Month: June 2016

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Our User-Friendly God…

We often think we have done God a favor by down-playing the whole idea of His judgment.  Our user-friendly God does not punish sin.  He certainly doesn’t send people to hell.  But hell gives us a picture of the absolute perfection and beauty of GOd.  Hell is what hell is because that’s what sin against an infinitely beautiful and glorious God deserves.  Hell is not one degree hotter than our sin demands it to be.  Hell should make our mouths stand agape at the righteous, just holiness of God.

– Greear, J.D.; Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary; B&H Publishing Group; Nashville, TN; Copyright 2011; Kindle Edition; page 93

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Why Albert Einstein Had So Little Use for Organized Religion

The design of the universe is very magnificent and should not be taken for granted.  In fact, I believe that is why Einstein had so little use for organized religions, although he struck me as a very religious man.  Einstein must have looked at what the preacher said about God and felt that they were blaspheming!  He had seen more majesty than he had ever imagined in the creation of the universe and felt that the God they were talking about couldn’t have been the real thing.  My guess is that he simply felt that the churches he had run across did not have proper respect for the Author of the Universe.

Charles Misner

– Greear, J.D.; Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary; B&H Publishing Group; Nashville, TN; Copyright 2011; Kindle Edition; page 92-93

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We Reduce God to a Domesticated, Middle-Class Diety

I believe that most people today have lost a sense of God’s awesome size.  We reduce God to a domesticated, middle-class-sized deity that we can explain and control.

He is not.  The infinite God staggers the mind.  When we try to reduce God to someone we can explain and control, we actually cripple people’s ability to believe in Him.

– Greear, J.D.; Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary; B&H Publishing Group; Nashville, TN; Copyright 2011; Kindle Edition; page 92

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Doctrine and Application

Doctrine helps describe the God we must see; application helps us see how to love the God we have seen.  But both are useless if the eyes of the heart have not been opened to see and savor the beauty of God.

– Greear, J.D.; Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary; B&H Publishing Group; Nashville, TN; Copyright 2011; Kindle Edition; page 89

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The Need for Spiritual Sight

Spiritual sight is even more important.  Spiritual sight is how we perceive God.  Without spiritual sight you miss out on the most glorious display in the universe.  And the tragedy is that if you are spiritually blind you have no idea that you’re missing anything at all.

Once we have our eyes opened to the beauty of God, we can really start to understand the second part of The Gospel Prayer:

“Your presence and approval are all I need for everlasting joy.”

– Greear, J.D.; Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary; B&H Publishing Group; Nashville, TN; Copyright 2011; Kindle Edition; page 88

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The Joy of Learning to be Satisfied in Jesus

Learning to be satisfied in Jesus will free you to enjoy everything else.  Being fulfilled in Christ means that you no longer depend on other things for life and happiness.  That means you can enjoy them, because you are no longer enslaved by them.  The prospect of losing them doesn’t terrorize you.  And you can say “no” to them when they are not God’s will.

– Greear, J.D.; Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary; B&H Publishing Group; Nashville, TN; Copyright 2011; Kindle Edition; page 84

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Idols Leave Us Empty

Ultimately idols leave us empty because our hearts were created for God.  To use the words of the seventeenth-century philosopher Blaise Pascal, God created our hearts with a vacuum.  We search for something to fulfill our deepest cravings, but nothing on earth works because the vacuum was created by the absence of God.  Anything we substitute for God in that place leaves us still yearning.  Or, as St. Augustine put it, “You have made us for Yourself, Lord.  Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.”

– Greear, J.D.; Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary; B&H Publishing Group; Nashville, TN; Copyright 2011; Kindle Edition; page 76