The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing.
Zephaniah 3:17 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/zep.3.17.KJV
How much do we owe the Lord in gratitude? Everything. If it weren’t for Him we wouldn’t be alive at all. If He had not seen us in the fullness of time from the very beginning, knowing that we would need His strength and His mercy in our lives…we would be lost and without hope. But God did see us and He chose each of us to come to know Him through Jesus Christ, His Son. There are so many things which we owe our thanks to God for until I couldn’t begin to list even the things which He does for me on one day, regardless of considering my life or the world around us!
God provides us with the air that we breathe and the world in which we live, yet there are many who either choose not to believe in Him or just don’t want to believe in Him and His Son. We have been given a wonderful gift through the knowledge of Jesus and His sacrifice for our sins. We should be thankful for that gift and live our lives accordingly because one day soon, He is coming back and He will be coming as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
And he said, The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; The God of my rock; in him will I trust: he is my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower, and my refuge, my saviour; thou savest me from violence. I will call on the Lord , who is worthy to be praised: so shall I be saved from mine enemies. 2 Samuel 22:2-4 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/2sa.22.2-4.KJV
Why should Christians be afraid of anything that man can do when we have a Deliverer Who is our Lord and Savior? While it is true that in today’s world there are evil men and we are experiencing evil times with diseases and wars and natural disasters happening all around us, God is still in control. He knows what is happening and He is allowing it to happen true enough, but His plan and the outcome of His plan will be glorious beyond our imagination. Consider living in squalor today but you have faith in God and in Jesus. What a wondrous joy it will be to walk the streets of purest gold one day!
Jesus said that He was going to prepare a place for us and that He would come again and take us with Him to be there in that place. We look at all of the “things” which we can have in this life and we usually think that “life couldn’t get any better than this”. But, eternity is going to be so much more than we can imagine now until it will likely be days before I can pick my jaw up from the floor! God would not have made those promises to us if He wasn’t going to fulfill them. So, we need to make sure that our life is in His hands and that we are ready when that day comes. Amen?
We who are sinners should seek God’s mercy and grace each day. We are given so many blessings that we tend to take our days and those blessings for granted. We are given another day to serve the Lord, we have food and a roof over our heads, and our health has not failed us, yet we still ask for more. God is merciful and gracious toward each of us every day but many of us don’t notice it. Truly, life is a blessing in itself but many don’t notice the blessing of it until some part of it is diminished by disease or an accident.
God loved us even while we were sinners and haven’t given our hearts or our life to Him but most don’t see it that way. Many just go about their lives complaining about how life isn’t fair and their job isn’t fair, etc. When the real problem is that Satan is keeping your life at this point so you will complain and whine about life and especially blame God for your life being so bad. When your life feels this way, seek out the One Who created life in the first place! The God of the Bible was there before the first light was shown in the universe. He flung the stars and commanded that they give their light to the Earth for seasons and for the marking of time itself. The stars are also there to prove that God did this for His glory and to bring wonder into our lives.
If the night sky was just black with a moon shining in it and the other planets in our own solar system moving around the Sun, what wonder would emerge from that? Not much I’d imagine. You can’t imagine a sky at night without stars and constellations and galaxies all around us because there has never been a time that the human race looked up and saw emptiness in the heavens. It would be too depressing and scary too. Looking out into the blackness of space and the only points of light are the planets. I don’t think it would’ve inspired us to imagine anything outside of our own solar system. There would be nothing to imagine.
God created all of the universe, as big as it is, in order to inspire us and make us wonder about a Creator that made all of those stars and galaxies and black holes and all of the nebula which can birth new stars. Our telescopes show us much more wondrous and magnificent parts of our universe than our eyes can fathom from our own planet. When you see all of these, for some of us it is a confirmation of our Creator. For some scientists it is confirmation of their theories and the complex math which can explain much of what they see. All that I want to do is to look at those stars and galaxies and be humbled by how magnificent our Creator must be that has created our eyes which can take in all of the wonders around us.
In many ways, when you think about all that is out in the vastness of the cosmos, it makes you wonder why did God put us on this little ball of dirt in our solar system? Why does He love us so much that He was willing to die on a cross in a most painful and horrific way in order to pay the penalty for our sins? Because…He is God and He loves us, that’s why. His mercy and His grace is given to us with each breath that we are given for the time that we have. What more could we need beyond life itself? A relationship with Him forever that is what we need! That is all that we truly need.
Each image in this group is a galaxy and each one has thousands of stars, yet God chose us.