The Timeless One

"... Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God"  (Psalm 90:2, NASB).  
"Do you not know?  Have you not heard?  The Lord is the everlasting God..." (Isaiah 40:28, ESV).
"For thus says the high and lofty One
  who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy;
'I dwell in the high and holy place [outside the time/space continuum]"  (Isaiah 57:15, RSV).
"[W]ho has saved us and called us to a holy life--not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace.  This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time"  (2 Tim. 1:9, NIV).

Most people don't know that time actually began!  Before there was a cosmos, there was no time--it was not of the essence!  "[G]od ... promised before time began"  (Titus 1:2, HCSB, emphasis added).

To our disadvantage, we are confined to time to comprehend things because we fit into the four dimensions that it included; whereas God created time and is timeless; from everlasting to everlasting He is God, according to Psalm 90:1.  Scientists have determined that if there were no space or matter, there would be no time.  What we can infer is that they were all created ex nihilo or out of nothing by the command of God simultaneously, since time is merely a corollary of space and matter.  If God created time, he cannot be defined in terms of it and is independent of it, and cannot be confined to it as we are.

God lives in more dimensions than we do and ones we cannot fathom.  When we say God is timeless, it means He doesn't age nor change--He is immutable!  Everything that begins to exist has a cause according to the ancient Greeks, and since God didn't begin to exist, He has no cause--He's not an effect, which means He owes His existence to no one or nothing.  God is not an effect since He had no beginning! Therefore, He must be self-existent and is who He is.  We don't know what God was doing before creation--some say He was creating hell for curious souls!  

But Jesus is the "Alpha and Omega," who always is, always was, and always shall be; the One "who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty" (cf. Rev. 1:8), having no beginning and no end.  He is called the eternal "I Am" in Scripture and this is not an Is-ness or state of being, but an Is-ing, a living Being (the Is-ing One), that is independent of all other life.

What God did was create a place in our heart to long for eternity--He set eternity in our hearts according to Eccl. 3:11.   When God is not defined in terms of time, it means He's timeless and will never grow old, become obsolete, nor become weary due to age.   If God created time, then, He has the right to manipulate it according to His will and to step outside it and to see all of it in one big spectrum or perspective.  To Him, a day is as a thousand years (He can accomplish as much as He wants in any given moment), and a thousand years is as a day (He can speed it up to His desires).

In summation, we can see how man cannot fathom God's limits nor understand eternity since the finite cannot grasp the infinite, as the Greeks said.  We are limited no matter how we approach the equation of God.  "Canst thou by searching find out God?" (Cf. Job 11:7).  You cannot put Him into a box or equation!  Jesus Himself pronounced:  "... Before Abraham was, I Am [already existed as the eternal One]"  (cf. John 8:58).  God created the time/space continuum and is able to manipulate after His will.   Soli Deo Gloria!

Limiting God

When you emphasize just one attribute of God or try to define Him to fit your agenda or project, you are limiting God or putting Him in a box. Martin Luther told Erasmus of Rotterdam that his "thoughts of God were too human."  In J. B. Phillips' book, Your God Is Too Small, the author expounds upon this theme. We will never fully apprehend God nor understand Him enough to peg Him, say we can second-guess Him, or have Him all figured out--He is beyond our analysis and cannot be defined by any human power of reason--God cannot be rationalized either. Throughout all eternity we will ever be learning more of Him and only be scratching the surface.  Fathom this:  God is perfect!

Common ways people limit God are saying things like God cannot forgive someone taking their life; God cannot meet my needs; my problems are too big or too little; God doesn't care.  God is so big that everything is small to Him and He cares enough to meet every need. We are wrong to call God just a mean Judge,  kind Father, celestial killjoy, sentimental Grandpa, or Great Spirit. Some people have a wholly inadequate concept of God and this in itself is limiting God--we are to be aware of all His attributes and not just our favorite one (some people even think of the Trinity as comprising the Father, who is the stern one, the Son, who is the nice one, and the Holy Spirit, who is the mysterious one).

A common error is to make God in our image (Voltaire said that man created God in his image) and like presumptuously thinking He is a member of our political party or even a citizen of our country.  Some even think Jesus would drive a Harley! This is all limiting God and trying to make a definition to fit our philosophy or way of life.  God is no respecter of persons or even teams, shows no partiality, and won't even take sides on sports events--don't believe that praying for victory is going to help; both sides are doing it and the prayers cancel out!  May I say, may the best team win?

The reason we cannot define God and understand Him is made clear by an old Greek maxim:  "The finite cannot grasp the infinite."  You cannot fit something that's infinite into a limited space.  We cannot imagine an infinite amount of potatoes, for instance, but we can imagine a God who is infinitely holy, wise, powerful, and righteous.  Just like love just is and beauty just is, and beauty remains after the rose fades, and love needs an expression like faith to make it known, but God is love and beauty proves there must be someone to enjoy it, namely God its Creator.  We can be grateful that God's love for us in infinite and cannot be measured and that eternity is longer than we can imagine, though God has set eternity into our hearts (cf. Eccl. 3:11).

You must ask yourself, "How big is your God?" And stop wondering if He can meet your needs because He is up to the challenge.  The bigger God you have the more awe and fear of God you have. It energizes and expands the intellect, boggles your understanding, it humbles the minds and spirit, and quite simply put, "It blows you away," to meditate on who God is.  Einstein thought of God as a "pure mathematical mind" in his early days, and this shows that even great minds cannot fathom God, but need to be enlightened by the Holy Spirit to come to faith in the true God as He is.  Someday we will behold the beatific vision and be satisfied with seeing Him as He is and when we see Christ we shall become like Him.  The highest calling of man and deepest meditation and contemplation is to dwell on who God is and His nature--we should never grow weary of this but always be up to the challenge and rise to the occasion.

For instance, God is perfect: That means He cannot change for the worse, nor improve for the better. He just is and describes Himself as I Am without a predicate, which means He is our everything and meets our every need and is everything He desires to be.  Our existence depends on Him, but He is self-existent and needs no one or nothing to exist or to live and owes no one or no thing.  Why do we want to know God as He is?  To know Him is to love Him and gives us a great desire to be like Him.

People who know their God, says Daniel 11:32, shall be strong and do great exploits.  God's pet peeve is that people don't know Him in Hosea 4:1 and Jesus said in His intercessory prayer of John 17 that knowing God and Jesus is having eternal life.  The whole point of believing in God is to know Him.  What is God like then?  All He has to tell us is expressed in the icon of God--Jesus Himself! God is like Jesus!   Soli Deo Gloria!

God's Complex Desires

God is a complicated Being that we cannot fully apprehend or put in a box, as if He were one-dimensional.  There's always more to God than we can apprehend!  Try not to think of Him as just a mean Judge, for example.  Muslims view God as being capricious, arbitrary, and whimsical; therefore they live their lives in fear of not doing enough good deeds to balance out or outweigh their bad ones.

God's desires and wants are not like man's, who goes primarily by emotion, instinct, passion, lust, or even hormones; God's will is at play too, and to Him, that is the paramount deciding factor in what happens.  God's Plan A is taking place without anyone able to thwart it or force God into Plan B.  It is written:  "... As I have planned, so shall it be, and as I have purposed, so shall it stand" (Isaiah 14:24, ESV); and again, "For the LORD of hosts has purposed, and who will annul it?  His hand is stretched out, and who will turn it back?"  (Isaiah 14:27).  God knew that Adam and Eve would sin and this was all in His plan too, but that doesn't mean He desired it--it was necessitated.  

John Wycliffe's tenet is that "all things come to pass of necessity."  Also, Ephesians 1:11 says that God works all things according to the counsel of His will. Yes, He sovereignly directs, disposes, and governs all creatures, actions, and things (from The Westminster Confession, 1646) as the causa prima or sole primary cause of the universe (got the ball rolling as unmoved mover).  NB:  God's name I AM can be translated, "I cause to be."

God is using us for His purposes.  Today's common secular worldviews deny that anything has a purpose, which is a dirty or forbidden concept to them who deny this concept known as teleology. All nature teaches that God has a purpose for everything if you examine it with an open mind.  I refer to the Anthropic Principle that says everything was designed for human habitation.  We are called according to His purposes (cf. Romans 8:28). When David "had fulfilled God's purpose" the Lord took him.

However, God doesn't cause evil (He uses evil ones to do it), but uses and allows evil to His glory (Psalm 76:10 says, "Surely your wrath against mankind brings you praise..." in the NIV, and in the ESV it says, "Surely the wrath of man shall praise you....").  "The LORD works out everything to its proper end--even the wicked for a day of disaster"  (Proverbs 16:4, NIV). Ecclesiastes 3:1 says "there is a time and purpose for every event under the sun." God makes everything beautiful in His time. Eccl. 3:11

Evil wouldn't exist if it didn't glorify Him in the end.  God was not defeated by Satan and had to come up with some salvation plan to rescue man. Man usually does according to the natural inclination of his evil desires, but God has the power to restrain Himself, so as not to sacrifice His glory.  "... But He does according to His will in the host of heaven....  And no one can ward off His hand Or say to Him, 'What have You done?'" (Daniel 4:35, NASB). "But our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases" (Psalm 115:3, NASB).

His justice is just as important to demonstrate as His grace and mercy; both will be brought forth. A good judge doesn't "desire" to send people to the death chambers when he metes out justice but is committed to doing the right thing.  A judge can't be "soft," but he still desires to render justice as well as mercy.  Thus, God gives everyone a chance to be saved, though He is not obligated to woo everyone (cf. John 6:44, 65), not necessarily the same amount of wooing to anyone, but no one has an excuse at Judgment Day (cf. Rom. 1:20).   "Yet he did not leave himself without witness..." (Acts 14:17,  ESV).    Caveat:  "Note then the kindness and severity of God..." (Romans 11:22, ESV).

1 Timothy 2:4 says that God desires all to be saved and in some versions, it says "wants all." 2 Peter 3:9 says God wants everyone to come to repentance yet in 2 Tim. 2:25 it says "if perchance God will grant them repentance" (repentance is by the grace of God, just like its flip side faith is).  Acts 11:18 says that God has even granted to the Gentiles the repentance unto life (it's a gift, God is under no obligation or it would be by justice).   It is God's preceptive will (what God's Word reveals to us as right and wrong) that no one perishes because He commands all to repent, yet His decreed will is that some receive His mercy and some His justice for the sake of His ultimate glory.  

Ezekiel 33:11 assures us that God takes "no pleasure in the death of the wicked."  They have only themselves to blame for their rejection of His love (sin is basically "the refusal of the love of God," according to Dr. Karl Menninger).  They made the condemning choice themselves and are culpable for it. They rejected God, but we all rejected God and chose self over Him in Adam, and none of us would have sought Christ had we not been wooed and sought out by the Holy Spirit (cf. John 6:44, 65).

God reserves the right to have mercy on whom He will have mercy and harden whom He will (cf. Romans 9:18).  We didn't choose Him as Jesus said in John 15:16, but He chose us ("Many are called but few are chosen" per Matt. 22:14).  In view of election, no one can say that they were just on the wrong list because God doesn't make anyone deny Him or reject Him against their free will.  (What this means is that God doesn't make anyone do anything he doesn't want to do, and in that sense we are free to act on our desires--but God made our nature the way it is (e.g., melancholy, choleric, sanguine, impetuous, etc., and we act according to our God-given nature!)


God decreed that His sheep would be saved, and He does everything to make sure it happens, while He lets the lost go their own way, of their free will, and reject Him.  Whenever God doesn't intervene a person is lost. Jesus said in John 15:5 that apart from Him we can do nothing, and this includes coming to Him.  This doctrine is called preterition and means God simply passes over the non-elect and doesn't choose to save them. The elect receive grace and mercy, the non-elect receive justice.  

Salvation is not a right and no one deserves to be saved or it would be justice and not mercy.  God can save anyone He wills and condemn anyone He wills and, as the Potter, can make either vessels of honor or vessels of dishonor as He wills.  God's glory is at stake. We don't know why God chose us, but it was "according to the good pleasure of His will." (Eph. 1:5). 

What is the logical conclusion and application of the subject at hand?  We should not wish people should go to hell or curse them to go there. Even some atheists sometimes wish there was a hell to send their enemies. We don't know who the elect are and must give everyone equal opportunity as far as we are concerned without bias or unfairness. We are to copy, emulate, or mimic this attitude of loving people into the kingdom, not arguing them in--you can win the argument and lose the seeker. 

God is uniquely able to separate His desires from His will and act in the best interest of His glory, which is His overall objective.  He takes "no pleasure in the death of the wicked " (cf. Ezek. 33:11, NIV) and desires [wants] all to be saved (cf. 1 Tim. 2:4), but it is not His will.  "Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him [the good pleasure of His will]" (Psalm 115:3, NIV).  We are limited and must learn to trust God for the outcome that He knows best, and our work is not in vain in the Lord (cf. 1 Cor. 15:58).    Soli Deo Gloria!

Does God Seem Too Small?

J. B. Phillips wrote the book Your God Is Too Small.  And Martin Luther replied to Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam that his God is too small too, in that he said, "Your thoughts of God are too human!"

J. I. Packer says he hears often:  "I like to think of God as the great Architect (or Mathematician or even Artist)."  "I don't think of God as a Judge," "I like to think of him simply as a Father."  This is a prime example of putting God in a box or limiting God who is infinite and cannot be defined.

We don't define or label God (He only can do this), but He can do that to us.  Like a psychiatrist that labels a patient as manic-depressive, Jesus cannot be labeled by a shrink; he is too balanced and normal!  It is obvious that Christ was in full possession of His faculties, even though He claimed outright deity:  His teachings are not the rantings and ravings of a madman.  "Canst thou by search find out [figure God out] God?"  (Job 11:7).  There is always more to God than we apprehend, and we will be learning about God and getting to know Him throughout eternity (the finite cannot contain(or grasp) the infinite, the Greeks said).

"With God nothing shall be impossible," (Luke 1:37).  But God cannot be God, or do something against or contrary to His essence or nature.  God is logical; therefore, we have math and reasoning ability and we can reason with God.  Can God make 1 + 1 = 3?  No, that is not a question of the omnipotence (God is almighty) or plenipotence of God, but a matter of arithmetic!  Can God make a stone too big to lift?  No!  No matter how you answer the question, you are limiting God.

In the same reality, an immovable stone, and an unlimited force cannot exits--it's that simple (either way God would cease being God and there are certain things God has decided not to do).  God is so so big that everything is small to Him!   His love is so great that no detail or trivia is too small (like the number of the hairs on your head or the lighting of a sparrow.  Conversely, nothing is too big for God, since he is bigger than everything.

Don't ever think that some request you have for God is a "bother" or too insignificant to waste God's time (God does not live in the time-space continuum and time is irrelevant to Him!).  Just because something hasn't happened before doesn't mean it cannot happen--there's always a first time.  Don't ever get discouraged by statistics or odds, such as in recovery from illness!

How else do we limit God and make Him out to be too small?  You cannot limit the attributes of God!  For instance, you cannot say that God cannot forgive suicide or some heinous sin (even Judas could have been forgiven and Hitler could have had deathbed repentance)--that is limiting the love and mercy of God.  With God, forgiveness is a matter of quality, not quantity.   If we limit God in any way our God is too small.

Putting God in a box is the third way to have a small God:  Whenever you say, "I like to think of God as so and so."  Einstein thought of God as a mathematical mind and superior reasoning power revealed in the universe.  Some people like to think of God as a sentimental old Grandfather who dotes on us and spoils us, even being slightly senile and permissive.  Other's think of God (and they did this in antiquity) that God is like us, only more so--in other words he also lusts and just has superhuman strength like Zeus. and Hercules his son. The philosophers were embarrassed at their mythical gods.  Some people merely say, "I like to think of God as a mean Judge or a good Father.  Remember that we are imago Dei or in the image of God and we must be less than Him and not vice versa.

Examples to ponder:  The Indians thought of God as a Great Spirit in the sky.  The Romans thought Jews were atheists because they worshiped a God they couldn't see and was just in their imaginations or mind.  We could say God is Mr. Nice Guy and just think that God is always nice and never stern or strict, but a pushover and easygoing as it were.  We have a saying in Minnesota that we call something "Minnesota nice." Jonathan Edwards, initiating the Great Awakening, in 1741 preached the sermon:  "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry [God is also love] God."   I understand that God defines what nice is, but we tend to put God in a box when we go "beyond that which is written" and make our own definitions of God:  It is true that God is love; God is light; God is true, God is love, et cetera, because these expressions are biblical.  Be aware that when we say, "God is good," we are to also realize that Romans 11:22 says, "Behold therefore the goodness and severity [sternness] of God."  That is, never one at the expense of the other or compromising the other. [Emphasis mine.]

It is a sin to presume on God's nature:  "God will forgive me, for that's His business," it has been said. When we know something is a sin and deliberately insist on doing it, it is presumptuous and willful sin and David asked God to keep him from this in Psalm 19:13 says, "Keep me from willful sin  (presumptuous sin)."  I do not believe in the doctrine of "entire sanctification" or perfectionism wherein we no longer willing sin and can say, unlike the apostle Paul, that we have "arrived."

Finally, because we are the offspring of God, as Paul said in Acts 17:28 saying, " ... As some of your poets have said, 'We are His offspring.'''  What this implies is that there is no evolution--we have devolved and gotten worse, not better.  God is greater than man because  He created us and you have to be greater than something to create it.  We are in His image implies that we alone can communicate with God and are made for Him and His pleasure.

Another way we limit God is to take one attribute at the expense of the others and believe in a just God, but not a loving and merciful God. Note that mercy is withholding justice or what is due, and grace is going beyond and giving what we don't deserve, instead of our due (which is justice).   You cannot always say that God shows justice to everyone because He withholds it in mercy and grace in some of His choosing, but He is unjust to no one!  Not showing justice or non-justice is not injustice and the Supreme Judge has this right at His discretion,  We can say that God is just, but not justice epitomized!  The Bible says not only that God loves, but that He is love (this is the very essence of His character and the Bible doesn't say He has love either).  It doesn't say God is goodness, but that He is good; there is a nuance of meaning here to recognize.   To reiterate:  Having mercy and showing grace are not forms of injustice! We say that the holiness of God regulates His attributes and keeps them in balance to that we cannot put God in a box:  God is infinite by definition!

Some people like to think of Jesus as the nice one, the Father as the stern one, and the Holy Spirit as the mysterious one!  Jesus said that if we have seen (beheld) Him, we have seen the Father.  To believe is to see, not to see is to believe ("But we see Jesus..." (Hebrews 2:9). What Jesus meant is that He is the ikon or image of God and everything we need to know or see is in beholding Him "Look to Me and be saved," (Isaiah 45:22).  There is nothing "un-Jesus-like" in the Father and so forth; one is not "nicer" than the other or has more of the attributes:  They are co-equal, co-eternal, and co-existent.  They all have the same essence even though they are different persons and we say there is merely one God and we must find God's will and seek God's glory.  (Soli Deo Gloria!)

In summation, if we limit God, we are limiting ourselves and what we can become in Christ, who is the ikon, the image of God (cf. Col. 1:15).   Soli Deo Gloria!

Is God Fair?

Jacob was paranoid:  "All these things are against me"  (Gen. 42:36).  Job had his time of being appalled at his circumstances and sudden disaster:  "My worst fears have come upon me."  But Paul said of his sufferings:  "But none of these things move me" (Acts 20:24).  We must never give up the faith that "If God can be for us, who can be against us?"  They must come because the same hammer breaks the glass, forges the steal, the same sun melts the butter, hardens the clay--we either become bitter or better through the crucible of suffering or the school of hard knocks because God never promised us a bed of roses.  Hardship or Reality 101 is part of the divine curriculum.

But don't break faith or lose heart--God loves us as His children and discipline means we belong to Him ("Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep thy Word," says Psalm 119:67).  God's grace is not only necessary but sufficient for us ("My grace is sufficient for thee," says 2 Cor. 9:8).  Believers have always inquired, "Why do bad things happen to good people?"  [There are no good people!]  Let's see why the Bible says, "...Can anyone say to Him, 'What hast Thou done?'" (Dan. 4:35).

Life is unfair, just look at what happened to Jesus.  But don't jump to the conclusion that God is ergo unfair.  It doesn't necessarily follow, as I intend to show.  The question should not be, "Is God fair?" but are you fair? Who do you think you are?  Do you trust yourself and your standards enough to judge the whole earth?  God is fair is a given and a no-brainer to any person of faith--but we have a struggle when the trial, tribulation, suffering, adversity or temptation happens to us personally, don't we?  Like when Job's comforters reprimanded him that he had preached to others, and now trouble comes to him and he can't take it (cf. Job 4:3ff  "See how you have instructed many...but now trouble comes to you and you are discouraged....").

God sees the big picture and we only see our own little world!  Who has the advantage?  To get specific, is it fair that Jesus had to die?  Even the objective onlooker realizes he suffered a great injustice at the hand of Rome, yet God is fair and decreed that this should this; He does not tolerate sin but remains holy, and untouched by sin,  We tend to put God in a box, like saying, "I like to think of God as a ...."  Luther said to Erasmus:   "Your thoughts of God are too human."  There is always more to God than we can apprehend!  "The finite cannot grasp the infinite", the Greeks said.

Job was told, "Canst thou by searching find out God?"   There is no "higher law" that God must obey:  He is a law unto Himself--autonomous!   Only He can set aside His laws.   God wants to see if we will trust Him through thick and thin when the chips are down.  Let the chips fall where they may, God is in control! He does what is right, He never does what is wrong, because all wrongdoing is a sin.

"How can God be just, and the Justifier?"  The Bible says God's ways are unfathomable and inscrutable and no one can discern His ways, "as the heavens are higher than the earth" (cf. Isaiah 55:9; Rom. 11:33).  ("How unsearchable his judgments and His paths beyond tracing out.")  We sometimes cry out for justice, but do we really want to get what we deserve?  Or do we want mercy and grace?  Some will receive justice from God, and others mercy and grace (mercy is not getting what you deserve--judgment; grace is getting what you don't deserve--eternal life), but no one will receive injustice. 

Grace and mercy are a form of non-justice, but not injustice--there is a nuance of meaning that you must realize here.  Karma is disproved by Christ's sufferings--He certainly didn't deserve what He got at the hand of Rome.  God tempers His justice with mercy and only give the evil-doer his due or just dessert, and not beyond what strict justice would demand--God is not cruel. Remember, God is not obligated to be merciful, just because He was merciful to one and we have no claim on His mercy and cannot demand it, but can only accept it as a gift by grace through faith in Christ.

People instinctively think that when something goes wrong that God is unfair.  They don't think they could possibly be reaping what they have sown.  Even Job didn't accuse God of wrong-doing and accepted evil at the hand of God as well as a blessing.  What is fair is the question, not is God fair.  For Abraham said, "Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?"  We don't judge God, he judges us!  We don't have some standard of right and wrong and see if God measures up!

What God does is fair by definition because God is fair, period, no if's, and's, or but's.  Today they say that art is what an artist says is art!  It is similar with God.  We say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder too.  But God said all creation was good after He created it and we are not to object to His standards.  R. C. Sproul says, "God is therefore never arbitrary, whimsical, or capricious, He always does what is right." Amen!  Amen!  He never acts out of character but is always true to Himself.

Because there is no immediate retribution, we tend to think we have gotten away with something--But God is only giving us space to repent and judge He will--either in Christ or at the Great White Throne Judgment at the Last Day.  We want revenge sometimes but must not take the law into our own hands but trust God and  His using the government to get the job done.  "Vengeance is mine, saith the LORD."  No one gets away with anything.  What seems like God being unfair is often just suffering the consequences for our own foolishness or sin!   Either they are disciplined by God as believers and their sins are judged on the cross, or they pay for their own sins in the final judgment for all eternity.  The point is this:  Something is fair because God says so--to have some other standard other than this self-attesting one would be to appeal to some standard higher than God.  For instance, if I said, common sense should be the standard, because that's just common sense.  (This is circular reasoning when we appeal to the source we are using as proof itself.)

Now in Psalm 73 Asaph bemoans the prosperity of the wicked--a common complaint against God.  But Psalm 17:14  says that some people's reward is in this life ("...whose portion is in this life")  and the rule still applies that they sow the wind and reap the whirlwind (Hosea 8:7).   We tend to think that if someone gets something, that we also deserve it.  If God saves one person, for instance, He is not obligated to save another--He could have elected to save no one!  Remember and keep faith in the goodness of God and the profundity or incomprehensibility of God--we cannot figure Him out and never will!

In the economy of God, it pays to trust God and it is more blessed to give than to receive, but also the laws of reaping what you sow and the promised rewards to people who are industrious and work hard are in effect despite being a believer or not.  God blesses some people in all ways, but all in some ways, because of common grace given to all--"God is good to all, and His compassion is over all creation" (Psa. 145:9).  God doesn't know how to be anything but good.  The proof of the pudding is in the eating--"Taste and see that the Lord is good," says Psalm 34:8.  God is good all the time! (Neh. 1:7).   Soli Deo Gloria!

Is God Doing His Best?

Some people think they are doing God a favor by "helping" Him out and doing Him a favor by what they do.  God doesn't need our aid to accomplish His purposes; He only has decreed the means to His ends and it is a privilege to be used by Him, not God that is privileged by our aid.  God doesn't need us in the slightest and can accomplish His will regardless--to say that He needs us is to deny His self-existence or His self-sustaining ability--He requires no outside aid to exist--God is dependent on no one. 

 Of course, some look at the lost and say that God is trying to save everyone and only doing His best--which means that God is a failure because not everyone is going to be saved.  ("As many as were appointed unto eternal life believed," says Acts 13:48.)  The doctrine of election is further delineated in Romans 11:7 saying, "The elect obtained unto it, and the rest were hardened."  Peter says, "They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do" in 1 Pet. 2:8.  There are encouraging words to the elect:  "For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through Jesus Christ," says 1 Thess. 5:9.  However, regarding the reprobate, Jude says, "For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation."

God achieves what He sets out to do and "accomplishes all His good purpose" (Isa. 46:10).  God takes no pleasure in the ultimate destiny of the wicked ("For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord God; so turn, and live," says Ezek. 18:32).  You might think of a judge that has to execute the guilty person but hates doing it.

God is a God of mercy and love, but also of justice and in some cases, justice must be served.  God owes mercy to no one or it would not be mercy, but justice.  God could have decided to save no one and He would still be God.  Yes, everything is going according to plan A and there is no plan B as a backup--God will not fail!   Soli Deo Gloria!

Can God Forget?

It is said in Holy Writ that God forgives and forgets. He wipes the slate clean. Like an Etch A Sketch's slate being cleaned, or a computer memory being erased, or a file deleted, giving us a fresh start. He puts our sins into the bottom of the sea, as it were, and puts up a no-fishing sign. "Yes, You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea" (Micah 7:19). "As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions" ( Ps. 103:12).

We shouldn't keep "dredging up" old sins (as Rick Warren says) and reminding God of what He has forgotten. If we do confess a sin again and remind Him of it, He says, "What sin?" "For You have cast all my sin behind Your back" (Isa. 38:17). "...[H]e canceled every record of the debt we had to pay..." (Col. 2:14).

God doesn't hold any of our confessed sins against us, but we still may suffer the consequences of our actions (reaping what we sow). Sometimes we cannot forget, and we must learn to forgive ourselves. "I, even I, am He who blots out your sins for My sake, and will not remember your sins" (Isa. 43:25). "I have blotted out your transgressions like a thick cloud, and your sins like a heavy mist..." (Isa. 44:22). "...For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more" (Jer. 31:34; Heb. 8:12).

Yes, God does forget, and we should, too. Even if we have terrible sins, there is hope: "Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow, and though they be red as crimson, they shall be as wool" (Isa. 1:18).   Soli Deo Gloria!