Munising Baptist Church

Thoughts on God

Thoughts About God

"Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened." — Romans 1:21

"Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, And prudent in their own sight!" — Isaiah 5:20-21

1. "Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable." — G.K. Chesterton
2. "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." — Winston Churchill
3. "One reason God created time was so that there would be a place to bury the failures of the past."
4. "The real attitude of sin in the heart towards God is that of being without God; it is pride, the worship of myself, that is the great atheistic fact in human life." — Oswald Chambers
5. "Of all created comforts, God is the lender; you are the borrower, not the owner" — Samuel Rutherford
6. "God makes three requests of his children:
   Do the best you can, where you are, with what you have, now" — Unknown
7. "God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons we could not learn in any other way. The way we learn those lessons is not to deny the feelings but to find the meanings underlying them." — Stanley Lindquist
8. "Your mind works very simply: you are either trying to find out what are God's laws in order to follow them; or you are trying to outsmart Him." — Martin H. Fischer
9. "How idle it is to call certain things God-sends! as if there was anything else in the world." — Augustus William Hare
10. "It is easy to understand God as long as you don't try to explain Him." — Joseph Joubert

God's Glory

"A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell." — C. S. Lewis

God is the Great I AM

"I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine." — John 10:11 & 14

God's Sovereignty

"And he goeth up into a mountain, and calleth unto him whom he would: and they came unto him." — Mark 3:13

1. "Although the sovereignty of God is universal and absolute, it is not the sovereignty of blind power. It is coupled with infinite wisdom, holiness, and love. And this doctrine, when properly understood, is a most comforting and reassuring one. Who would not prefer to have his affairs in the hands of a God of infinite power, wisdom, holiness and love, rather than to have them left to fate, or chance, or irrevocable natural law, or to short-sighted and perverted self?" — Loraine Boettner
2. "God's love does not depend upon me. Looking at that love of God as manifest in the cross of Jesus Christ, I am assured of my redemption. Considering that love is always the same and never changes I am assured of my Preservation unto glory. That is my comfort. It is a comfort grounded in the Almighty Sovereign God." — Robert Decker
3. "It respects the events of ordinary providence. It is God who gives rain upon the earth, and sends water upon the fields. He makes His sun to rise upon the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust." — Murray
   [ "Who giveth rain upon the earth, and sendeth waters upon the fields" (Job 5:10) ]
4. The sovereignty of God is founded upon the self-sufficiency of God. Not only is He self-existent but He is to Himself sufficient. He does not need any created existence to complete His perfection and blessedness.
   [ "It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe." (I Corinthians 1:21) ]
5. The sovereignty of God is also founded upon the self-existence of God. Since God is one and there is none else besides Him, He does not owe His existence to any other.
   [ "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God." (Psalm 90:2) ]
6. "Sovereignty is founded upon the oneness or Unity of God." — Murray
   [ "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord" (Deuteronomy 6:4) ]
7. "Woe to him who strives with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth! Shall the clay say to him who forms it, 'What are you making?' Or shall your handiwork say, 'He has no hands?'" — Isaiah 45:9
8. "God has every right to deal with man however He wants, because He created man in the first place. Since He created mankind and everything else, He alone is worthy to rule and decide what will take place." — Unknown
9. "God is the supreme authority. He is not subject to any power or law which could be conceived as superior to or other than Himself. Sovereign refers to a king who has authority over a certain land or group of people. God's sovereignty is over all the earth and all creation, as He created all things." — Unknown
10. "Impatient spirits may fret and fume, because they are not called to the highest places in the ministry; but reader be it thine to rejoice that Jesus calleth whom He wills." — Spurgeon

God's Mercy

"and (we) were by nature by nature children of wrath ... But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ" — Ephesians 2:2-5 [NKJV]

1. God's Mercy is Vast and Amazing: "although I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man; but I obtained mercy" — I Timothy 1:13
2. Mercy is not getting what you do deserve/withheld punishment
3. Mercy is like a judge finding you guilty, but then withholding any punishment
4. Mercy, in the sense we mean, is vast but limited, and will end in either:
   1. Repentance leading to salvation by grace, or
   2. Stored-up wrath and eternal punishment
5. In the meantime, God is calling us out of mercy and into obedience. Eventually it dawns on all of us that we cannot "get away with" unrepentant sin. It's as if God gradually withdraws his mercy after we have come to a knowledge of the truth. God's mercy has served it's purpose, now it is time for obedience.
6. "It is God's Divine Mercy that saves us — or rather, the Lord's compassionate, forgiving LOVE which daily lifts our lives into the light of freedom...the light of good will and the wisdom of what is good and true...which gives us the power to choose for Christ." — Rev. Kit Billings
7. Charles Finney on God's Mercy:
   1. "Mercy is a disposition to pardon the guilty."
   2. "Trust in mercy always implies that we have no hope on the score of justice. If we had anything to expect from justice, we should not look to mercy."
   3. "Trusting in mercy always implies a deep, heartfelt conviction of personal guilt... We never trust in mercy till we really understand what it is--pardon for the crimes of the guilty"
   4. "Trusting in mercy implies a cessation from all excuses and excuse-making. The moment you trust in mercy, you give up all apologies and excuses at once and entirely."
8. "God supplies inexhaustible mercy. Our need for mercy can never exhaust God's ability to provide mercy. When I repent, my sins are destroyed by God's mercy. When I repent, none of my sins are bigger than God's mercy." — David Chadwell
9. "We should remember that Ishmael was still cared for by God (Gen 16:10-14; 17:20; 21:13), and that God still desired that mercy be extended towards Esau's descendants (Deut 23:7), even though God hated Esau's rejection of His blessings (Mal 1:2-4; Rom 9:13)." — Paul Brydson
10. "In mercy, God comes to man who is miserable and obnoxious." — Paul Mizzi