Wednesday, June 3, 2009

The Wonder of Our Self-Sufficient God!

Gen 1:1 – “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Have you ever stopped to contemplate or mediate on that sentence? It is so rich and full that I don’t know if we could ever wring the fullness of what it is saying to us in a lifetime. What does this really mean? It means that there was a time when God lived alone in the unity of His nature. He was complete and He was happy. Most human beings are social creatures and it is extremely difficult for most people to be alone for lengthy periods of time. We crave, need, and thrive off of the company or the society of other people. As a matter of fact, one form of discipline or punishment that we impose on people is “forcing them to be alone.” We impose this practice on very young children by sending them from our presence to their rooms, or to the corner, or to a designated place where they can not interact with the presence of others and they are “alone.” We punish prisoners with time in the “box” or what is humanely called “solitary confinement.” How long did God exist before He chose to reveal His glorious and majestic character? Of course they answer is that He existed eternally. The next question to contemplate is how long is eternity? Stop, and at some point attempt to contemplate God existing alone in His nature for eternity. It is mind blowing. Once you have tried to comprehend the fact that God existed with absolutely no beginning for what we can only call "forever", think about the fact that … …there was no heaven where His glory was manifested …there were no angels to sing his praise and worship …there was no universe to uphold by the power of His word …there was no earth to engage his attention …there was nothing- no one but God – not for a day, or a month, or a year, or even an age, but from everlasting! Through a past eternity God was alone. He was self-contained – He had everything that He “needed.” God has always been everything that He is, and has always had everything that "makes" Him God. It is absolutely impossible to add to God in anyway at all. He was self-sufficient – He needed nothing. God did not lack in any capacity. He was self-satisfied – He was totally happy and pleased. He did not need anything! If heaven, angels, a universe, an earth, or even mankind had been necessary to complete God in any way, they would have been spoken into existence from eternity past. The creating of them did not add one thing to the essential nature of God. His essential nature and glory can not be added to or subtracted from! Next time you are alone, take some time and contemplate the solitariness of God in which there was an eternity past in which God lived alone. In this “aloneness” He was completely sufficient, completely satisfied, and completely self-contained.

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