome of majesty, splendor, glory, and beauty. He is the very essence of holiness, exercising every aspect of this character and nature in perfect holiness. Yet, we so easily degrade and belittle Him with our humanistic imaginations of what we want Him to be to us or for us.

 

It is imperative for the honor and sake of God that we develop right thinking about Him. He is worthy of right thoughts. We are in desperate need of right thoughts so that we might honor Him, serve Him, enjoy Him, and share Him with those who yet have been instructed in the ways of thinking right thoughts about God.

Would You Pray With Me?

I hope to lead an Evangelistic Bible Study called  In Search of... in mid January 2012. Please join me in prayer between now and then as we seek to influence 2 to 3 unsaved couples into a seven week bible study.

In Search of... Is a seven week evangelistic bible study from the Psalms covering seven different things that human beings desire.

• The goal is to stimulate thinking along the lines of spiritual things generated from relevant "needs" of individuals in order to share the gospel.

• This study is schedule to begin Thursday evening, January 19th, 2012 at 7:00 PM

• The goal is to present the gospel in a relaxed, non-threatening atmosphere of a living room to six or eight people in order for God to claim some as His in redemptive power

• The goal would is to enroll those who were redeemed by the power of Christ into the first segment of the Gospel-driven Disciples discipleship small group

 

Prayer Requests

1.  Host home in order to hold the study

2.  Six to Eight individuals to attend

3.  Presence and power of the Holy Spirit

4.  Ability to share and teach compassionately

5.  God's character to be manifested for His glory

Post Script (P.S.)

Since making the decision to conduct an evangelistic study and placing this post in Que two weeks ago in order to post today, the enemy has been at work. I had hoped to develop a relationship with three unsaved couples in order to invite them to this study, the wife of one couple had an aneurysm and is in the hospital in intensive care, and another couple separated and seems to be headed for divorce.

This may delay the new evangelistic Bible Study and it shows that this is a very serious spiritual warfare that we are engaged in. Satan does not like his territory invaded. Praise God however, He is sovereign and does as He pleases! Amen! 

If Jesus had consulted an Attorney...

A Modern Lord's Prayer

Our Father, who shall be termed party of

the first part, whose place of business

is in Heaven, Hallowed be thy name. 

Thy Kingdom, pursuant to terms and

conditions, come.  

 

Thy will, duly uncontested, be done on

earth, inasfar as existing statutes

permit, as it is in Heaven.     

Give us this third day of

December, 2011, our daily bread.   

 

Forgive us our debts, notwithstanding

claims, liens and legal costs, as we,

who shall be termed party of the second

part, forgive our debtors.     

And lead us not into temptation, i.e.

sin, corruption, greed, gluttony, etc.,

but deliver us from evil, the nature of

which shall be determined by the court. 

   

For thine is the Kingdom, and the Power,

and, pending appeal, the Glory forever. 

Amen. 

 

God 1 - Satan 0

"I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring, he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." (Genesis 3:15, ESV)

(circa Passover AD 32)

Briefing - News and Notes of Interest!

USMC mulling over decision to remove a cross from Camp Pendleton which honors fallen Marines in Iraq.  The Marine Corps said Monday it is reviewing whether to remove a cross placed on a Camp Pendleton hilltop earlier this month by Marines honoring four comrades killed in Iraq. The review came after an atheist group argued that the cross on government land violates the separation of church and state. Several Marines, as well as the widows and children of two of the fallen Marines, carried the 13-foot-tall cross up to the hilltop on Veterans Day. The did so on their own and without Corps permission. The cross replaced one that had been there since 2003 until it was destroyed by a brushfire in 2007. “Camp Pendleton legal authorities are researching and reviewing the issue in order to make a judicious decision,” the Marine Corps said in a statement reported by the Los Angeles Times Monday.

Catholic Church in Germany sells outlet that sold porn. The Catholic church in Germany is to sell Weltbild, its bookselling arm, after the unit admitted last month to publishing pornographic novels, the company says. Weltbild is one of the Germany’s main book enterprises, with annual sales of 1.6 billion euros (2.1 billion dollars) and a workforce of 6,400. Its interests include general publishing, a main national bookshop chain and book clubs. Catholic leaders were outraged that the profitable company’s book range included steamy pulp novels with titles like “Boarding School for Sluts” and “The Lawyer’s Whore” and advice on how to practice esoteric superstitions that are condemned by Catholic doctrine.

Thanksgiving 1908.Theodore Roosevelt, that force of nature that was once President of these United States, was a deeply religious man.  He attended church faithfully his entire life.  (He was Dutch Reformed, but he often attended Episcopal services with his wife.)  He opposed putting the national motto “In God We Trust” on currency, for fear it would cheapen the  noble sentiment, as would be the case, in his view, if it were used on postage stamps or in advertisements.  He was opposed to all religious bigotry as he would state immediately after the campaign of 1908 when the Unitarian Willam Howard Taft came under fire for his religion… A frequent reader of the Bible, Roosevelt once opined that a thorough knowledge of it was more valuable to a person than a college education. His Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1908 rejoices in the material well being of the country, but notes that there is far more to life than piling up material possessions.  He would have vigorously dissented from the idiotic bumper sticker:  “He who dies with the most toys wins.”

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35.4 - million square feet of graffiti removed in FY 2011 by the city of Los Angeles. Up 8.2% from FY 2010. No numbers released on the amount of tax-payer dollars to fund this criminal graffiti tagging.

7,500 - earthquakes recorded near Christ Church, New Zealand since a 7.1 magnitude quake hit the area in September of 2010. People think L.A. is bad!

1 in 7 - Americans who receive help from the Federal Government to put food on the table. Sounds like it is time to call in "...a man named Jed, a poor mountaineer who barely kept his family fed, but one day when he was shooting at some food, up from the ground came a bubblin' crude." We could use the food and crude it sounds like.


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Happy 80th birthday to my dear Father, Glenn F. Metcalf, of Modesto, CA! I love you Dad!

Word Power

In Words We Trust
Words have meaning. The Words chosen by the Holy Spirit in Holy Writ have meaning. We need to be willing to diligently discover the meaning of those Words.

ABADDON - in the Old Testament, a  place name of the realm of the dead. Three times in the Old Testament Abaddon is paralledled with Sheol (Job 26:6; Prov. 15:11; 27:20) In Job 28:22 it is equal to death, and in Psalms 88:11 is refers to the grave.

Abaddon belongs to the realm of the mysterious. Only God fully understands it. (Job 26:6; Prov. 15:11) It is the place or world of the dead in its utterly dismal, destructive, and dreadful aspects. In Abaddon there are no declarations of God's lovingkindness, (Psalms 88:11)

In the New Testament the word occurs once (Rev 9:11), the personalization becoming sharp. Abaddon is here not th world of the dead, but the angel who reigns over it. The Greek equivalent of his name is given as Apollyon. 1.

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1.  W. J. Bdeecher, ISBE, Vol. 1,( Eerdmans: Grand Rapid Michigan), p.2

Are You Getting the most Bang for Your Buck?

The other day I was working my way through my blog roll when I came across a blog that caught my eye. It made me stop and check it out. You know the kind that make you go ummmmm? Well, it made me do more than go ummmmmm. It made me do some thinking.

How expensive is your church membership? What are you getting for your church membership? Now, let me make it clear that I am really addressing this to the seeker-sensitive, cutting-edge, and/or production type churches rather than truly biblical churches.

Here is what I mean. Most of these churches have an entrance or membership fee; it is called the tithe. Setting aside the true teaching of the tithe for a moment, I am referring to that 10% or more that is received each week at your church. Let's say you make $60,000.00 a year. That puts your "tithe" at $6,000.00 a year. What are you getting for that $6,000.00? Mind you this works out to about $115.38 a week. Even if the show, oops sorry, the performance, oh again, sorry, service is 2 hours in length, that is roughly $58.00 an hour.

Most of these seeker-sensitive and cutting edge churches are drama, skit, or musical performance oriented. I mean they have huge productions. They have full costumes, lights, smoke machines, fans, even rain makers. The lighting alone must be horrendously expensive. In addition, many would be actors and actresses, regardless of how talented they may truly be flock to these churches to live out their long denied dreams of stardom.

Are these services worth $58.00 an hour? I can not think of anything that I have done that would cost that much, at least lately.

• Netfliks charges 7.99 to watch unlimited number of movies as many times as you want.

• Seattle Seahawk single game tickets in the nosebleed sections run about $155.00 or for a 3 hour game $51.67 an hour

• Disneyland offers a ticket pass for $199.99 for three days which grants entrance into Disneyland Park and Disney California Adventure Park  

• Even our "cheap date night (somebody thought I should have used inexpensive date night) runs about $10.68 (Lest you women start trying to find a better husband for Irene, we spend our money on many other items making life easier or for our kids, neighbors, and even strangers)

At our church, Coal Creek Community Church, we don't have productions, shows, drama, skits, or even musical performances. We don't have light machines, bubble machines, smoke machines, or rain-making machines. For our gifts and offerings, we do not practice tithing at Coal Creek, we receive each week the opportunity to gather with our brother and sisters in Christ, sing a couple of hymns, and hear a well studied and prepared exegetical and expositional message from the Gospel According to Matthew by a humble and gifted bible teacher.

Now, you are well aware that this has been somewhat tongue in cheek right? We at Coal Creek are not paying a membership fee anymore than most of the seeker-sensitive churches are. I am not impugning their motives nor judging their hearts. I thought I would play a little devil's advocate for a moment in order to evaluate the best way to invest in eternity and expand the kingdom of God.