To Him who alone does great wonders, for His faithfulness is everlasting. (Psalm 136:4).
No one but our God can do the wondrous things He does because…
…no one is eternally existent like He is
…no one is self-sufficient like He is
…no one knows what He knows
…no one loves like He loves
…no one has the strength He has
…no one is as faithful as He is
…no one gets the final word as He does
God uses anything He needs to accomplish what He wants to happen.
Sometimes for correcting us.
Sometimes for redirecting world events.
Sometimes to express His lovingkindness.
But always for His glory.
Elihu reminded Job, “Whether for correction, or for His world, or for lovingkindness, He causes it to happen” (Job 37:13).
How good it is to trust the One who is All-knowing, All-powerful, and All-loving!
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I love the simple but utterly profound statement the angel Gabriel leaves with Mary. Listen to it from different biblical translations:
“No word”—not the single dot of an “i” or the cross of a “t” will be missing.
The God who never slumbers—the Omnipotent One, the Omniscient One—superintends every single word He has spoken.
It is His word: “No word from God will ever fail.” It is not the way I desire it to be, or the way culture wants it to be, but it is the way the All-Loving, All-Powerful One has already determined it is going to be.
The plans God has for me are for His glory. He is working all things out to bring to completion what He has declared.
God’s words never fail, but they always prevail. It doesn’t matter how dark, hopeless, or even impossible it may seem, His plan always triumphs!
When I have God’s word on it, I can confidently say, “Worry, be gone! Striving, cease! Doubt, you are a liar! I belong to the One who has spoken His word. I will rest assured in Him until His word prevails. I say as Mary replied to Gabriel, ‘May it be to me as you have said’” (Luke 1:38).
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I know you want to lash out against those evil people who come at you—just to say something that will “put them in their place.”
I get it. I feel like that at times too.
But pause.
Think about the last rain storm that came your way. The rain beat down on your roof and the wind blew against the walls of your house. You knew that there was no reason to yell at the rain because you were safe in your house. You also knew that yelling at the wind and the rain wouldn’t do a thing to it.
Isaiah describes the breath of ruthless, wicked people as “a rain storm against a wall.” The wicked may rain on you, but you have an unshakable house.
Recall the words of Jesus—
Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. (Matthew 7:24-25)
When you abide in Jesus—when His words are the foundation of your life—you are safe and secure. There is no reason to fret about the breath of the ruthless, there is no reason to lash out at them. In fact, there might not be any reason to speak to them at all.
The stormy breath of the wicked will eventually give out. Their power has a limit. But you are secure inside the Limitless One, the Omnipotent One! The One who is eternal will never run out of strength and love for you.
Let the evildoers rage, but you can save your breath. Instead of using your breath to respond to their howling words, use your breath to praise the One who holds you securely forever!
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…the Lord blesses His people with peace (Psalm 29:11).
Please forgive me for the use of so many exclamation points in this post, but it’s the only way I can even begin to come close to portraying the awesomeness of our God!
What brings peace to God’s people? David says it is the glimpse of God’s awesome power—
Count all of the ways God is awesome! Give Him praise that is equally great! Tremble at His weighty, majestic holiness! Be filled with the awe of His strength! And let this bring you peace.
Why?
Because this awesome, glorious, omnipotent, majestic, powerful, unrivaled, holy God wants to be in a relationship with you! He cares about you! He will unleash His power against any enemy that comes against you! What brings peace to your trembling soul? A glimpse of this awesome God!
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One God! one Majesty! 
One definition of a Christian mystic is someone who engages in deep, prayerful pondering of the nature of God, as He is revealed in the Scriptures, and then emerges from those intimate encounters to share with us what he or she has learned. I would put A.W. Tozer in this category, especially in his book The Knowledge Of The Holy—The Attributes of God: Their Meaning in the Christian Life.
Tozer himself described the Christian mystic more fully than I could in his book The Christian Book Of Mystical Verse. In that book, Tozer shared some poetic verses from some of his favorite mystical thinkers. He noted, “The hymns and poems found here are mystical in that they are God-oriented; they begin with God, embrace the worshipping soul, and return to God again.”
In The Knowledge Of The Holy, Tozer takes us on his own personal journey into the immeasurable depths of God’s greatness. Whereas many theologians tend to focus on one attribute of God at a time, Tozer has a God-given ability to help us see all of God’s attributes operating in their infinite fullness.
Even as Tozer plunges deep into the attributes of God’s self-existence, self-sufficiency, omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, love, mercy, justice, grace, and sovereignty, he reminds us, “Because God is immutable He always acts like Himself, and because He is a unity He never suspends one of His attributes in order to exercise another.”
This is not a book you can ready lightly or casually, or even quickly. This is a book that invites you to read slowly and reverently each of the short chapters, and then to meditate long on the immenseness of an All-Powerful, All-Loving God who wants to reveal Himself to you.
The Knowledge Of The Holy is a soul-expanding book!
All things being are essential to the vast ubiquity of God;
This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Charles Spurgeon. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Spurgeon” in the search box to read more entries.
You Cannot Hide Your Heart From God
Hell and destruction are before the Lord: how much more then the hearts of the children of men? (Proverbs 15:11 KJV)
God knows the burial places of all His people. He notes as well the resting place of the man who is buried tombless and alone as the man over home a mighty mausoleum has been raised. He saw the traveler who fell in the barren desert, whose body became the prey of vultures and whose bones were bleach in the sun. He saw the mariner, who was wrecked far out at sea and over whose corpse no dirge was ever wailed, except the howling of the winds and the murmuring of the wild waves. God knows the thousands who have perished in battle, unnumbered and unnoticed; the many who have died alone amid dreary forests, frozen seas, and devouring snowstorms; all these and the places of their sepulcher. God has marked that silent grotto within the sea, where pearls lie deep, where now the shipwrecked one is sleeping, as the death place of one of His redeemed. …
Yes, hell, horrible as it is and veiled in many clouds and covered over with darkness, is naked before the vision of the Most High. There is the grand fact stated: “Hell and destruction are before the Lord.” After this the inference seems to be easy: “How much more, then, the hearts of the children of men?” …
God who sees death and hell sees our hearts, for they are far less extensive. … Scarcely have we time enough to tell the story before it comes to its end. Surely, then, God may easily understand the history of a man, when He knows the history of the monarchies of death and hell. [see Psalm 44:21; Jeremiah 23:24; Revelation 2:23] …
God does not judge by the appearance of a man’s great heart, or the outside appearance of a good heart. But He puts it in the scales and weighs it; puts His own Word in one scale and the heart in the other. He knows the exact weight. He knows whether we have grace in the heart, which makes us good weight, or only presence in the heart, which makes us weigh light when put into the scale. He searches the heart in every possible way. …
Oh, you may endeavor as much as you can to hide your faults from God. But beyond a doubt, He will discover you.
From God, The All-Seeing One
When—not if—God looks at your heart, what will He find?
Yes, we should pray—Search me, O God, show me anything that is offensive to You [Psalm 139:23-24]—but then we must repent and ask forgiveness when the offense is revealed. No excuses, no covering up!
This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Charles Spurgeon. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Spurgeon” in the search box to read more entries.
God Will Not Acquit The Wicked
The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked [Nahum 1:3]. The Lord is slow to anger because He is great in power. ‘How say you so?’ says one. I answer: He who is great in power has power over himself. And he who can keep his own temper down and subdue himself is greater than he who rules the city, or can conquer nations. … When God’s power does restrain Himself, then it is power indeed—the power to curb power. The power that binds omnipotence is omnipotence surpassed. God is great in power, and therefore does He keep in His anger. … We bless God that the greatness of His power is just our protection! He is slow to anger because He is great in power. …
I have blotted out like a thick cloud your transgressions, and like a cloud your sins [Isaiah 44:22]. Not of one of all those sins that have been pardoned was pardoned without punishment. Do you ask me why and how such a thing as that can be the truth? I point you to yonder dreadful sight on Calvary. The punishment that fell not on the forgiven sinner fell there. … Sin is still punished, though the sinner is delivered. …
And now we trace this terrible attribute to its source. Why is this? We reply, God will not acquit the wicked, because He is good. What? Does goodness demand that sinners will be punished? It does. The judge must condemn the murderer because he loves his nation. …
Mercy, with her weeping eyes (for she has wept for sinners), when she finds they will not repent, looks more terribly stern in her loveliness than justice in all his majesty. She drops the white flag from her hand and says, “No. I called and they refused. I stretched out my hand and no man regarded. Let them die, let them die” and that terrible word from the lip of mercy’s self is harsher thunder then the very damnation of justice. Oh yes, the goodness of God demands that men should perish if they will sin. …
Can you by humble faith look to Jesus and say, “My substitute, my refuge, and my shield; You are my rock, my trust, in You I do confide”? Then, beloved, to you I have nothing to say except never be afraid when you see God’s power. For now that you are forgiven and accepted, now that by faith you have fled to Christ for refuge, the power of God need no more terrify you than the shield and sword of the warrior need terrify his wife or his child.
From Mercy, Omnipotence, And Justice
Have you looked in faith to the work Jesus did on Calvary so that your sins could be forgiven? If so, wonderful! You have nothing to fear from God’s justice.
If not, I plead with you—look again. God’s mercy has been extended to you at least long enough for you to read this, but His justice must fall. Don’t procrastinate another moment: Allow the acquittal of your sins that Jesus purchased with His blood to be yours this very moment!
Craig T. Owens 