Tag: God’s glory

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Four Blessings to Ask God For in 2025

This article first appeared at Small Town Summits Articles.

Father, as we sail out upon the unknown waters of 2025, we are reminded of past years that held joys and trials and we are a bit weary. It could be a year of smooth sailing and joy that easily points us to you, the giver of all good things (James 1:17). But life in this fallen world is so uncertain. What life-changing squalls could hit with hardly a moment’s notice?

Jesus, we know that you are our captain and that you are Lord over the storms. So, with you in our boat, we cry out to you, asking you to work in our lives, our church and our family in 2025.

We ask these things with boldness, knowing that the same Jesus who heard the cries of the disciples and asked where their faith is hears us today (Romans 8:34). Jesus, we believe—help our unbelief (Mark 9:24)! We serve you in faith, believing that you not only exist, but that you reward those who earnestly seek you (Hebrews 11:6). Lord, may you be our reward as we seek you today and look ahead to 2025.

We ask for four blessings from your hand in 2025—hope, peace, joy, and to see Jesus’s glory.

Give Us Hope

Give us hope that you are working all things for our good (Romans 8:28). Give us hope that you are forming us to look more like Jesus even though we get so impatient with our progress in sanctification sometimes (Romans 8:29).

Give us hope that the Word is doing its work in other church member’s lives and that you are at work in our community even when we can’t see it (Mark 4:26-29). Give us hope that you will never abandon your church (Matthew 16:18) and that you will use us, but that gospel ministry is not reliant upon us (1 Corinthians 15:58).

Give us hope that you are cheering my spouse and I on each time that we move towards each other (Song of Solomon 5:1b). Give us hope that you are working in my spouse’s heart and life and that you are forming his or her character into a beautiful work of art that belongs to you (Ephesians 2:10). Give us hope that you hold each of my children in your hands and that no one can snatch them out of your hands (John 10:28-29).

Give us hope that you can do more than we can ask for or imagine in our walk with you, in our church, and in our family in 2025 (Ephesians 3:20-21)!

Give Us Peace

Give us peace, knowing that we can sleep because you never sleep, always watching your own (Psalm 121:3-4). Give us peace as we navigate our own doubts and fears (Matthew 10:31). Give us peace that can only be found in knowing you personally, as we pursue you even more than we have in past years (Psalm 119:10).

Give our church peace in conflict that may arise in 2025, and give us a heart to seek the unity of the Spirit (Ephesians 4:3). Give us peace as we navigate the complexity of being believers in today’s world (2 Corinthians 11:28). Give our church a greater measure of the peace that comes from resting in Jesus (John 14:27).

Give my spouse and I peace if financial or health or extended family situations arise this year that add stress to our marriage (Isaiah 26:3). Give our home peace and may our children and grandchildren grow in enjoying their relationships with each other (Psalm 133:1). Give our children your spiritual protection from the evil one, so that they can experience the peace that comes from walking with you in a tumultuous world (John 17:15).

Give Us Joy

Give us joy, knowing that joy is always available in Jesus regardless of what circumstances may come in 2025 (John 15:11, 16:20). Give us your joy in the happy days, and the eyes to see the world as a place where your beauty and power are constantly on display (Psalm 24:1). Give us joy in trials, knowing that you have not abandoned us and are producing Christ-like character in us (James 1:2-3, Romans 5:3-5).

Give our church joy so that when unbelievers visit, they will want this joy that the world cannot offer (Luke 2:10). Give our church joy that is not surface-deep but rather that is deep like a glacier, because it is joy in God (2 Corinthians 1:24). Give our church joy that is Spirit-produced as we worship the living God on Sunday mornings together (Psalms 4:7).

Give us joy in our marriages, as we seek to enjoy life with the spouse you have given us (Ecclesiastes 9:9). Give our spouses joy in their day-to-day responsibilities and in their ministry opportunities (Romans 15:13). Give our children joy through spiritual tastebuds that savor Jesus rather than sin (Psalm 16:11).

Give Us Jesus’s Glory

In the same way that Moses did not want to move into the Promised Land without viewing your glory (Exodus 33:14-18), we don’t want to move into 2025 without a fresh view of Jesus’s glory!

Give us Jesus’s glory in our times of Bible reading and prayer in 2025, so that we can take a spiritual drink and be satisfied (John 7:37-39). Give us Jesus’s glory through seeing your salvation in our personal witnessing with friends and community members (Luke 5:25).

Give our church a view of Jesus’s glory that is so breathtaking that they will want to run from sin (1 Peter 1:13-16). Give our church the focus that church is about Jesus’s glory, not their preferences or ease (1 Thessalonians 5:14). Give our church such a sense of Jesus’s glory on Sunday mornings that they will long for the next time of worship together (2 John 1:12).

Give our families a view of Jesus’s glory that comes from having a privileged front-row seat to your work in so many lives (Acts 2:43). Give our children Jesus’s glory so that they have mountain-top spiritual experiences, but also we ask that when they come down from them that they will have eyes for Jesus only (Matthew 17:8).

Father, we recognize that we don’t deserve any blessing from you. But we also know that you love to give good gifts to your children (Matthew 7:11). So, we are asking you today to give us, our family, and our church four things in 2025: give us hope, give us peace, give us joy, and give us Jesus’s glory!

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The Big Picture of the Bible in Four Movements

Just as in a great symphony there are different movements that make up the entire masterpiece, in the Bible there are four great movements or stories that make up the whole.  Creation.  Fall.  Cross.  New Creation.  Put together, these four themes can give us the big picture of the entire Bible.  Sometimes we can’t see the forest for the trees, and we simply need to step back and take in what God has done and is doing.  I hope that this will help you rejoice in His amazing and sovereign plan that is for our salvation and His glory!

Creation.  “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…” (Gen. 1:1) are such familiar words as almost every English version of the Bible translates this first verse the exact same way.  God created all things, showing both ownership and care for what He had made.  His great plan had begun!

Fall.  The Bible wastes no time in presenting the great predicament that mankind has found himself in since the beginning.  At the start of Genesis chapter 3 Adam and Eve are already presented with an opportunity to sin, and they turn from God to sin and death.  So do we: “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned…” (Rom. 5:12).

Cross.  God’s solution to His creation turning from Him and the fact of their spiritual and physical death is effected in His Son, through His death on the cross.  The One promised from the moment of the Fall (Gen. 3:15) came as the God-man who alone could atone for our sin.  “And you, who were dead in your trespasses…God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.  This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.” (Col. 2:13-14)  Christ and His work on the cross is looked forward to throughout the Old Testament and looked back upon throughout the New Testament.

New Creation.  The last “event” in all of history as we know it will be the New Creation, when God will consummate all things by abolishing sin, evil, and death.  Those who are in Christ will enjoy a New Heaven and New Earth in new bodies that will never be tainted by sin or its’ effects.  God will be worshiped and we will enjoy Him and His creation forever with joy that we can only imagine now.  God’s plan for our salvation and His glory will have been realized as He exclaims at the end of the Bible: “It is done!  I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.  To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.” (Rev. 21:6b)

May we respond to the big picture of the Bible as John did at the end of Revelation: “Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev. 22:20)

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The LORD Reigns

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I was on Jury Duty recently and as I was waiting in the Jury Room to be called up or not called up to court, I thought about how at that moment the government had so much sovereignty over my life.  Whether or not they called my name would determine if I would go to work the next day or back to the courthouse.  If I was assigned (I was), it could be a quick 2 day trial or my life could have to revolve around a trial for months (after all, I live in L.A. County).

I think God’s sovereignty is sometimes hard for us to understand as American Christians because we don’t have any clear examples of “absolute” authority such as was so common during the time the Bible was written.  The government’s “power” to make me come in to Jury Duty and to decide what would happen with the next few weeks of my life, or to force me to pay taxes, is about the extent of my personal involvement with the government’s sovereignty.  I used to wrestle quite a bit with God’s sovereignty.  Although I accepted it, as God is clearly displayed and explained as sovereign again and again and again in God’s Word, and although I wanted to understand it, it sometimes made me question my understanding of God.  My understanding of God needed to be questioned and expanded. 

I remember reading a quote by Jonathan Edwards that exclaimed, “…Absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God…” (quoted in Desiring God, p. 38, by John Piper).  I could tell by the way Edwards worded it that he rejoiced in this attribute of God.  I had a hard time saying this the same way, much like the struggle that Habakkuk had at the beginning of his prophecy, before he waited on the LORD .  I think it was because I wanted to rejoice in God’s sovereignty, but all of the theological and practical “problems” were getting tangled up in my mind.  Praise God that I can now agree with Jonathan Edwards in the rest of his quote: “And there has been a wonderful alteration in my mind, in respect to the doctrine of God’s sovereignty, from that day to this; so that I scarce ever have found so much as the rising of an objection against it, in the most absolute sense…I have often since had not only a conviction but a delightful conviction.  The doctrine has very often appeared exceeding pleasant, bright, and sweet.  Absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God.  But my first conviction was not so…” (quoted in Desiring God, p. 38, by John Piper).   

The Lord has been teaching me this doctrine again and again over the last 15 years as I have studied the Bible and constantly been confronted with God’s absolute sovereignty and also as I have seen it lived out in my own life, family, and ministry with others.  I love God’s sovereignty now.  I love to exclaim with the Psalmist, “The LORD reigns, let the earth rejoice; let the many coastlands be glad!” (Psalm 97:1)  I am prepared to accept and deal as biblically as I can with any confusion that may cause (more posts on that in the future, in particular regarding “Sickness” and “Suffering and the Sovereignty of God”).  The fact that the LORD reigns is actually the greatest comfort now during times of trial rather than a question mark.  It is a sweet doctrine to be embraced rather than to be feared.  One thing that has helped me in my understanding of and rejoicing in God’s sovereignty is knowing that His sovereignty is always exercised in a way that corresponds with His other attributes, such as His love, mercy, compassion, justice, etc.  A favorite way that I like to express this truth is that “God is both sovereign and good.”

There is a sense in which, when God is seen as sovereign, He is seen more clearly as God than with any other attribute.  Everything else is created, but only God is the ruler of the universe.  That is why so many of the Psalms (the “worship book” of the Bible) call attention to God’s greatness and sovereignty, because reflecting on this aspect of His character inspires worship.  I remember hearing R.C. Sproul teach pastors that if they hide an aspect of God’s character from their people then they are guilty of veiling the glory of God. May we as God’s people never be declared guilty on that count!

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Thursday Night of “Passion Week”

It is Thursday night of “Passion Week.”  We all know that Christ died on Friday and rose on Sunday, but what happened on Thursday night?  He washed His disciples’ feet.  He taught His disciples in the Upper Room.  He transformed the Passover meal into “The Lord’s Supper” commemorating His death.  He cried out to the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane until He sweat drops of blood.  He was betrayed with a kiss.  He was arrested.  And He knocked a large detachment of Roman soldiers to the ground with His word.

The beloved Apostle, moved by the Holy Spirit, remembered that night: “So Judas, having procured a band of soldiers and some officers from the chief priests and the Pharisees, went there with lanterns and torches and weapons.  Then Jesus, knowing all that would happen to Him, came forward and said to them, ‘Whom do you seek?’  They answered him, ‘Jesus of Nazareth.’  Jesus said to them, ‘I am He.’  Judas, who betrayed him, was standing with them.  When Jesus said to them, ‘I am he,’ they drew back and fell to the ground.” (John 18:3-6)

Judas, along with the religious leaders, had organized a detachment of soldiers to come and arrest Jesus in the garden.  The word translated “band” of soldiers in the ESV is a “cohort” of Roman soldiers that would normally number 600 men.  However, depending on the circumstances it could be up to 1,000 or as little as 200.  Given that there were extra Roman soldiers on duty for the Passover Feast, as well as the fact that the other Gospels indicate that there were others besides the soldiers in the crowd who carried clubs, it is no exaggeration to say that there was a minimum of 300 men there that night if not the full 1,000 given Jesus’ popularity just a few days before on “Palm Sunday.”  This would be at least 15 times more armed men than are in the picture at the top of this post.

Jesus decimated them by simply answering “I am” to their question.  These trained killers fell to the ground at the word of our Savior!

It is mind-boggling how some commentators will try to explain away this profound moment before Jesus was arrested.  It is another display of His authority before He would let them arrest Him, and we are reminded once again that He is the incarnate God before He humbles Himself to the point of death on a cross.  Before His greatest humility, He once again displayed His power.  Yet some will say things such as that they fell down because they expected to find a meek peasant and instead were met in the dim light by a majestic person.  Ludicrous.  Others say that those in the front were startled when Jesus appeared out of the shadows, which in turn knocked down those behind them like dominoes.  Nonsense.  Roman soldiers were highly trained and had taken over much of the world.  They battled against the most powerful armies on earth and often won.  They did not easily spook and fall down like children when somebody emerged from a dark garden that was now lit up with their torches.  But, they did fall down when Jesus said “I am.”  As John MacArthur explains, “All Jesus had to do was speak His name–the name of God–and His enemies were rendered helpless.” (The MacArthur New Testament Commentary, John 12-21, p. 308)

It is no wonder Peter was emboldened to cut off the ear of the slave of the high priest!  Christ quickly reminded Peter right in front of the soldiers that if He wanted to, He could ask the Father to send 72,000 angels that He could then command (Matt. 26:53).  What was a detachment of Roman soldiers compared to His power?     

This was a foretaste of Christ as sovereign LORD even though the cross was looming on the horizon.  The same Apostle John who wrote the Gospel of John later saw Christ exalted and described Him: “…from His mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and His face was like the sun shining in full strength.  When I saw him, I fell at His feet as though dead.  But He laid His right hand on me, saying, ‘Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one.  I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.‘” (John 18:16-18)

Just as He laid His hand on John to show His grace, how He loves you and me!  That He would place Himself into the hands of these soldiers to obey the will of the Father, to be crushed on the cross as He paid the awful and incomprehensible price of sin when He could have stopped it all in an instant, with a word, needs to move us!

Even when they fell down at His word, the soldiers in the garden that night didn’t recognize Him as God.  But it may have contributed to God’s work in some of their hearts as later some soldiers would believe in Christ as the Son of God and Savior even at the foot of the cross the next day.  As you celebrate Good Friday and then Resurrection Sunday, remember that our King was not a victim of an evil plan (although it was evil, Acts 2:23), but rather the triumphant Victor of the Plan that had been made before the foundation of the world (Acts 2:23).  Thank You Jesus for Your power, and thank You for Your grace!

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