Knowing God - His Nature
Pastor Glenn Newton 10-7-01
1JN 4:7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who
loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know
God, because God is love.
Last Sunday I talked to you about How We come to Know God and what He is like
through our Experience with him in our lives. I want you too know that this week God
has again reaffirmed who He is to Nola and I, He is Almighty, He is the Healing God, He
is the one who can and does confound the experts when He moves in. We serve a Mighty
God who cares about our needs today. He cares about what is going on in your life today.
He really cares for you. In fact, it’s really much more than just caring. He Loves You.
He Loves You today not because of anything you have done or haven’t done, He just
plain and simple loves you because He Wants to. Praise God This Morning For His Love!
I feel very impressed through the Holy Spirit that we need to grow in our understanding of
who God really is and when we do that, we can grow in our relationship with Him, and
know Him better.
Friends, as we look at our world today, as we study what is going on around us, it’s not
very hard to see that our world could change dramatically in the matter of months. My
concern is that everyone here this morning is at a place in their relationship with Jesus
Christ that will hold them when the rough times come. Our Faith needs to be grounded,
our roots and commitment to God needs to go deep.
With that in mind, I want to talk to you about the Nature of God - What is God really
Like? And in tough times can I trust Him?
Let’s look to Scripture for our answers, because we believe that God’s Word has been
given to us as a written Revelation of Who God is. READ.
1JN 4:7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.
Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love
does not know God, because God is love.
God is Love. God is love during the good times. God is Love during the bad
times. God is love when your well, God is love when your sick. God is love when a baby
is born, God is love when someone dies.
I have heard greiving people say that God must not love them to allow a death in
the family to occur. When all the circumstances of life seem to mount up against you,
when everything caves in on you, too many times people will say, Well, I guess God
doesn’t love me anymore?
This last Tuesday and Wednesday was a trying time for our family. When the
specialist tell you that if this treatment doesn’t work, he’s not sure what he’s going to do,
it doesn’t inspire you very much. After watching Calah take fluids for almost 24 hours
and nothing seemed to be happening, our prayers became urgent.
The truth was though, that Nola and I never questioned whether God loved us or
not. We never had the thought, how could a loving God allow our daughter to go
through all this?
All I have to do when I think about God’s Love is Look to the Cross of Calvary.
Whenever I need reassurance about God’s love, I just think about the Cross and what the
Father sacrificed because He Loved me so. If your not sure about God’s love, Look to
the Cross and remember that the Father sent Jesus, his only Son, to die for your sins so
that He could have a loving personal, relationship with you. Jesus loved you so much, he
died for you, and for me. God is Love.
My prayer is, Father, don’t ever let me look at circumstances and question Your
love for me. Your love for me was settled on the cross. That has never changed and will
never change for me.
Friends, if you want to know God’s will for your life, you must respond to His invitation
to love Him wholeheartedly. God works through those He loves, to carry out His
Kingdom purposes in the world.
This morning I want to share with you 3 aspects of His Nature. Each of these
Characteristics of God has special implications for you doing His will.
First, God is Love: His will is always best.
When we read 1 Jn. 4:16, it says plainly that God is Love. The Scriptures say that God’s
very nature is love. God can never act contrary to His own nature. Never in your life will
God express His will toward you except that it is an expression of perfect love. God’s
kind of love always seeks the very best for a person. God can never give you second best,
His nature will not allow him too.
God does bring discipline, judgement, and wrath on those who continue in sin and
rebellion. Even His disciples, however, always based on love. Heb. 12:6 says, “because
the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son."
If I understand that His Nature is one of Perfect Love, then I can be confident that
however He expresses Himself to me, it will always be for the best, my best. 2 More
Scriptures describing His Love. Jn. 3:16 “For God so loved the world that He gave His
only begotten Son” and 1 Jn. 3:16 says, “By this we know love, because He laid down
His life for us.”
Friends, your trust in the Love nature of God is crucial. How will you deal with the tough
times ahead if your not convinced of God’s Love for you?
For me, The Cross, the death of Jesus Christ, and his resurrection are God’s final,
total, and complete expression that He loves me, and loves us.
I can tell you this with confidence this morning. God is pursuing you, wanting that Love
relationship that he created you to have with Him. Do you have that Love Relationship
with Him? Do you really know and believe that God loves you?
If your going to grow and be able to carry out God’s will in your life, you will need to
settle this in your own heart. Tell God how much you love Him, and ask Him to show
you, to reveal to you How much He loves you, and He will.
The second aspect of His Nature that we need to understand is this: His Directions are
always right.
By nature God is omniscient - or in everyday language, He is All-Knowing. He possesses
all knowledge, past, present, future. Nothing is outside the knowledge of God. So
whenever God expresses to you his direction, they are always right. When God gives you
a directive, you can count on the fact that God has already considered every factor that
must be considered. You will never follow a directive that God has given and find out
later that God must have been mistaken. His directions are always right.
When we pray for direction from God, we don’t ask him to submit all the possible
options so we can decide which one would be the best do we? NO. We ask God to give
us his direction, and when he does, we can know it’s right every time.
The truth is we find ourselves trying to make the calculations, trying to add everything up,
trying to come up with the answers, instead of just trusting God.
This daycare has been a perfect example in my own life, and maybe for you too. Three
years ago when God began to put this ministry on my heart, and as I shared it with the
church, there was no question in my mind what God wanted us to do. He gave very clear
direction. And as we look at things now, we can see how God has worked out the many
details along the way to bring us to where we are today. Even this week as I was talking
to Nola about what it was going to take for the day care to be self supporting, God again
reminded me that he started this, and He will finish it. Two days after that conversation
Nola calls me and tells me that one of the day care’s in town has shut down and we have
Six full time kids starting tomorrow morning! Can you say Praise the Lord?
Human wisdom and knowledge will not be adequate, but God’s wisdom and knowledge
are always adequate. Even when His will doesn’t make sense from your perspective, your
obedience will reveal that His will was right.
Not only do we need to Trust God’s Love, but we must also Trust God’s directions, even
if he doesn’t supply all the answers to our questions. Faith.
Do you know that God is all-knowing? If we know this then all we have to offer him is
our obedience.
The Third aspect of God’s Nature that we need to know is: God is All-Powerful, he can
enable you to accomplish His will.
He is omnipotent - that is, He is all powerful. He was able to create the world out of
nothing. He can accomplish anything He purposes to do. Listen to his words in Isaish
46:10-11 “ I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still
to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please. ISA 46:11 From the
east I summon a bird of prey; from a far-off land, a man to fulfill my purpose. What
I have said, that will I bring about; what I have planned, that will I do.”
If God ever asks you to do something, He Himself will enable you to do it. Listen to what
He has done in the past:
* God enabled Noah and his sons to build a huge boat that spared the lives of every animal
species during the great flood. (Gen. 6-9)
* God enabled Gideon and 300 men to defeat an army of 120,000 men. (Jud. 7-8)
* Christ Jesus enabled His twelve disciples to heal people and to cast out demons. (Mt.
10)
* God enabled Paul to carry the gospel to the Gentiles and establish churches throughout
Asia minor and all the way to Rome.
The truth is when your life is in the middle of God’s activity, He will start
rearranging alot of your thinking. Why? Because God’s ways and thoughts are so
different from yours and mine that they will often sound wrong, crazy, or impossible. The
fact is, when you recognize that the task is humanly impossible, you need to be ready to
believe God and trust Him completely.
How many times do we miss miracles because of our unbelief?
Don’t second guess Him. Just let Him be God. Turn to Him for the needed power,
insight, skill, and resources. He will provide you with all you need. Do you believe that
this morning?
As we begin to trust God and allow Him to work through our lives, God will begin to
make Himself known to us in a very simple way, just as he would a child. And as we
respond to him in a simple childlike trust, we will find a whole new way of looking at life,
it will begin to unfold for you. Your life will be fulfilling. You will never have a sense of
emptiness or lack of purpose. He always fills your life with Himself.
If we are to grow in our Christian life, we need to understand these three things about
God and His Nature.
* God is love. His will is always best.
* God is all-knowing. His directions are always right.
* God is all-powerful. He can enable you to accomplish His will.
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