TerryLema

The great promises we hold to will only be as great as the God in whom we believe.

 Paul tells us in his first letter to the Corinthians that no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.

He adds that while no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God, God has given us His Spirit to indwell us so that we may understand what God has freely given us. [1 Corinthians 2]

People make promises all the time … we’re in the middle of a political run for the presidency.  Promises abound.  Everyone has a promise … few of which will be kept.  By their very nature promises are based on the power and character of those making them.  Circumstances intervene. Situations evolve.  People change their minds.  And just like that the promises we’ve trusted are set aside by the very people who gave them to us.

Unfortunately, we can become a bit jaded because of so many un-kept promises.  We trust no one.  We believe nothing we read, and little of what we see and hear.  We might even carry that attitude into our relationship with God.  We apply the same doubt to the promises of God that we apply to the promises of man.

But God is not man that He should lie.  In fact, God cannot lie. And there are no circumstances, or situations that are powerful enough to overcome or tilt the slightest bit what God has promised.  God will not change His mind, He changes not.  The great promises that we hold to are every bit as great as the God in whom we believe!

Peter begins his second letter telling us that God has given us “everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.” [2 Peter 1:2]

That word for godliness is EUSEBEIA (yoo-seb’-i-ah); which simply means godliness or holiness. God has provided everything we need to live a holy life, a godly life.  Everything.  It’s all there.  Waiting … waiting for us to appropriate it.

I remember a story about John D. Rockefeller.  He saw a painting in a catalog that he really liked and wanted. He sent his assistants scouring the world to see who possessed it so that he could acquire it.  They found it in his own collection.  He possessed it all along and didn’t even know it.

Are we like that with the things of God?  Are we scouring around trying to find things we already possess?  God has given us everything.  That means He has held back nothing.  Do we need peace, comfort, strength, joy?  It’s already ours.  Do we need forgiveness, wisdom, provision, grace?  We have it.

 Peter ends his letter with one important admonition that we are to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”  [2 Peter 3:18]

Why the reminder to GROW in knowledge?  Because everything we need for life and godliness is given us THROUGH the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

The more we know of Jesus, the more we realize just what is in our storehouse.  We won’t be scurrying around trying to find something we already possess.  We’ll know what we have, and we’ll know how to appropriate and appreciate it!

The phrase, “what joy shall fill my heart” was running through my mind this morning and then I recognized where it comes from.  It is found in the final verse in a beloved old hymn, How Great Thou Art.

 When Christ shall come with shout of acclamation, and take me home, what joy shall fill my heart.  Then I shall bow in humble adoration, and proclaim, my God, how great thou art!

Have we lost some of our admiration of the greatness of our God?  Do we fail to see our God displayed in the universe, in the stars or rolling thunder as the song says?  Do we not hear Him any longer in the song of the birds or the rushing brooks or feel Him on the breezes? Have we become so jaded that we are no longer rendered breathless when we think about the cross?

There is another verse to that song that should leave us speechless with awe, overpowered by God’s abundant mercy and grace.

 And when I think that God, his Son not sparing, sent him to die, I scarce can take it in, that on the cross, my burden gladly bearing, He bled and died to take away my sin.

We must return to the greatness of God. We must come back to the cross where God’s Son was not spared.  We must be struck again by God’s majesty.  We must see ourselves in the light of God’s holiness.  We can no longer see our God the way the world sees Him, we must see Him as He is.

 Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee: How great thou art! How great thou art! Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee: How great thou art! How great thou art!

I was reading in Ecclesiastes yesterday.  The book opens with “’Vanity of vanities,’ says the Preacher; ‘Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.’”

The Preacher was Solomon, the richest of all kings who had everything and anything a person could want.  And when he looked it all over, when he experienced everything possible, to him it was all vanity, a thought which he repeats through the book.

Vanity, hebel, means emptiness, transitory and unsatisfactory.

There is one thought, however, that always intrigues me in Solomon’s discourse on vanity. It comes in Chapter 3:11, when Solomon says that God has set eternity in the hearts of men.

Paul also talks about that heartfelt longing for eternity. “For we know that if our temporary, earthly dwelling is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal dwelling in the heavens, not made with hands. Indeed, we groan in this body, desiring to put on our dwelling from heaven.” [2 Cor 5:1-2 HCSB]

Meanwhile we groan.  Boy, do we groan.  We groan when we face separations.  We groan when we face sin and its consequences.  We groan when we grow tired or sick or old or lonely or unsatisfied.  We groan, longing for heaven [our home], for the presence of God [our Father], and for our loved ones there.

God has placed a longing in our hearts for heaven (eternity) that cannot be filled by anything in this life.  There is something inside us that knows that our life in this world is not complete, not enough.

Deep within all of us is a knowledge that this is not our home.