Encouragement

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Your relationship with God is of paramount importance, and it should be growing and maturing. Your relationship with Him begins at the moment of your salvation, and matures through sanctification. Sanctification means to “set aside,” and it’s the process that through the tutoring of the Holy Spirit you are “set aside” for God’s use while you are on earth. Sanctification and the maturing of your relationship with God continue until He takes you home.

Nothing is magical about your relationship with Him, and it grows the same way your relationship with anyone grows, by learning about them. However, differences abound like God is eternal, while you are finite, and He is perfect with no needs, and you are imperfect with many needs. In addition, even though He is inside the framework of time, He is outside the boundaries of time, while you are also in the framework of time, but are bound by it. Then, too, you are human, a creation, while He is Spirit, and eternal.

Nevertheless, in His sovereignty, He provides ways for you to know Him, and one way is through the world He created. Many verses in the Bible reference God to His creation, but I have two favorites. The first, “For since the creation of the world His (Gods) invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse,” Ro. 1:20 NASB. Through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, Paul says the attributes of God are seen in the created world.

For example, when you look at flowers, grass, and trees and you might see God’s attribute of beauty. When you see a mountain you might see His majesty, or in storm clouds, tornado funnels, hurricanes, and earthquakes you might see His power. According to the verse, the ability to see Him in creation applies to everyone. No one has an excuse not to. (I want to make clear I am not promoting pantheism. Pantheism believes that nature is God, and God is nature. That is not true and the Bible makes it clear that God is a personal and creating God. What I am saying is that nature is like a painting. When you see a painting by Vincent van Gogh you see van Gogh in the painting through the brushstrokes, or the texture of the colors. The same is true of God and His creation, you see Him through it.

The second verse says, “Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow,” Jam 1:17 NASB. Yes, as “the Father of lights” He sees (knows) every gift He sends is good. However, in this context it also refers to His immutability. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever,” He 13:8 NASB. You behold God in the celestial lights because they do not change. Although it appears the sun moves across the sky it doesn’t. The sun remains stationary and the rotation of the earth makes it appear to move. The celestial lights never change only what is around them changes. You might ask, what about falling stars, is that not a change? No, because they were created to fall, and have always fallen in the six or seven thousand year history of the world, and will continue to fall until the end of times. Stars fall as part of God’s eternal plan.

You can compare your relationship with God to the celestial lights. Like them, your relationship with Him receives its sustaining light from Him. His light on you never changes and if it does it is because something moved. You might look in the mirror, because it is not God that moved.

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