How is God great?

 
How is God great?
Message by Henk Moorman
 
 
 
 
Good Morning everybody.
 
I have called this sermon: “How is God great?”.
That is a matter you can’t stop thinking about. You will keep on thinking, but it you are never ready, you can’t think enough about it.
The apostle John starts his first letter with: “We are telling you of that which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched,- this we proclaim concerning the Word of Life, so that you also may have fellowship with us and our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.
Jesus Himself says the same thing  more clearly in John’s Gospel 14:23: “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching and  My Father will love him and we will come unto him and make our home with him.’
Somewhere else, in Revelation 3:20, Jesus says, “Here I am. I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him and he with me.”
 
These utterances are pictures of having fellowship, of sharing things with one another.
God wants to have fellowship with man, He wants deep, intimate fellowship.
If somebody demands from you: “I want a relationship with you,’ it might be better to stay away from him and keep your door closed, because it does not sound very respectful, does it?
But if someone says: “I really would like to have an intimate relationship with you,” that sounds more like a question.
That is not a pressiur put upon you, but it is a request. And everyone will have to decide personally whether he enters into such a relationship or not.
 
What do we actually need to have fellowship, what is necessary for us to have an intimate relationship with God?
Have a look at the Lord’s Prayer.
Jesus says: “Do you know how you should pray? Say: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, ‘ This is the first line of the Lord’s prayer.
I think that we can keep thinking, meditating about that for our whole lifetime.
It will take a long time before we actually realise what it means to have a Father and before we have truly honoured the name of God in our lives, in your and my minds.
It will take time before we have cleansed the name of God from all the things that are clinging to it, things that don’t belong to God at all.
All the things that block the way for a person who wants to come into an intimate relationship with God.
It will keep us occupied for quite some time, I think.
 
What are the things that stand in the way?
I think in particular the idea that ‘God is great’.
That is why I started with the question: “How is God great?”
Every believer will agree that God is great. But the question is: HOW is God great? In which way?
Because many people already have a certain fixed image of God in their minds. And that image depends for an important part of what is written in the Old Testament. You read about a great and fearsome God who will not accept that you treat Him with contempt, a God whose mighty hand causes everything to happen on earth and who gets very angry with those who disobey Him. That kind of image is what people see when they speak of a great God. And we also find that in many of our songs. That thought has rooted itself deeply into our minds. God who is great in that way. Great is interpreted as ‘mighty’, as ‘destructively powerful’, as ‘moving everything the way He wants it.’  In one of our songs we sing: “Our God is so great, so strong and so mighty, there is nothing our God cannot do.” That is how we think about God in His ‘ greatness’.
And then I think by myself: Is this really what God is like, or is this an image created by the human mind, how people think that God should be. And if that is so, by what standard is this measured? Yes, by human standard of course. You start to think with a human mind about God,
and God becomes a kind of superman. He can do everything that a human being can do, but then a million times more, so to speak. Even more so, endless times more. And that gives you your image of God. This is the image that many people have of God.
 
I once read a book from a pastor who also wrote about this. He said: “It is a heathen image of God. The Almighty as a huge enlargement of how man is. You can think of a kind of superman, make him many times bigger than he is and then you have God. He can do everything that a human being can do, but endlessly more so. A human being can see, but God is ‘ all-seeing’ . A human being can be present, but God is omnipresent. A human being may know a lot of things, but God is omniscient. As a human being you can be selfsatisfied, but God is even more so. He does not need anybody else to be happy and feel at peace with Himself. He is up there in heaven, and it does not bother Him whether you, as a human being, love Him or not, whether you take Him serious, or want to have fellowship with Him. That does not determine his happiness. He seems to be unchangeable, unmovable untouched as far as that is concerned.  
 
Yes, and more than anything else, the attribute of His omnipotence, His almightiness, makes Him a God. A human being can be very mighty, but God is almighty, the very omnipotent ruler. That attribute, which typifies a god, should be typifying God more than any other attribute. The thought that there would be something which God could not do is almost unthinkable. That would bring Him down in our estimate (we would be disappointed to say) the least. You can see that throughout history. People have their own gods and when one nation was conquered by another nation or group of people, those who were conquered would accept the god of the conquerors, because he had proved to be the stronger one. Their own god had proved not to be almighty after all, the other one was stronger. Therefore it was wise to accept the other god, so that you too had a god again who was strong enough to conquer your enemies.
 
I think that such an idea about God is a hindrance for a person to have real fellowship and a relationship with God; a hindrance to see God as a real Father with whom he can be on intimate terms. Because it is only possible for two people to have an intimate relationship, to have fellowship with one another, when both are on the same level. And naturally, this can only take place between members of he same sort. Look at creation. Look at the animal world. What moves together, what brings forth new life? Always species of the same sort. You never see a pigeon mating with a crow, or an elephant with a giraffe. What belongs together, comes together and fits together.
And it is the same with human beings. You can’t have a deep conversation with a horse, can you? Or do you feel that your cat understands you better than anybody else? Of course you can enjoy the presence of an animal, but I am sure you understand what I mean. Only species of the same sort can have fellowship on an equal basis, on an intimate basis.
 
Let us do an experiment in our mind.
Imagine, God is a bit like you. I am saying: imagine, a ‘what-if’ kind of experiment.
Imagine, God looks like somebody like me, like you. A person who is not able to do everything, who has things that he can not do at all. Someone who doesn’t know everything, who cannot solve every problem in a record time, who cannot magically change situations. Be honest, how many people are praying just as if God is like that? They pray and pray and pray some more until at last God changes everything in one single moment. Such praying comes from the idea that God is able to do that. And immediately the question arises: “Why doesn’t He do that. I have been praying for so long and so hard and so persistent.” Just imagine that God can not do everything, is that terrible? What effect does that have?
As for me, it gives me more breathing space, because it gives me more of a Father, one who is on the same level with me. And so to Him it matters what you think, how you react, how you deal with issues in life and how you are behaving towards Him. That again determines how He reacts to you and how He acts towards you. That is what it means to have a relationship, to have fellowship. The character of real fellowship is that it is reciprocal, it comes from 2 sides.
I think that God longs for that, that He is allowed to come down from His throne as it were. Does that make sense to you? Think of a palace, the king sits in the big hall, on his throne and he is surrounded by his ministers and advisors. Would you call that a place where you can have intimate fellowship with somebody? Where you can build a intimate relationship with the other person, speaking about very personal matters? Now a throne like that is big enough, you could sit on it together, the two of you. But it doesn’t work, does it? Intimate fellowship, a confidential relationship does not require a palace and a throne. Nor can you have it with powerful rulers, only with a person who comes to you with respect for you, respect for the person you are.
You will come across other questions of course. Somebody may say, “But explain to me, isn’t God my strength, my hiding place? How do you deal with that. What happens with that?”
Yes, that is a valid question, because as a human being you need that, you need to be able to hide somewhere, to have a place where you feel safe. Could it be though, that you feel safe with God because He lives in unapproachable light? Because that is what it says in 1 Tim. 6:16. I think that God’s light is unapproachable for the darkness, not for us human beings. It is hard to imagine that God’s light would be unapproachable for us. Just imagine that God would say: “I would like to have fellowship, but you can’t come to me because of the unapproachable light.” But you would like to come closer to God, and in doing so, you discover that you are walking into a hot, destructive light from which you have to turn back. The one is irreconcilable with the other. It doesn’t make sense. No, I think that God lives in a light that is unapproachable for the darkness. Darkness will have to stay far away,  for light and darkness have nothing in common. And I am convinced that it is a warm pleasant light for those who love God, a light in which you can feel safe. For when you are there, you know: ‘the darkness cannot reach me.’
I think that is what is meant by the strong tower and the hiding place and the strength.
He who walks in the light finds protection in it. And he who has accepted the Lord, who has accepted Jesus, walks in the light. You could also say: ‘he walks in His way of thinking. If you live in that atmosphere, in His way of thinking, near to Him, then you are safe indeed.
 
And there will be more questions. If you say: “God is a bit like you and me”, somebody may rightfully ask: “But God is not a human person, is He? Isn’t God more than man, sombody like you and me?”  Indeed, God is God and we are human beings and let us keep it that way. He is the One who started it all, in Him everything has its origin, also mankind.
He is the one who brought us out of Egypt, out of the house of servitude and slavery.
He is the one who can oversee things, when we can’t.
He is more, He is so much more.
In the letter to the Ephesians (3:20) it says: “He is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.”
If He can do that, He has to be endlessly more than we can ask or think.
But that “more”, how do you interpret that?
Before you realise it, words like ‘great’ and ‘imposing’ come to your mind again.
They have become so ingrained in our God-image, in the way we think about God..
 
My mind goes to the image of Nebuchadnezzar. You can read about it in Daniel 3. Nebuchadnezzar had a statue built for himself, a golden image that was 40 yards high, that is about 30 meters. You are talking about a structure as high as a ten-story building.
That is impressive, and that makes you feel very small as a human being. And everybody had to kneel down before that image. That makes you even smaller. And a person who still was not impressed by that all, was made to feel small by the fear for a burning oven standing next to it. Such an image of Nebuchadnezzar that is the way a heathen thinks of the greatness of God. It is the image of God as the highest, most powerful ruler. That fits Babel: the foundation of Babel is power. Babel is full of power, saturated with it, and the essence of Babel’s god-image is power. But that is not a true image. Because if that were true, God would be great in such a way that it would make me as a human being very small.  
 
Many years ago I saw in a Christian magazine a picture of God drawn by somebody. 
There was a person on a throne, big, over the whole page and at the bottom you could see a few very small specks. Those were the people.
Honestly, if you think about the greatness of God in that way, it does not agree  with the possibility to have an intimate relationship with Him.
It is completely different and not correct. It is a pagan, a heathen way of thinking about God.
It is the same for the word ‘ less’. If you say that  “God is more and we are less”, and you interpret ‘ less’ then as a ‘lower in rank, less in value, not worth much’,  you have the wrong interpretation of the sentence: “God is more than man”. Man is not of a lower rank. Doesn’t the Lord Jesus teach us that God is our Father? That means that we are of His line, his family, of His kind. And a child is smaller than his father, but not less than him. A child can do less, knows less than his father, but he is not worth less than his father. I said it before: God is God and man is man. Let us keep it that way without drawing the conclusion that a human being is therefore less valuable and of no significance in the eyes of God. That is the lie that has been told throughout the ages about God and man. And that lie has made it impossible for man to walk with God in the way God intended it to be from the beginning: intimately and on the basis of being of the same value.
That is different from ‘on equal footing’, God and man are not the same. You are of His kind, yet different. 
 
When I quoted from Ephesians (3:20) I said that ‘God is more’ “He is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.”
You can see that God is great by the power that is at work in us, so that has to be visible. How can you see that? You can see that in all that He works out in you. What is God’s work in me? When I look at all the things that God has worked out in me, over all the years that I have known Him, I come to this conclusion:
These are not the great spectacular things, but they are the things of the everyday life, the ordinary things that are very nearby. They are the things of which the Bible says in Zechariah 4:10:  “Who despises the day of small things?”
Our God is not a God of the great and spectacular things, which overpower you as a human being. No, He is the God of the small things. And I am talking here about humility, gentleness, mercy, taking care of others, having an eye for the needs of others, willing to be the least. In short, the mind and attitude which is in Jesus, in other words: LOVE. In the end that is in a nutshell, what God works out in us: LOVE. The power that works this out in us is not a tremendous power, but a ‘gentle power’. And that is something in which God is more than we are: He is more in LOVE. He knows better to love people than we do.
 
I quoted from Ephesians 3, where Paul says of God: “He is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine.” And it is therefore no accident that Paul also says in this same chapter:  “I pray that you may be able to understand, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.“ (verses 17,18)
That you may be able to grasp His love. God is great in love, unselfish, unconditional and never-ending love.
It is impossible to describe that in human words.
To grasp this is more than understanding, it is to experience, to fathom, to drink it in with your whole being, in short to be filled with it.
Paul says: “ I am praying that you will be able to grasp all the dimensions of that love. You need a whole life to achieve that and probably even longer, I think.
You can’t do that on your own, you need others, we need one another.
Without the other person I will never be able to grasp the height and depth of the love of God. That knowledge protects me from falling into the trap  that tells me that I can do it on my own.
 
And that love of the Father contains a lot of things, for instance patience. It is clear that God has a lot more patience than I have, and fortunately so.
And of course, He has a lot more compassion than I have, lucky for us! And yes, He is so much more unselfish than I am, I am so glad about that!
And He is so much more creative in finding solutions than I am, in  creating new possibilities; in discovering: how can we solve together this problem, how can we together find a new way, how can we create light in the darkness?
It is wonderful that He can. And yes, He has infinitely more forgiveness than I have. God is so very good in all these things, infinitely better. I am so happy about this, that God is great in this way.
You see, that is a comforting greatness, as I would call it.
That is not a greatness which makes you feel small, but a greatness that makes you grow, that lifts you up.
It is a greatness which causes you to become great in the same way. It causes you to become the person God intended you to be from the very beginning.
 
I am sure there will be more questions. May be somebody will ask: “ But doesn’t it say: ‘The Son of Man will be coming with great power and glory’? (Mark 13:26) And didn’t Jesus Himself say: ‘All power is given unto me in heaven and on earth.’?” (Matthew 28:18)
And when you hear that, it really speaks about a superpower.
If somebody has ALL the power in heaven and on earth, it means that nobody else has power.
Yes, the Lord says that indeed.
But you have to read that in context. “The Son of Man shall return with great power and glory.” But why, how must we understand these words?
You can find the answer in vers 27 where it says: “And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.”
That is the purpose of His power.
That is so characteristic of God: He gathers, He brings together.
We so easily see God’s power as His ability to do mighty things, spectacular things and to destroy our enemies.
But God’s power is especially seen in His bringing together those who want to belong to Him. You could say in gathering them under His wings. That is the context.
 
Jesus says in Matthew 28:18: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”
But what is the context?
Look at what follows: “Make disciples of all nations.” 
There is no sense of “ all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth and therefore I will show myself as the mighty one and destroy my enemies for ever.”
None whatsoever.“
Make disciples, teach them, is what follows!
God’s power therefore is the ability to connect people with Him.
And how do you connect people with God?
That is possible in different ways: you can command obedience, or respect or admiration, especially by doing great and spectacular things.
But the only thing you cannot command is love.
And that is the very thing that God desires, that a person comes to Him out of love for Him.
To unite a person with God on that basis, is only possible, when you tell him that God is very attractive for him. That means a God you do not need to fear, with Whom you don’t feel very small and insignificant, but with Whom you feel safe, secure and beloved.  That is only possible if you can see God as the one who loves you more than anyone else. In short, the power of God, which we may also use, is the ability to show how much LOVE the Father has for us.
 
There is one verse in the New Testament, where God has been given the attribute “GREAT’. Nowhere in the NT will you find, ‘ the Lord, our God is great.  There is only one verse that speaks of the great God. And that is in the letter which Paul wrote to Titus (2:13) “ Looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.´ This refers to Jesus, but you can argue when it talks about Jesus, it also means the same for God. “Looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ,” but what follows? “Who gave Himself for us.”  In this His power and his greatness have become visible, that He has given Himself for us. And this is the only verse in which we can read that God is great, at least in the New Testament. IN the Old Testament you find this more often. But the key for this is that in the Old Testament it is only partly revealed to us how the Father is.
Do you want to know how God really is? Look to Jesus.
For in the Scriptures it says in John 1:18, “No man has ever seen God, but the only begotten Son who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.”
Jesus has shown us that the power of God is so great because of of his self-sacrificing love.
 
Some more bible verses, Ephesians 1:18-20. Here we find one of the very long sentences which Paul uses, so I am beginning somewhere in the middle.
He says there: ”I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms.”  
You can find everything in those verses, can’t you! It starts with power, not just ordinary power, but ‘incomparably great power’.
That gives you a picture of muscle force, it will happen one day, the tremendous manifestation of God’s power!
Where does it lead to and what has it accomplished?  Well,
He has raised Jesus from the dead by that power.
Again we see that same God who uses his power to bring somebody back to life, back, out of  the realm of the dead,  to the land of the living.
Thatis an exceedingly great power. God uses his power, the strength of his power, to give a person honour, in this case Jesus, by giving him the place he deserves: with the Father in the heavenly places, at His right hand, that is the place of honour.
That is the purpose of God’s power and might, to set a person free from death and the kingdom of death and to promote him to honour and value by giving him a place in the heavenly places, with God Himself.
 
What I want to stress is that this is the context, whenever the Bible speaks of God’s power and might.
We always need to ask ourselves: that power of God, what is the purpose of it?
You can say that God’s power is the ability to do well, to bless man, to gather, to raise people, to bring them to honour. 
Considering the fact that God has power and that He has an enemy, you could ask yourself: Is God concerned with the devil?
Do they have a relationship of enmity, a fighting relationship, in which God says: “I am the stronger one, so take that into account, I am all-powerful.”
Or do they have a kind of armed peace,  whereby God says to Satan: “I have to admit that something went wrong. OK, you can be Lord of the darkness, but I am Lord of the Kingdom of light and you are not allowed to touch my Kingdom."
Can you imagine such a thing, that God would say: ‘Well, every now and then you can make a raid, OK. If you want to get at my friend Job for a while, OK, but don’t touch his life.”
I can’t imagine such a thing. Can you?
Is there actually enmity between God and the devil?
Yes there is, in the sense that light and darkness cannot go together, that they hate each other. In that sense they are opposed to one another and they are mutually exclusive.
Because, where the light shines, darkness has to flee.
That is a law in the natural world and also in the spiritual world.
But is there enmity beyond that?
I think that things which are so infinitely far removed from one another, have no relationship with one another, not even a fighting relationship.
 
Yet, according to the bible, there is enmity between man and the devil.
God even has appointed man to be the enemy, the opponent of the devil. Read it in Gen. 3:15. God says to the serpent: “I will set enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring.”
That sounds logical, because man is approachable for the darkness, for the devil.
Man has been appointed to be the enemy of the serpent, not as his victim, but as opponent of the devil.
He is the one who has to stop Satan: ‘I will tread down the adversary under your feet’, says God and ‘I am waiting until my enemies have been made to a footstool for My feet.’
 
Somebody may ask: “Well, but according to the Book of Revelation, will there not be a tremendous battle, a measuring (trial) of strengths, in which God will at last show all He can do, by throwing the devil with peals of thunder and great force into the abyss?”
If you read Revelation carefully, especially chapter 19, you will see that it actually happens a bit differently.
You read there that God finally says: “That is the task of man.”
For how is the beast from the abyss removed?
By the rider on the white horse and all the riders following him, with their white robes, undefiled and holy.
And the rider is called: ‘Faithful and Trustworthy’, and ‘Word of God’ and from His mouth comes that sword which conquers all the peoples, the adversaries, - the spiritual adversaries is what is meant here -.
It is not God who with a great show of power is going to bring peace and order.
Jesus and His people are doing that, they are able to conquer the evil one.
That is not a tremendous measuring of power with enormous clouds of smoke from which finally Jesus and his people will appear victoriously.
Jesus and his people are coming as riders on horses, riding!
That is a picture and they are having the Word of God as their swords.
And the enemy is smitten by this, completely brought down.
And the beast is taken and thrown into the abyss even before he has had a chance to fight a war.
The inner power, the light that is within Jesus and his people, that does it.
I think that you can compare this with the things that happened during the time that Jesus walked on earth.
Him is given all authority, not only to forgive sin, but also authority over evil spirits.
He does not have battles with them.
His authority is seen in that he only speaks one word and the evil spirits leave.
Why? Because darkness and light have nothing in common.
There are situations in which they feel the light coming towards them and they already start to scream, just because Jesus is coming close to them.
“What do you have to do with us, Son of the most high God? Have you come to torment us before time?”
That is what the evil spirits cry out through the mad person at Gadara.
And they flee just for the light even.
I think that this is the ultimate authority, the power of God and of God’s Kingdom, full of light, a light that works as a consuming fire on all that is darkness.
 
This is how it is written in the bible, that God says: ”It is your task, the task of Jesus and his church to cause that darkness shall be ultimately and definitely removed from the whole creation.” 
And the people who follow Jesus are those who have answered the call which is recorded just before that in Revelation 18:5, ‘ Get out of her, move out of Babylon, my people. Move out of Babylon so that you will not receive her plagues.’  
What is Babylon? It is the Greek name for Babel.
And what is Babel?
It is a big town, known from history, where the people decided to build a big tower ‘ to climb up to heaven’ as they said.
Why did they want to do that? What was pushing them ahead? Power!!!
The beginning of Babel is power, you can read that in Genesis 10:10.
Who founded Babel? That is Nimrod.
And what does the bible say about Nimrod?
He was the first ruler, the first mighty one on earth. (Gen.10:8)
And the first town he founded was Babel.
He built Nineve as well, but the first one was Babel.
So the root, the beginning of Babel is power and that is why they say ‘let us climb up to heaven, so that nothing will be impossible for us anymore.’ 
That is what is behind Babel.
No wonder that the king of Babel put up a huge monstrosity of an image of himself with the command that everybody had to kneel down before it.
It is a world of thought of course.
It is easy to say that ‘ Babel, that is the false church? Let us have a look around. Where do we have a false church?’
I think that it is better to have a good look at ourselves, because God doesn’t speak to unbelievers but to his own people when He says that they have to move out of Babylon. Babylon is a mind-set, a way of thinking, a way of believing.
It is in your mind in as far as thoughts are led by principles of power.
It is in you mind in as far as you connect God with principles of power.
‘Hallowed be your name’, is what Jesus teaches us to pray.
That means: You must set God’s name and His being free from all that is darkness and the execution of power.
 
The bible describes two kingdoms and the clash between them. The battle between on one hand the kingdom that is based on love and respect, the kingdom of God, the kingdom of light, and on the other hand the kingdom that is based on power and force and violence.
Those are the controversies that have to come to a climax and revelation in the Book of Revelation, and they are the main theme of the bible and certainly of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
You can see that controversy throughout the bible, but it comes to a head in the ministry of Jesus.
Jesus says in Matth.11:12 “the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing and forceful men lay hold of it.”
Forceful men lay hold of it.
They take it, try to bring it under their power.
They are trying to infiltrate into your mind with other thoughts about God, they try to colour our thinking with the god-image that shows God as the God who is so great, mighty and powerful.
And then it is still called kingdom of God and it is still called the Gospel.
But then it should become a kingdom under powerful rulers,  where men of violence have control. And they order that in churches and meetings, the leaders should be in control of the flock, instead of being there to serve the sheep.
And those sheep have to listen very well and obey wat is commanded from above, by these leaders, because the leaders are a kind of supreme being, not the real supreme being, but stemming from it, a kind of supreme being that commands what to do and what to believe.
That is how you recognise rulers.
They do not look like the real Leader, Jesus,  who has given everything to serve man, He, who also says: “He who is the most, the highest in my kingdom, is the one who is everybody’s servant.”
 
This kind of thinking can be implanted in your own mind.
If I try to push through my own will, I am exercising power.
If I want to get my right at any cost, I am exercising power.
If I act the part of the one who has been maltreated and blame others and I say that they have to put this right, I am in the process of manipulating them and exercising power
It looks as if you are weak, but you can control others this way.
It is in your mind, it is ‘power-thinking’.
And the question is: ‘in how far is it still penetrated in my thinking, in my mind, in in what I say and in my actions? In how far is it in my thinking about God’, because those two things usually go together.
If the image I have of God is still more or less saturated with power and force, it will surely be obvious and manifest itself in the way I think about myself and in my relationships with other people.
This will happen almost, without fail, because it is a matter of thinking and everything starts in your mind.
I would like to say: “let us move out of there, move completely out of Babylon, out of that way of thinking and let us concentrate not on: ‘how great is God’, but on ‘in which way is God great’. Then we will experience the real atmosphere of His Kingdom .
 
 
 
PRAYER
Father, I want to thank you that You are showing yourself to us as you really are.
I am sure there are still many other things of which you say: “I cannot show them to you now, you are not yet ready for them, but the time will come.”
Lord, we are growing in our relationship with you, because the picture of who you really are, becomes clearer and clearer to us.
Thank you that you have entrusted us with that mystery, because that is what it is: a mystery. Thank you that you have entrusted us with Yourself. Thank You, that You show us who you really are.
There are things that cause us to be quiet. It is so wonderful to know that it is a joy for You as well, to walk with us, that it makes a big difference to you – may be as big as heaven, that we want to walk with You.
Lord, I pray, that we may deal with this in all sensitivity and humility, that we may continue to sanctify Your name So that You will receive the place in our life, the lives of the people that You want to save. Because that is what You want : You want us to be saved! Thank You for your work
 
Amen