Category Archives: God

Tozer on God’s self-sufficiency

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Here are some extracts from A.W. Tozer on God’s self-sufficiency.

A voluntary relation

‘God has a voluntary relation to everything He has made, but He has no necessary relation to anything outside of Himself. His interest in His creatures arises from His sovereign good pleasure, not from any need those creatures can supply nor from any completeness they can bring to Him who is complete in Himself.’

We must learn to think differently about God

‘We must reverse the familiar flow of our thoughts and try to understand that which is unique, that which stands alone as being true in this situation and nowhere else.…

God the Judge

Walking With Giants Posted on by

J.I. Packer writes:

Do you believe in divine judgment? By which I mean, do you believe in a God who acts as our Judge?

Many, it seems, do not. Speak to them of God as a Father, a friend, a helper, one who loves us despite all our weakness and folly and sin, and their faces light up; you are on their wavelength at once. But speak to them of God as Judge and they frown and shake their heads.…

Ten things you should know about God’s presence

Walking With Giants Posted on by

1. God is immanent because he is transcendent

The Lord is “God in the heavens above (transcendent) and on the earth beneath (immanent)” (Josh 2:11).  God’s transcendence means that there is no deficiency in him that creation satisfies.  Rather, God comes among us out of the abundance of who he is.  He draws near because of our need (Isa 57:15), not his.

2. The Bible emphasizes God’s manifest presence, not only his omnipresence

God is everywhere (Psa 139:5-12; 1 Kings 8:27), and God is here. …

Unmasking our self-sufficiency

Walking With Giants Posted on by

One of the big differences between God and ourselves is that he is self-sufficient, having no need of anything outside of himself (Acts 17:24f), whereas we have a deep need both of God and of one another (on this latter point, see 1 Cor 12:21).

Jen Wilkin asks:

What are the marks of self-sufficiency in the life of the believer? How can we know when we have stopped relying on God and others? When we deny our need for God, self-sufficiency reveals itself in the following ways:

  • Prayerlessness.
…

Knowing God

Walking With Giants Posted on by

“This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (Jn 17:3).

What does it mean to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom he has sent?

Let J.I. Packer answer.

First, knowing God is a matter of personal dealing, as is all direct acquaintance with personal beings. Knowing God is more than knowing about him; it is a matter of dealing with him as he opens up to you, and being dealt with by him as he takes knowledge of you.…

The tabernacle – God’s dwelling place

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Christians sometimes regard the accounts of the tabernacle, temple and priestly service as tedious and irrelevant.  This is a mistake.  They point to a vital reality – the presence of God with his people.

The tabernacle itself is of seminal importance.  It is the first in an important series (tabernacle, temple, incarnation, church, new Jerusalem).  The account of its construction is much more detailed than that of the temple (see 1 Kings 5-8), and the tabernacle found a permanent home in the latter structure. …

Creation and the tabernacle

Walking With Giants Posted on by

As Rabbinic interpreters have long recognised, there are many echoes of the creation narrative (Genesis 1-2) in the description of the tabernacle in Exodus 25-40).

  1. ‘The Spirit of God, present at creation (Gen. 1:2) filled Bezalel and the craftsmen who created the tabernacle with creative gifts (Exod. 31:1–11).’
  2. ‘Israel made the tabernacle, even as God made the world, as a dwelling place for God (Exod. 25:8–9; Ps. 104:1–4).’
  3. ‘God instructed them to erect the tabernacle on New Year’s Day to underscore this new beginning (Exod.
…

Matthew 11:12 – “The kingdom of heaven has suffered violence”

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Matthew 11:12 “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and forceful people lay hold of it.”

(a) Forceful entry?

The NIV translation links this difficult saying with Luke 16:16 “The law and the prophets were in force until John; since then, the good news of the kingdom of God has been proclaimed, and everyone is urged to enter it.”  But it is not at all certain that both sayings are teaching the same thing.…

‘The Lost Message of Paul’ – ‘The wrath of God’

Walking With Giants Posted on by

In chapter 12 of The Lost Message of Paul, Steve Chalke deals with ‘the wrath of God’.

Chalke thinks that the idea that God is capable of wrath, or anger, is mistaken.  Three reasons are discernable.

Historical

According to Chalke, much of the responsibility for the doctrine of the wrath of God must be laid at the feet of John Calvin, who is described as brilliant but legalistic.

Calvin, it is said, ‘effectively replaced Jesus’ image of God as a loving parent with that of God as a stern, courtroom judge.’…

May we refer to God as ‘she’?

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Clearly, God is not ‘male’.  So should we not stop referring to God exclusively (or predominantly) as ‘he’?

The argument is that to refer to God with masculine language is to demean the dignity of women, to imply that they are less ‘godlike’ than men, and to perpetuate their subservient positions.

The solutions would be either to refer to God in both masculine and feminine language (in roughly equal proportions), or to use gender-neutral language when referring to the deity. …