Step Up to Speak Up 1- Who Is God?

Last Tuesday we spent some time mapping out some places in the Bible that we could take the people around us who don't know Jesus to explain the Gospel better. We want to help you to make use of God's Word in speaking to the people God has placed in your life, after all Romans 10: 17 says that, 'faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.' You can catch up on that first post here

Who is God? Too often we find it difficult to share Jesus with people around us by giving ourselves further to travel than we need to. We choose the wrong departure point and so take the the considerable risk of missing the point. If we start with someone or something other than God then it substantially reduces our capacity to direct people to God because we will likely find ourselves seeking to meet the person's felt needs rather than their faith need. the reality is that we cannot truly understand ourselves, our lives and our world without first examining them from a perspective that is massively focused on who God is, the One who created and sustains that very life.

C. S. Lewis once said that if you 'Aim at heaven you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.' So by changing the default question of 'who am I?' to 'who is God?' we serve our friends better by actually directing their focus towards where it needs to be and their faith towards the ONLY One who is faithful.

Good news for the weary
Often we will encounter people in a variety of circumstances but there mostly remains a degree of commonality which is a weariness with life, the world and having to keep it all together. For most of us we need the mercy of realising that our way of doing things isn't working because most of us have a degree of stubbornness which likes to exhaust every avenue of self-sufficiency before asking for help. Isaiah 40: 28-29 gives us a helpful launch pad into conversation in these cases which are generally most cases. 'Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength.'

Humbling news for the proud
People will readily protest that they realise that they are not God, but the functional reality of how they live their lives is something quite different. If people's engagement with the world is often restless then their disengagement with God is rebellion. There is a struggle going on in their hearts for who occupies the throne of their hearts. So here is the newsflash - He is God and you are not, I heard someone once say that God's plan A is humility, His plan B is humiliation- don't pick a fight with God on this. 1 Timothy 6: 15-16 describes God as: 'He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.'

Reality check for the stubborn
I think it was the movie Gladiator which had the line about 'what we do in life echoes in eternity' and while the themes and focus of that movie are not grounded in the message that we are shooting for - this life does hold eternal significance. The conclusions we draw about God now will determine the duration of our eternity, the investments we make in this life will determine what we inherit eternally. 'Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.' Galatians 6: 7-8

Foundation for the faithful
We contribute to our downfall all too often. We believe empty promises and build on false foundations. How about something that cannot be shaken? How would we respond to something or someone like that? Hebrews 12: 28-29 tells us- God deserves your gratitude and worship, sin is that you are reluctant or refusing to give Him either of those things that rightfully belong to Him and He will not be slow or sparing in dealing with that which opposes Him- 'Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.'

Light in the darkness
It will be evident in how we live our lives what we have to do with God. Fellowship is found in faithfulness and intimacy is demonstrated in the intergrity of how we walk with Him (and if we walk with Him). 1 John 1: 5-6 says that 'This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.' Ultimately the question 'who is God?' poses the further question of 'do I have fellowship with Him?' and/or 'how can I have fellowship with Him?'

We will continue to think through that next Tuesday.