I admit this right now. I didn’t write this. I thought it was so awesome that I took the whole post and copied it here. I wanted what he wrote here so that I can see this post. This is from a blog called Fallen and Flawed. Demian will you forgive me. If you get a chance take a look at his blog. It is worth reading.
__________________________________
God lacks nothing. Craves nothing. He has everything he needs in himself.
In fact, to admit the existence of a need in God is to admit incompleteness in God.
Why God created anything is a mystery then.
We do know that the emphatic teaching of the Bible is that God exists for himself and man for the glory of God.
So, with that in mind, let’s explore 10 biblical illustrations of what it means when we say that God is self-sufficient. And then look at how we should respond.
1. God is life.
Self-sufficient, God requires nothing to give him life. He is the source of all life. Man, on the other hand, requires something else–something outside himself–to give him life.
2. God lives.
Contrasted against the dead, dumb idols he is the living God. The God of Abraham, Jacob and Isaiah. The God who speaks from fire. The God who doesn’t beg for anything. But commands everything.
3. God is lord.
The Hebrew word Lord used in Psalm 16:2 is adan…meaning master, ruler, owner, lord. Adan is thought to be the root of the noun adom, which is frequently used of men who own slaves. It’s were we get the word Adonia. It’s what believers mean when we prostrate ourselves before God in humble submission. We are slaves to the core.
4. God owns everything. His possessions extend from the earth to the unknown regions of space. God sustains it like a man who sustains a small garden on the side of his house. He doesn’t need it to survive. He sustains it so he can enjoy it.
5. God provides everything. God is our provider. What we have, we only have because God has opened up the way for us to get it. Our duty–especially in tithing–is to give back to the church. That is, God. The same is true for our lives.
6. God is jealous.
God is protective of his self-sufficiency. It’s what isolates him–and Him alone–from every other thing in the universe. Self-sufficiency is his air-tight silo. Except he can talk to us, comfort us, love us despite this barrier.
7. God is independent.
Man is dependent. God is necessary. Man is unnecessary. We get at the heart of God’s creation when we finally understand that God would still exist if all creation were dead. All animals. All birds. All plants. All men.
8. God gives life.
John uses the word “life” 36 times in his gospel–more than any other New Testament author. It refers not only to physical and temporal life that God gave to the world at creation, but especially to spiritual and eternal life imparted as a gift through belief in Him. Eternal life is at the beck-and-call of God.
9. God puts to death.
Self-sufficiency declares authority. Authority over birth, work, love and death. All things are slaves to him–the sea, the saint, the suicide. No once can escape Him or is out of His control. Including death.
10. God delivers.
The power of life is in God. As is the power of death. God cannot die, but he can kill. Furthermore, He is alive and without death and he is the one who can snatch people from the jaws of death. The Creator and the redeemer. That is the self-sufficient God we serve.
How Should You Respond to God’s Self-Sufficiency?
Get this: Gazing upon the face of God is a robust death sentence. Regardless, we are to pursue him. Any motion in His direction is upward for us. Away from him, a descent.
A. W. Tozer said about Christ, “The awful majesty of the Godhead was mercifully sheathed in the soft envelope of human nature to protect mankind.”
Self-sufficient God may be, but merciful, gracious and humble is he also, “who, although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being in the likeness of men. Being found in the appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even on a cross.”
Here is the video that I tried posting yesterday, maybe this time it will work correctly. I have never embedded a video before in to my blog. I thought it had some very compelling thoughts in it and things we need to be looking at. I was certainly convicted by it.
On Justin Taylor’s “Between Two Worlds” there is a post about Norma McCorvey, the Jane Roe in the Roe vs. Wade case. The full post is quoted here on my blog. At the end of the post there is a link to the full testimony of McCorvey, it is definitely worth reading.
The “Jane Roe” of Roe v. Wade was Norma McCorvey. In 1969 she was 22 years old, divorced, homeless, and pregnant for the third time (she had placed her first two children for adoption). Somehow an adoption agency connected her with two young lawyers fresh out of law school who were eager to challenge the Texas statutes on abortion. McCorvey only met with her lawyers twice–once for beer and pizza, the other time to sign an affidavit (which she didn’t read). In order to speed things up McCorvey lied and told them she had been raped. She never appeared in court, and she found out about the infamous ruling from the newspapers. The baby she was seeking to abort was born and placed for adoption.
Today Norma McCorvey is pro-life, advocating for the unborn. You can read her sworn testimony recounting her experience as the plantiff in one of the most signficant cases to appear before the Supreme Court.
It is prayer week at Bethlehem Baptist, and Desiring God has a few articles on it. Prayer is one of those things that seem so simple and yet so powerful. For some people they struggle to do it, because they don’t have time, they don’t see a point in doing it or just don’t believe the promises that God gave us for when we pray.
As the new year comes, it is a time to reflect and to remember the year past. A time to remember the fulfillment of God’s promises to us this last year to sustain us into the new year.
At Bethlehem Baptist Church this is the beginning of prayer week. This is our way of encouraging each other to pray more consistently, more earnestly, more hopefully, and more biblically in 2009.
The best way to strengthen our faith and our resolve is to read what God has promised to those who pray. Here is a sampling:
Promises of Answered Prayer to Encourage Us to Pray with Hope
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for wholeness and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. 12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you.13 You will seek me and find me. When you seek me with all your heart,
If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 9 Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.
The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. 19 He fulfills the desire of those who fear him; he also hears their cry and saves them.
The eyes of the LORD are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry. . . 17 When the righteous cry for help, the LORD hears and delivers them out of all their troubles.
Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”
You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.
Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. 6 In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.
And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
And I will put this third into the fire, and refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested. They will call upon my name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘They are my people’; and they will say, ‘The LORD is my God.’”
I am doing some testing on how to deal with spam on my blog. Either my spam filter has been letting a lot of spam in, or not allowing any comments whatsoever. The last plug in that I tried blocked my only two readers and commenters on my blog. I am hoping that the change that I made will continue to prevent spam and allow people to comment again.
If you have commented before and have a chance please do a test to this post so I can see if you are able to respond or not? Thanks
The devil, things and people being what they are, it is necessary for God to use the hammer, the file and the furnace in His holy work of preparing a saint for true sainthood. It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.
If you are a fan of Douglas Adam’s “Hitchhikers guide to the Universe” the answer that Adam’s came up with is 42. I don’t know if the characters ever found the ultimate question. I never could get through the series.
Adam’s had one thing right, but many things wrong. He is right the ultimate answer is simple, but the answer is wrong.
The ultimate answer is God. The ultimate question, no matter what the question is, the answer will ultimately be God.
The number 42 is beginning to invade my thinking more and more, those who know me, probably already get it, those who don’t probably will get it eventually.
Update: Coincidentally this is my 42nd post… Go figure.
I haven’t written much in here this week because I haven’t had much to say. I am struggling with a lot of things in my life and not conducive to good blog entries.
I am not very good at any of this stuff that God wants me to do. I don’t know how to be a friend. I don’t know how to be part of a family. I don’t know how to love. I don’t know… anything.
I am a creature of the dark, creature of the world. I know the rules and they are easy. Apathy and selfishness. I am good at that. I know what that is all about. I don’t have to think. I don’t have to care.
I crave the darkness. I crave my sin. I crave all the things that I do that goes against God. I am nothing, I am zilch, I don’t count. I am an afterthought. I am a failure. I want to run away from Him. I don’t want to serve Him…
I don’t want to serve Him… and fail Him.
The thing that stops me cold…
He did choose me. I don’t know why. He sees something that He can use. He not only chose me. He died for me.
Why does Christ want me? Why did He choose me?!? What good am I to him?
It doesn’t matter why he chose me. Only that He did…
Dear Lord
I need to state this clearly. I need everyone to see it. I love you Lord, with all my heart and all my soul. There is no doubts in my relationship with You. You are my commander and I am your soldier.
Thousands of years ago you chose me. I can’t figure out for the life of me why you chose me. What good am I to you. I don’t understand. I am broken and weak. How do I serve you when I can’t take care of myself
I live in the world most of the time. I am trying to change. I am fighting against what sin does to me. I HATE the sin in me. I hate who I am. I hate what I do. I hate my rebellion against you. I hate the open defiance and the ease that I sin. I hate that I am so easily able to slam the door in your face every day. I hate how the enemy sneaks inside my head to convince me that sinning against you is a better idea than repenting. I hate the enemy how he can destroy what little beauty and love there is in my life and I am powerless to fight back against him. I hate how weak I am. There is no power or strength in Todd.
You endured abuse, torture and climb up on the cross for me. I don’t understand why you would care about me that much. I don’t understand why you would do that for an uncaring sin-filled filthy person. You climbed up on the cross and endured the nails going through your hand. Each nerve screaming hit of the hammer. You endured all of my sin. I barely can endure my own sin on a daily basis. You chose to take it all, all the sin of the world. You chose to take the punishment and make sure justice is served. I can’t understand. You so loved the world that you gave us everything.
It is only through your gift, the ransom you paid that it is possible to be seen as valuable to You and Your Father, you chose me. I am worthless but you forgive what I never could, you love me, who I could never love.
Questions upon Questions…
I give up my life to you, I submit to you. Lead me to the fight and I will serve and fight. I am Your broken warrior.
Entries (RSS)