Sunday, November 30, 2008

How Big is God ?



There is but one only living and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions, immutable, immense, eternal, ……..(Of God, and of the Holy Trinity -WCF Chapter II -I)

The God of the Bible is a big God. He is not contained by space, scripture is clear even “the heavens and the heaven of heavens cannot contain” Him (1Ki 8:27). God fills His entire creation, they cannot contain Him (Jer 23:23 - 24). It is important to keep in mind, God is immensely bigger than anything existing or what you can even imagine. This truth about the attributes of God offers great peace and comfort when we are seized with doubt or fear, we must remember that no one or anything is bigger than God. AMEN - God is BIG. God is near, never fear !

When God is near, who else but God do we need to fear ? If God stands on our side, do we need fear anything ? It gives great joy, peace and comfort to know that this immensely big God, Jehovah my God is near His people and hears the prayer of those who cry out to Him (1Ki 8:28-30). Scriptures says “And You shall listen to the cry of Your servant” and “and hear in Heaven Your dwelling-place, and when You hear, forgive!”.

Never Fear! He Is Near!
Never fear! He is near!
Look to no man, Care not what the world may plan;
Only trust in the Lord, All the way to Beulah Land.

不要怕只要信

不要怕,只要信,不要看人,不看环境与外面,

只要仰望耶稣,一路跟主到天家。

John Sung Choruses, trans. by Tow

1Ki 8:27 But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, the heavens and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You. How much less this house which I have built?

Jer 23:23 - 24 “Am I a God near, says Jehovah, and not a God afar off? Can anyone hide himself in secret places so that I shall not see him? says Jehovah. Do I not fill the heavens and earth? says Jehovah.”

1Ki 8:28 -30 Yet, O, Jehovah my God, You have turned toward the prayer of Your servant and to his request, to listen to the cry and to the prayer which Your servant prays before You today; for Your eyes to be open toward this house night and day, toward the place of which You have said, My name shall be there; to listen to the prayer which Your servant shall pray toward this place. And You shall listen to the cry of Your servant, and of Your people Israel, when they shall pray toward this place, and hear in Heaven Your dwelling-place, and when You hear, forgive!

Sunday, November 9, 2008

An Unchangeable God


There is but one only living and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions, immutable,.. ……..(Of God, and of the Holy Trinity -WCF Chapter II -I)









Our God is immutable. God is not capable of or susceptible to change. He is an unchangeable God. He does not change. Mal 3:6 “For I the LORD do not change;…”.

While everything else change around us, God remains the same. Everything around us can fall apart, God is still the same. When our bodies grow weak with age and sick with pain, we look to our unchanging God who has promised sufficient grace to meet our every need. There is real peace and joy that God does not change what He has promised. What a comfort that our unchanging God is on our side.

Jas 1:17 “.. the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”
Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father;
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not;
As Thou hast been, Thou forever will be.”

Friday, November 7, 2008

There is but one only living and true God


There is but one only living and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, …… (Of God, and of the Holy Trinity -WCF Chapter II -I)

Oh God, as finite creatures, it is our desire to know you and to know your attributes. We look into your Word, for your Word declare who you are: there is but one only living and true God. We worship thee, the only living and true God who is perfect and infinite.


Deu 6:4 “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.

1Co 8:6 “there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.”

1 Th 1:9 ” the living and true God

Jer 10:10 But the LORD is the true God; he is the living God and the everlasting King.

1Ti 1:17 To the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

Job 11:7 -9 “Can you find out the deep things of God? Can you find out the limit of the Almighty? It is higher than heaven–what can you do? Deeper than Sheol–what can you know? Its measure is longer than the earth and broader than the sea.”

Joh 4:24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Act 14:15 “a living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them.”

Thursday, November 6, 2008

“So Send I You” Missionary Hymn of the Twentieth Century


So Send I You

So send I you to labor unrewarded,
To serve unpaid, unloved, unsought, unknown,
To bear rebuke, to suffer scorn and scoffing-
So send I you to toil for Me alone.

So send I you to bind the bruised and broken,
O’er wand’ring souls to work, to weep, to wake,
To bear the burdens of a world aweary-
So send I you to suffer for My sake.

So send I you to loneliness and longing,
With heart ahung’ring for the loved and known,
Forsaking home and kindred, friend and dear one-
So send I you to know My love alone.

So send I you to leave your life’s ambition,
To die to dear desire, self-will resign,
To labor long, and love where men revile you-
So send I you to lose your life in Mine.

So send I you to hearts made hard by hatred,
To eyes made blind because they will not see,
To spend, tho’ it be blood, to spend and spare not-
So send I you to taste of Calvary.

History

This hymn, So Send I You, has been called the greatest missionary hymn of the twentieth century. The hymn has been labelled by many evangelical leaders as the finest missionary hymn of the twentieth century. It was first published in 1954 after having been written sixteen years earlier by a Canadian school teacher, Margaret Clarkson.

“Margaret Clarkson, who was born in 1915, was a teacher in a gold-mining camp in northern Ontario, Canada. It was a lonely life for this woman, but she also knew that this is where God wanted her to serve Him. She had a great desire to be a missionary on a foreign field but because of her health was unable to go. One day she was reading again the verse John 20:21, “Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.” While meditating on this verse she wrote the words to a hymn that has become a favorite during missionary conferences, “So Send I You.”

“In 1935 teaching jobs were so scarce that I had to take my first job as a teacher in a lumber camp some 1400 miles from home, out in the Rainy River District of northwestern Ontario. From there I moved to the gold mining camp of Kirkland Lake, 450 miles north of Toronto. In all, I spent seven years in the north. I experienced loneliness of every kind; mental, cultural, but particularly spiritual, for in all of those seven yeaars I never found real Christian fellowship - churches were modern and born-again Christians almost non-existent.

I was studying the Word one night and meditating on the loneliness of my situation and came in my reading to John 20, and the words ‘So send I you’. Because of a physical disability I knew that I could never go to the mission field, but God seemed to tell me that night that this was my mission field, and this was where He had sent me. I was then twenty-hree, in my third year of teaching. I had written and published verse all of my life, so it was natural to put my thoughts into verse.”

Sources:

http://www.cyberhymnal.org/bio/c/l/a/clarkson_m.htm

http://songsandhymns.org/people/detail/e.margaret-clarkson

http://www.wheaton.edu/learnres/ARCSC/exhibits/clarkson/