A Revealing God - Letter From Pastor Evan
Dear Praise Family,
For the past couple of weeks, as I have been writing these emails/blog posts, I have been thinking about what would be beneficial for our church to hear each week. What is it that would be beneficial for us to read each week and wouldn’t just be another piece of mail clogging up inboxes?
As I’ve thought about this, I keep coming back to this idea of helping our church to know what we believe more deeply, beyond just knowing that “Jesus died for my sins.” While that central truth is what holds all things together, there is so much more to know about our God who has loved us and who has so graciously rescued us! So, moving forward, I’ll be writing briefly about theological terms that have an impact on how we understand our loving God so that we can grow to love Him more!
Do you remember your first love? Do you remember those feelings wrapped up in how you were going to get that special someone to notice you (without making a complete fool of yourself)? Or maybe you remember the painful side of it as you tried desperately to get someone to notice you, but they still never even knew you existed? Oh, the excitement, exhilaration, joy, delight, and complete uncertainty, anguish, torture and pain of young love!
When you want someone to notice you, the key thing is to make yourself known. Sometimes we do this subtly, like by holding a door for someone or by putting ourselves in the “right place at the right time.” And sometimes it’s more blatant, by (gulp) going up and talking to that special someone or actually mustering the courage to invite them out on a date! Either way, however you do it, the goal is to reveal yourself to the other person so that they notice you.
Often when we think about our relationship with God, we use the language that makes it seem like we found Him. But in actuality, it’s not us making ourselves known to Him, but that He has been making Himself known to us! He is constantly revealing Himself to us in two ways: general revelation and special revelation.
Have you ever looked the starry sky at night and wondered “How did this all come to be?” That is general revelation or natural revelation. God is revealing Himself through what He has created. Psalm 19:1-2 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech and night to night reveals knowledge.” In short, the beauty and the majesty of creation is meant to help us to see that there is a God. When we wonder how all of this happened to come into being, and the perfect order that we see all around is in creation, that it would point to a Creator who made it all possible!
Now it’s one thing to notice someone, but it’s quite another to know what they think about you. While it’s great if that special someone that you want to get to know knows that you exist, it’s quite another thing for them to know how you feel about them! As we think about God revealing Himself, this is called special revelation or revealed knowledge, in which God is communicating what He thinks about us as His children. Through His Word, He not only communicates that He exists, but the Word tells us what He is like (His nature and character) and, more than that, of His incredible love for us! The Bible tells us of the story of our sin and how He has loved us so much that He rescued us from sin and death! This is the Good News of the Gospel for us, communicated clearly so that we might know we are dearly loved!
Know this: God reveals Himself to us! The Creator of all things searches us out (see the parables of Luke 15) and comes to rescue us. He desires for you to know who He is, so that when we know of His great love for us, we might love Him back! What a thought the He would want to know me! Take joy in that today. Look at how He’s revealed Himself in nature and through His Word, and hear His voice calling to you today!
In Christ,
Pastor Evan