LIFE IS LIKE A BREATH

Psalm 144:4  "Man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow." 

The past few days the shortness of life has filled a lot of my thinking.  Two dear godly friends of mine quietly flew away to Heaven yesterday.  Both of them had vibrant lives with loving families and solid purpose to life; serving God and serving other people (not serving themselves).  Neither of them had a bit of fear concerning eternity because of the confidence they had in Christ having paid the price to make them pure and holy before God.  

I greatly admire these two well lived lives and feel strongly challenged to reconsider the content of my days.  What better life could there be than to live every day wholeheartedly for God and other people.  "Only one life; it will soon be past.  Only what is done for Christ will last."  God bless the aching hearts of the families of Harold Hayes and Randy Van Hecke.

THURSDAY MORNING BIBLE STUDY LADIES:  Because I need to be with my husband and the Hayes family for the graveside service for Harold Hayes this Thursday morning we are going to delay our last Bible study time for 2 weeks.  Please note that we will meet on Thursday April 26th for a potluck brunch and last study on the attributes of God.  Thank you for being flexible with me.

GOD'S FAITHFULNESS--OUR CONFIDENCE

Understanding the faithfulness in connection with all His other qualities brings peace to a life that cannot be understood by the common person.  AW Tozer gives us some great thoughts concerning God's faithfulness.

"You can live on froth and bubbles and little wisps of badly understood theology--until the pressure in on.  And when the pressure is on, you'll want to know what kind of God you're serving."

"This is the kind of God you'r serving:  All that God says or does must accord with all of His attributes, including His attribute of faithfulness.  Every thought that God thinks, every word that God speaks, every act of God must accord with His faithfulness, wisdom, goodness, justice, holiness, love, truth and all His other attributes."

"If we magnify one attribute to the diminishing of another, we have an asymmetrical concept of God, a lopsided God--that is, He is lopsided as we see Him." The Attributes of God-Volume 2

Psalm 89:1-2  I will sing of the steadfast love of the LORD, forever; with my mouth I will make known your faithfulness to all generations.  (2)  For I said, "Steadfast love will be built up forever; in the heavens you will establish your faithfulness."

Yes, this Thursday we will be meeting to discuss God's faithfulness.  Plan to join us.  We have just one more week after this when we will be studying God's love.

GOD'S SOVEREIGNTY AND MY CHOICES

God's sovereignty presents a topic of hot debate within and outside of Christian circles.  This Thursday we will put our minds and souls to work trying to understand what sovereignty looks like from a Biblical perspective. GotQuestions.org gave the following as part of their explanation of this quality of God.

"The fact that God is sovereign essentially means that He has the power, wisdom, and authority to do anything He chooses within His creation. Whether or not He actually exerts that level of control in any given circumstance is actually a completely different question. Often, the concept of divine sovereignty is oversimplified. We tend to assume that, if God is not directly, overtly, purposefully driving some event, then He is somehow not sovereign. The cartoon version of sovereignty depicts a God who must do anything that He can do, or else He is not truly sovereign.

Of course, such a cartoonish view of God’s sovereignty is logically false. If a man were to put an ant in a bowl, the “sovereignty” of the man over the ant is not in doubt. The ant may try to crawl out, and the man may not want this to happen. But the man is not forced to crush the ant, drown it, or pick it up. The man, for reasons of his own, may choose to let the ant crawl away, but the man is still in control. There is a difference between allowing the ant to leave the bowl and helplessly watching as it escapes. The cartoon version of God’s sovereignty implies that, if the man is not actively holding the ant inside the bowl, then he must be unable to keep it in there at all."

See you on Thursday as we deepen our understanding of this amazing attribute of God.