GOD
A man’s concept of God creates his attitude toward the hour in which he lives.
—G. Campbell Morgan
A young Jewish girl in the Warsaw ghetto managed to escape over the wall and hide in a cave. She died there shortly before the Allied Army broke out the ghetto. Before she died, she had scratched on the wall three things. First she wrote, “I believe in the sun, even though it is not shining.” The second thing she wrote was, “I believe in love, even when feeling it or not.” The third thing she wrote was, “I believe in God, even when He is silent.”
—Gerald Kennedy
Immortal, invisible, God only wise
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days
Almighty, victorious, Thy great name we praise.
Great Father of glory, pure Father of light,
Thine angels adore thee, all veiling their sight;
All praise we would render, O help us to see
’Tis only the splendor of light hideth thee.
—Walter Chalmers Smith
Through the ages people have peered into the darkness, listened in the stillness, looked into the cold, silent depths of space and come away with a heterogeneous collection of definitions of the “something” they think is “out there.” Aristotle called it “The Unmoved Mover.” Spencer said, “Eternal Energy,” Huxley said, “The Unknown Absolute.” Liberal theology speaks of “Ultimate Reality” and “Ground of Being,” while others talk about “First Principle,” “Cosmic Organism,” “Life Force,” “Sum Total of Accumulated Idealism.”
A woman didn’t know what to do about her two incorrigible boys. A neighbor said she had a boy like that and she took him to her parish priest. The mother of the two said, “I’m not Catholic but I’ll try anything.”
One boy was taken to the priest and the priest said, “Where is God?”
The boy answered nothing.
Again the priest said, “Where is God?”
Still the boy said nothing.
And so for the third time the priest asked the same question.
Then the boy ran out and said to his brother, “Let’s get out of here. They’ve lost God and they’re pinning it on me.”
A recent newsletter included this essay, written by eight-year-old Danny Dutton. The boy’s third-grade teacher asked her students to explain “God,” prompting this essay.
“One of God’s main jobs is making people. He makes these to put in the place of the ones that die so there will be enough people to take care of things here on earth. He doesn’t make grown-ups, just babies. I think because they are smaller and easier to make. That way He doesn’t have to take up His valuable time teaching them to walk and talk. He can just leave that up to the mothers and fathers. I think it works out pretty good.
“God’s second most important job is listening to prayers. An awful lot of this goes on, as some people, like preachers and things, pray other times besides bedtime, and Grandpa and Grandma Dutton pray every time they eat (except for snacks). God doesn’t have time to listen to the radio or TV on account of this. As He hears everything, not only prayers, there must be a terrible lot of noise going on in His ears unless He has thought of a way to turn it off. I think we should all be a little quieter. God sees everything and hears everything and is everywhere. Which keeps Him pretty busy. So you shouldn’t go wasting His time asking for things that aren’t important or go way over your parents’ heads and ask for something they said you couldn’t have.”
The richest man in the world, Croesus, once asked the wisest man in the world, Thales, What is God? The philosopher asked for a day in which to deliberate, and then for another and another and another—and at length confessed that he was not able to answer. He said that the longer he deliberated, the more difficult it was for him to frame an answer.
The fiery Tertullian, the early church father, eagerly seized on this incident and said it was an example of the world’s ignorance of God outside of Christ. “There,” he exclaimed, “is the wisest man in the world, and he cannot tell you who God is. But the most ignorant mechanic among the Christians knows God and is able to make Him known to others.”
—Paul Lee Tan
A Scottish college principal, John Cairns, told of a confirmed law-breaker who was often arrested by the police. The one redeeming feature of his dissolute life was love for his little girl, who was the image of his dead mother. Once, having committed burglary, he was sentenced to a long term in prison. During his imprisonment his little girl died. On the day he was released from prison he learned of her death. The blow shattered him. He was broken. He could not bring himself even to visit the home from which she had been taken. Suicide seemed the only escape. So he resolved to throw himself off one of the bridges of the Scottish capital. At midnight he stood on the parapet. He found himself climbing it. For no reason he could explain, as he said later, there flashed into his mind the words of the creed: “I believe in God the Father Almighty.” He repeated it. He knew nothing of God, but he did know something of fatherhood. “Why,” he said, “if that is what God is, if God is like that then I can trust him with my lassie—and myself.” Death receded, life began anew.
—David A. MacLennan
Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfolded.
—J. I. Packer
Seek the face of God and you will
Strengthen your faith in God.
If man is not made for God,
why is he only happy in God?
If man is made for God,
why is he so opposed to God?
—Blaise Pascal
GOD—EXISTENCE OF
One evening as Napoleon Bonaparte was returning to France from an expedition to Egypt, a group of his officers began discussing the existence of God. Thoroughly caught up in the atheistic spirit of the times, the officers were unanimous in their denial of God’s existence. Finally, someone suggested they ask Napoleon, who was standing alone on the deck of their vessel. On hearing the question, “Is there a God?” he raised his hand and pointed to the starry sky, and simply asked, “Gentlemen, who made all that?”
GOD—FAITHFULNESS OF
In the greatest difficulties, in the heaviest trials, in the deepest poverty and necessities, God has never failed me: the financial balance for the entire Inland China Mission yesterday was twenty-five cents. Praise the Lord! Twenty-five cents … plus all the promises of God.
—J. Hudson Taylor
How many folks estimate difficulties in the light of their own resources and then attempt little and often fail in the little they attempt. All God’s giants have been weak men and women who did great things for God because they counted on His faithfulness.
—J. Hudson Taylor
GOD—FELLOWSHIP WITH
A little boy, whose father was away from home most of the time, looked at his dad’s picture on the wall and said to his mother, “Mother, I wish Father would come out of that frame.”
Is God real to you, a Person near at hand? Or is He more like a picture on the wall, a motto, a doctrine, or something wonderful to look at and think about, but still in a frame?
Have you wished He might come out of the frame, become a glorious living reality? Have you cried, “Oh, that I know where I might find Him?”
—Vance Havner
GOD—GLORY OF
The glory of God is all His attributes added together and raised to the nth degree.
—Lewis Sperry Chafer
GOD—GOODNESS OF
Charles Simeon, rector of Holy Trinity Church in Cambridge, England, for fifty-four years (1782–1836), had a profound effect on the students of the university. Among those converted through Simeon’s ministry, for example, was Henry Martyn, pioneer missionary to India.
Students were invited to the rector’s house for tea and were encouraged to question him concerning spiritual truth. Once he was asked, “How do you maintain a close walk with God?” This was his reply: “By constantly meditating on the goodness of God and on our great deliverance from that punishment which our sins deserve. Keeping both of these in mind, we shall find ourselves advancing on our course; we shall feel the presence of God; we shall experience His love; we shall live in the enjoyment of His favor and in the hope of His grace. Meditation is the grand means of our growth and grace.”
—Edward H. Morgan
About a century ago a missionary named Allen Gardiner had an accident and was drowned. When his body was found near his overturned boat along the seashore, his diary was also discovered. It told over and over again of hunger, privation, persecution, and suffering he had experienced. And yet the very last entry in the book was this: “I am overwhelmed with a sense of the goodness of God!”
GOD—GREATNESS OF
God created a universe so large that it would take a person between 200 and 500 billion years to travel around the universe at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second). He created the world out of atoms so small that it would take the whole population of the world 180 million years to count the atoms in a cup of water, counting at one per second. If you were in a bit of a hurry you could count at two per second and only take 90 million years.
Collins, the “Freethinker,” once met a plain countryman going to church. He asked him where he was going. “To church to worship God.” “Is your God a great or a little God?” “He is both, Sir.” “How can He be both?” “He is so great, Sir, that the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him; and so little that He can dwell in my heart.” Collins was so struck, that he afterwards declared that the simple answer of the countryman had produced a greater effect on his mind than all the columns the learned doctors had written against Him.
GOD—HIS CARE
If you take care of the things that are dear to God, He will take care of the things that are dear to you.
—Howard Taylor
GOD—HIS KEEPING
God will “keep” you as the apple of His eye (Ps. 17:8).
He will “keep” you in all your ways (Ps. 91:11).
He will “keep” that which you have committed to Him against that day (2 Tim. 1:12).
He will “keep” you as a shepherd cares for his flock of sheep (Jer. 31:10).
He will “keep” you in perfect peace (Isa. 26:3).
He will “keep” you from the hour of temptation and support you in the time of trial (1 Cor. 10:13).
He will “keep” you from falling (Jude 24).
GOD—HUMOR OF
Dear God, we make You so solemn,
So stiff and old and staid—
How can we be so stupid
When we look at the things You have made?
How can we miss the twinkle
That must have been in Your eye
When you planned the hippopoto
And the rhinoceri?
Who watches an ostrich swallow,
Then doubts that You like to play,
Or questions Your sense of humor
Hearing a donkey bray?
Could the God who made the monkey
Have forgotten how to laugh—
Or the One who striped the zebra
And stretched out the giraffe?
How could an oldish person
Fashion a pelican—
Or a perfectly sober Creator
Ever imagine man?
—Helen Salsbury
GOD—IGNORANCE OF
A Christian was visiting the home of devout Muslims. He watched as a woman went through the ritual of washing her face, hands, and feet before praying. Then, facing Mecca, she bowed repeatedly on her little grass mat. Her lips moved continuously. When she finished, the guest asked her the meaning of her prayers. She replied, “I really don’t know.”
Although she had disciplined herself to pray five times a day, she was merely repeating words she had learned as a child. And they were in a language she didn’t understand. Sad to say, she was not conscious of having any contact with God.
—Our Daily Bread
GOD—IMMUTABILITY OF
A Roman Catholic said, “When the Lord comes back, He’ll unite Himself with His church.”
A Presbyterian said, “He’ll agree with the Reformed position.”
A Methodist responded, “He’ll accept the Wesleyan position.”
A Southern Baptist thought for a while and then affirmed, “Gentlemen, I don’t think He’ll change at all.”
GOD—KNOWLEDGE OF
He truly knows God perfectly who finds Him incomprehensible and unable to be known.
—Richard Rolle
An impersonal knowledge of God is like the tail feathers of a peacock—highly ornamental, but not much use in a high wind.
—Arnold Prater
Get me a man who is restfully intimate with the Lord and you have a man whose force is tremendous.
—John Henry Jowett
The great need now is for people who know God by something more than hearsay.
There is a great deal about God that we cannot understand. Who can understand the Trinity? John Wesley very appropriately said, “Bring me a worm that can comprehend a man, and then I will show you a man who can comprehend the Triune God!”
GOD—LOVE FOR
When I love God more than I love my earthly dearest, then I shall love my earthly dearest more than I do now.
—C. S. Lewis
GOD—LOVE OF
The love of God toward you is like the Amazon River flowing down to water a single daisy.
—F. B. Meyer
Someone asked Leith Anderson, “If you could say one sentence to a secular audience, what would you say?” He answered, “You matter to God.”
It matters to Him about you.
—George Mueller
The Christian life is like the dial of a clock. The hands are God’s hands, passing over and over again—the short hands of discipline and the long hand of mercy. Slowly and surely the hand of discipline must pass, and God speaks at each stroke. But over and over passes the hand of mercy, showering down a twelvefold blessing for each stroke of the discipline and trial. But hands are fastened to one secure pivot: the great unchanging heart of our God of love.
When Charles H. Spurgeon, Britain’s famed Baptist preacher of the nineteenth century, was walking along a country lane with a friend one day he noticed a weather vane which was topped by the words “God Is Love.” Spurgeon remarked to his companion that he thought a weather vane an inappropriate medium for such a message, since weather vanes are changeable and God’s love is constant.
“I don’t agree with you, Charles,” his friend replied. “You misconstrue the meaning. What that weather vane is telling us is that whichever way the wind blows, God is love.”
—E. Schuyler English
One day, a father wanted to teach his little boy about God’s love. Taking him to the top of a high hill, he pointed in all the directions of the compass. Then, sweeping his arm around the whole encircling horizon, he exclaimed, “Johnny, my boy, God’s love is as big as all that.” “Why, Father,” the child replied with sparkling eyes, “then we must be right in the middle of it!” How true!
Isn’t it odd
that a being like God
who sees the facade
still loves the clod
He made out of sod?
Now isn’t that odd?
GOD—OMNIPOTENCE OF
The greatest single distinguishing feature of the omnipotence of God is that our imagination gets lost when thinking about it.
—Blaise Pascal
GOD—OMNIPRESENCE OF
An eccentric professor, thinking to have some fun with a small boy who was reading a Sunday school paper, said to him, “Tell me, my good boy, where God is, and I will give you an apple.”
The boy quickly looked up at the man and replied, “I will give you a whole barrel of apples if you tell me where He is not.”
GOD—OMNISCIENCE OF
Students were taking apples from the cafeteria to their room. Someone put up a sign, “Please take only one apple. God is watching you.” Someone else put up a sign by the cookies: “Take all the cookies you want. God is watching the apples.”
Shih Huang-ti, one-time emperor of China, claimed to have eighty thousand eyes. For along the Great Wall of China were forty thousand watchtowers and every day and night a sentinel was posted at each one of them to guard the safety of China. This is said to have been “the greatest example of vigilance ever known to the world.”
Emperor Shih’s vigilance was at best only human watchfulness. It lasted but a short time, gazed in one direction only, looked for one thing alone and was imperiled by darkness, corruption, and carelessness. There is a greater vigilance than Shih’s, as remarkable as that was—the watchfulness of Almighty God.
GOD—POWER OF
Niccolo Paganini began to play his violin and one string popped. The people giggled a bit, and then he began to play again and the second string broke. The same thing happened and the third string broke. Then all was silent as Paganini raised his hand to speak. He spoke and said, “Just one string and Paganini.” And on that one string he played some of the most beautiful music ever to be heard. Yes, just you and God!
GOD—PRESENCE OF
The passengers on the train were uneasy as they sped along through the dark, stormy night. The lightning was flashing, black clouds were rolling, and the train was traveling fast. The fear and tension among the passengers was evident.
One little fellow, however, sitting all by himself, seemed utterly unaware of the storm or the speed of the train. He was amusing himself with a few toys.
One of the passengers spoke to him. “Sonny, I see you are alone on the train. Aren’t you afraid to travel alone on such a stormy night?”
The lad looked up with a smile and answered, “No, ma’am, I ain’t afraid. My daddy’s the engineer.”
GOD—PROVIDENCE OF
A man was questioning God’s arrangement of the universe. He said, “Why does God make a big tree with small nuts, and a small plant with large watermelons. It doesn’t make sense.”
Just then a nut fell out of the tree and hit him on the head. He said, “Thank God that wasn’t a watermelon.”
The longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that God governs in the affairs of men.
—Benjamin Franklin
Providence is God acting anonymously.
—Paul Harvey
GOD—PROVISION OF
Charles H. Spurgeon loved to tell stories about his grandfather, a minister, who was very poor. The one cow he owned had died, and his ten children were without milk. His wife asked, “What will we do now?” “I cannot tell,” he said, “but I know what God will do. We must have milk for the children and He will provide for us.”
The next morning a man brought Spurgeon’s grandfather a gift of twenty pounds from the ministers’ relief fund, even though help had not been requested. A few days before, the relief committee had divided the funds for distribution and an amount of five pounds was left over. One of the members said, “There is poor Mr. Spurgeon down in Essex. Suppose we send it to him.” “We’d better make it ten,” said the chairman, “and I’ll give another five.” That made it fifteen. Another man added five more pounds. Those men knew nothing about Spurgeon’s cow, but God knew.
While two Wycliffe translators were making a language survey out in a remote area, their car broke down eighty miles from the nearest mechanic. A helpful stranger offered to tow them the entire distance at no charge, but the tow rope wasn’t strong enough.
Halted for the umpteenth time because the rope had finally broken so many times it couldn’t be tied anymore, they saw, lying in the roadside bushes, a stronger rope. When they’d literally “come to the end of their rope,” there was God with a better one!
GOD—SOVEREIGNTY OF
H. G. Wells, the English writer, once visited the home of his friend Henry James, the American novelist. He noticed a large stuffed bird in the drawing room.
“What is that?” asked Wells.
“That is a stork,” replied James.
“Humph,” snorted Wells. “That’s not my idea of a stork.”
“Perhaps not,” James replied, “but apparently it was God’s idea.”
Before Jehovah’s awesome throne
Ye nations, bow with sacred joy;
Know that the Lord is God alone;
He can create; and He can destroy.
—Isaac Watts
God must reserve for Himself the right of the initiative, the right to break into my life without question or explanation. That shattering phone call, that disturbing letter may indeed be the first stage of God’s interruption in my life.… Since God does the initiating, He must be responsible for the consequences.
—W. Glyn Evans
God’s time is the best time.
—T. J. Bach
GOD—SUFFICIENCY OF
His grace is sufficient.
Then why I need fear,
Though the testing be hard,
And the trial severe?
He tempers each wind
That upon me doth blow,
And tenderly whispers,
“Thy Father doth know!”
His pow’r is sufficient.
Then why should I quail,
Though the storm clouds hang low,
And though wild is the gale?
His strength will not falter,
Whatever betide,
And safe on His bosom
He bids me to hide.
His love is sufficient—
Yea boundless and free;
As high as the mountains,
As deep as the sea.
Ah, there I will rest
Till the darkness is o’er,
And wake in His likeness
To dwell evermore.
—Avis Burgeson Christiansen
When you have nothing left but God you become aware that He is enough.
GOD—TRINITY
Augustine was once walking by the seashore pondering the doctrine of the Trinity. He came upon a little boy who was dipping water from the ocean with a shell and pouring the water into a hole in the sand.
“What are you doing?” Augustine asked the child.
“I’m going to put the ocean in this hole,” the boy replied.
Augustine went his way. But, he confided to his friends later that he was struck with this thought: “And art thou doing the like in thinking to comprehend the depths of God in the limits of thy finite mind?”
If you try to understand the Trinity, you will lose your mind. But if you deny the Trinity, you will lose your soul.
—Wilbur Smith
GOD—WISDOM OF
Your heavenly Father is too good to be unkind, and too wise to make mistakes.
GOD—WORSHIP OF
Whatever power such a being may have over me, there is one thing which he shall not do; he shall not compel me to worship him … and if such a being can sentence me to hell for not—to hell I will go!
—J. S. Mills
GOD—WRATH OF
Bumper sticker: “God is back, and boy, is He mad.”
A lot of people attend who can’t conceive of a God who would ever punish anybody. They say that wouldn’t be loving. They need to understand God’s holiness. So I’ve used the old illustration, “If I backed into the door of your new car in the parking lot after the service, and we went to court and the judge said, ‘That’s no problem; Bill didn’t mean it,’ you’d be up in arms. You’d want justice.
“If you went to a Cubs game, and Sutcliffe threw a strike down the middle of the plate, and the ump said, ‘Ball four,’ and walked in a run, you’d be out there arguing furiously with the ump, because you want justice.”
A person hears that and says, “I guess you’re right. I wouldn’t want a God who wasn’t just.”
Then I can go on to say, “Now before you say, ‘Rah, rah, for a just God,’ let me tell you some of the implications. That means He metes out justice to you.”
The wrath of God is like great waters that are dammed for the present. They increase more and more and rise higher till an outlet is given. The longer the stream is stopped, the more rapid and mighty is its course when once it is let loose.
—Jonathan Edwards