Tag: hope

  • General Revelation: Why No One Can Claim They Didn’t Know

    I have a habit I did not set out to form. Most mornings, before the day gets loud, I end up outside for a few minutes. Not for any spiritual reason at first. Coffee. Fresh air. Quiet. But at some point I started noticing that the quiet was not actually quiet. Something out there was already talking.

    A bird. The light changing. The same trees that were bare a few weeks ago full again. And every time, the same thought: this did not happen by accident, and whoever is responsible for it has not stopped paying attention.

    That is not poetry. That is theology. And Scripture has been saying it since the beginning.

    God Made Sure You Would Know

    The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and the expanse is declaring the work of His hands. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. Psalm 19:1-2

    Creation has been preaching since Genesis and has not taken a day off. You do not need a seminary degree to hear it. You need to step outside.

    Job said the same thing from a very different place. He was not in a season of quiet morning coffee. He was in ruins. And still he pointed to the birds and the beasts and the earth itself and said, ask them. They know something.

    Who among all these does not know that the hand of Yahweh has done this, in whose hand is the life of every living thing, and the breath of all the flesh of man? Job 12:9-10

    This is not a soft comfort. It is a hard fact. God has made Himself known through what He made, and He did it on purpose.

    I have written about how creation points us to a God who is near and who cares for what He has made. Creation Is a Signpost

    No One Is Without Evidence

    Here is where it gets serious.

    Paul did not write Romans 1 to comfort anyone. He wrote it to close every exit.

    For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, both His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. Romans 1:20

    Without excuse. Not without opportunity. Not without enough information. Without excuse.

    From the smallest particle yet to be discovered to the edge of an expanding universe no one has mapped, God is being declared. The smaller we look, the larger the claim becomes. The further we search, the less accidental any of it is. To look at creation and conclude there is no God is not a neutral position. Scripture calls it willful. Romans 1:18 calls it suppressing the truth.

    Some Judgment Day, no one will be able to say to the LORD, I didn’t know.

    What You Do With What You Know

    General revelation, the knowledge of God available to every human being through creation, is enough to leave us without excuse. It is not enough to save us. For that, God went further. He sent His Son. He gave us His Word. He sent His Spirit to open what our own effort never could reach.

    But it starts here. Outside. Any morning. With a bird and the light changing and the quiet that is not actually quiet.

    The question creation puts to every person who has ever lived is not whether God exists. That question has already been answered. The question is what you will do with what you already know.

    Be blessed

    Kevin

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    SUMMARY

    God has embedded the knowledge of His existence and care into every corner of creation, from a bird call on a quiet morning to the expanding edge of the universe, leaving every person without excuse. General revelation is enough to condemn but not enough to save, which is why God went further and sent His Son, His Word, and His Spirit.

    TAKEAWAY

    Psalm 19, Job 12, and Romans 1 together establish that creation is not passive scenery but active testimony to God’s existence, power, and care. 

    General revelation is universal and intentional — God made sure no one would be without evidence, and Scripture calls willful blindness exactly what it is. 

    Creation leaves us without excuse but not without hope; for salvation God went further, which makes the gospel not a backup plan but the completion of what creation started.

    The importance of reading the Bible. It’s your primary truth source.

  • Tribulation Produces Perseverance

    perseverance- you dont always see what's happening

    I have a scar on my right hand from a job I worked in my twenties. I will not bore you with the details, but the short version is that I did something careless, something sharp moved faster than I expected, and the rest is biology. What I remember most is not the moment it happened. It is the weeks after, when the wound was closing but not closed, when it itched in a way that made you want to crawl out of your skin, and when the doctor told me that the itching was the tissue knitting itself back together.

    The discomfort was the healing.

    I have thought about that a lot over the years, because it is a remarkably accurate picture of what God does with suffering and our times of waiting.

    Paul does not tiptoe around this. We also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance, and perseverance, proven character, and proven character, hope (Romans 5:3-4).

    Read that slowly, because it is easy to skim past what Paul is actually claiming. He is not saying suffering is fine because it will be over eventually. He is saying suffering produces something. Actively. Right now. In you. The tribulation is not an interruption to your growth. It is the means of it. The gap is where God does His best work.

    That is not how we usually feel about the hard seasons. We forget that tribulation produces perseverance.

    We feel like we are falling behind. Like everyone else is moving and we are stuck. Like God has either forgotten where He put us or decided we can handle more than we actually can. The gap between where we are and where we thought we would be by now can feel less like a workshop and more like a waiting room with no magazines and no news on when your name will be called.

    But here is what Scripture will not let us do. It will not let us call that gap wasted time.

    Hebrews 12 puts it plainly. Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith(Hebrews 12:1-2).

    Two things in that passage that are worth sitting with. First, the race is set before us — not chosen by us, not designed to our preferences, not adjusted for our comfort level. It is set. Second, endurance is not something you summon from inside yourself. You run it with your eyes fixed on Someone outside yourself. The moment you look away from Him and start measuring the distance you have left, the legs go.

    Perseverance, in Scripture, is not optimism. It is not telling yourself it will get better and pressing on with clenched teeth. It is obedience in the dark. It is continuing to do the next right thing when you cannot see what it is producing, because you trust the One who can.

    James says it this way. Consider it all joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing (James 1:2-4).

    Perfect and complete. That is the finish line. Not comfortable. Not unscathed. Complete.

    The gap between who you are and who God is making you is not evidence that something has gone wrong. It is evidence that something is still going on. The wound is still closing. The tissue is still knitting. The discomfort you are feeling right now may be exactly that — the feeling of becoming.

    I will not tell you the hard season you are in is easy, or that it is short, or that you will understand it on this side of eternity. I cannot promise any of those things, and I would not insult you by trying.

    What I can tell you is what Scripture says. That it is not random. That God wastes nothing. That the same Jesus who is the author of your faith is also its perfecter, and He does not start things He does not intend to finish. Tribulation produces perseverance

    Keep going. Not because you can see the end. Because He can.

    Be blessed,

    Kevin

    Tim Challies – we’re not affiliated  but you might enjoy his writing

    Some thoughts on finding a good church

    Find a good church

    Live in Abbotsford? There are many good churches. This is where I attend.

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