Thursday, January 19, 2012

Financial Faith - The Nature of God

For part one of this series, I encourage you to read Financial Peace - The Foundation

In reviewing my introduction to this series, I realized that I have gotten ahead of myself. Before continuing on in the lessons of living the truth of Financial Faith, it is vital that we lay a deeper foundation. We need to remember fundamentally who God is and why it is that we can trust Him. Unless you have a proper view of the reality of God, you will never be able to have the implicit trust necessary to live a life of faith in His providing hand.

And so we will go back to the beginning. Who is God? The best description comes from the mouth of God Himself:

Moses said to God, "If I go to the Israelites and tell them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' — what should I say to them?" God said to Moses, "I AM that I AM." And he said, "You must say this to the Israelites, 'I AM has sent me to you.' "
(Exodus 3:13-14 NET)

“I AM that I AM.” There is no other being in the universe that can bear that name. Everything is else is creature – that is, it has been created by the one and only God. But God is eternal and infinite in power and wisdom.

All things were created by him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created.
(John 1:3 NET)

"You are worthy, our Lord and God,
     to receive glory and honor and power,
     since you created all things,
     and because of your will they existed and were created!"
(Revelation 4:11 NET)

God sustains all things by the power and reality of who He is.

For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the hills, and all that moves in the field is mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine.
(Psalms 50:10-12 ESV)

Everything in the universe owes its very existence to God and only continues to exist because of the eternal faithfulness of God. We often fall into the modern curse of considering the laws of physics as some sort of mechanism that God set into motion. In reality, the scriptures teach us that the laws of Physics, rather than the observation of a machine in motion, are in fact an example of the continuing faithfulness of God in sustaining His creation.

When you got out of bed, you did not fly up and hit the ceiling, because God was faithful to sustain the laws of gravity and keep your feet on the floor. When you warmed up your coffee, God was faithful to ensure the energy expended became heat that warmed your drink. As you start to consider every moment of every day, you will soon realize that every single nanosecond of your life is utterly dependent upon the will and faithfulness of God. It is He who transforms your food into a usable form and ensures that it nourishes your body. He alone gives you mind the capacity to think, and your hands the capacity to move.

Further, a God who created the entire universe in six days is still creating to this day, forming new life in the womb, transforming hearts of stone into hearts of flesh, and bringing the dead sinful man to life in the Spirit.

All of your creatures wait for you
     to provide them with food on a regular basis.
You give food to them and they receive it;
     you open your hand and they are filled with food.
When you ignore them, they panic.
     When you take away their life's breath, they die
     and return to dust.
When you send your life-giving breath, they are created,
     and you replenish the surface of the ground.
(Psalms 104:27-30 NET)

A God who can do all of that is more than sufficient to take care of your temporal needs.

Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
(Matthew 6:26 ESV)

For further reading that lingers in the reality of who God is, I highly recommend "The Knowledge of the Holy" by A.W. Tozer. In this book, he prayerfully and worshipfully lingers in the presence of God.


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