Ready to build? Let's get building a firm foundation!
“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of – throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”
I love that quote from C.S. Lewis because it’s so true! We’ve been preparing and building and toiling over these little cottages for ourselves, but God has a much bigger plan – he really is making us into that palace! Today, the first day of our rebuild, we’re focusing on who God is. That may seem incredibly basic, but the truth is that so many of our seemingly unbreakable habits and guilt actually come from a misunderstanding of who God actually is. He’s God the Father, not The Godfather, and today we’re diving deeper into the truth of who our father is!
Verses:
Psalm 46:1
God is our refuge and strength, always ready to help in times of trouble
1 John 4:8
…God is love
1 Corinthians 13:4-7
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.
Now. Try reading that again and replacing the word
love with the word
God. Because God is love, and if that’s true, then God must be all the things that love is!
For more scriptures on who God is,
Click Here
Quote:
“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”―
A.W. Tozer
“Grace means that there isn’t anything you can do to make God love you any less. What will drive you crazy is the discovery that there isn’t anything you can do to make him love you any more, either.” ―
(Hustling God by Craig Barnes).
Song:
How He Loves Us – David Crowder Band
(Other songs you might be moved by:
This Is Our God by Chris Tomlin,
Come As You Are by Crowder)
Action:
Stop trying so hard to “do all the right things” to get God to love you. Stop trying to earn it! If you could earn it, then the cross and Christ’s sacrifice are cheapened. Today, just sit and ask God to show you how much he loves you. If there are times in your life when you thought he wasn’t there, I want you to ask Him today to show you where He was in those times. Once we see that He’s truly never left us or abandoned us, we can start to accept and live in the love He pours out on us every day. He really is there to help you through your days!
When you finish this ReStart week I highly recommend reading the “Red Letters” in the Bible. The red letters are the words that Jesus spoke and some Bibles will highlight all his spoken words by putting them in red text. If you don’t have a Bible, or yours doesn’t have red letters, you can go to www.biblegateway.com and in the preferences add “red letters”. The reason I suggest that you do this is because in Colossians 1:15 we are told that, “Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.” so if we want to know God better we need to know Jesus.
Please don’t skip this last step. Watch this video.
Additional Reading:
The Reason for God by Tim Keller (specifically Chapters 9, 10, and 11)
Pursuit of God by AW Tozier
Raggamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning
