Of God and His Good News
How does a right view of God shape our lives?
Impassibility and Holiness
The impassibility of God is God’s immunity to the passions of life, "without body, parts, or passions". This is better understood when contrasted with the passibility of humans. Glad that’s cleared up!
Okay, fine I’ll say it another way. Humans are vulnerable to passions, the emotions of our hearts involuntarily carried to and fro by every single thing that comes our way. We are quickly stirred to excitement, sadness, apathy, anger, by a direct real stimulation or even an internal imaginary one. To put it another way, we are fickle but God is not.
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning” -James 1:17
Why is this practical? It’s practical because it means God doesn’t change His demeanor towards you. When you feel far away, God is not. When you fear God is certainly angry with you (if you are in Christ), know He has made His face to shine on you in His Son Jesus Christ. For those who are not in Christ it means that no measure of sincerity or force may cause God’s holiness to move an inch in our favor. The avenue for God’s love and benevolence has been and always will be through the Promise, the Messiah, the God-man Jesus Christ’s substitutionary death to atone for our sins and resurrection for our justification.
This topic was brought up at our training last week as we discussed which of God’s attributes are easiest or hardest for us to grasp. The impassibility is certainly up there. Another practical one is God’s holiness. Nobody fusses about His goodness or His love, but His justice and wrath invoked by His holiness causes all kinds of problems for us. It means God has standards, rules, commands. We, in our fallen state, seek to violate those boundaries. Understanding this helps us be more faithful in our worship, but also in the work of evangelism — which was the topic of Sunday’s sermon.
Check out the second article of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith for more.
IX Marks
Looking ahead a week, I am very excited to be going to Portland next weekend to join the IX Marks conference which is on discipleship. Our church is taking some folks up, and I get to take Rachel for the first time! I look forward to these events every year as a time of strong, clear, and God-glorifying teaching, worship, and fellowship. Plus they give away free books. I’m fairly certain this is as close to heaven as I’ll get. I jest. Mostly.
Conversion
This week we hit the climax of Jonah’s story which centered on the conversion of Ninevah. We examined how God’s sovereignty over conversion should frame our evangelism. If there is one thing God has called every Christian to it’s the bold and unapologetic declaration that Christ has conquered death and is King, and that we can be made right with Him through His atoning death and resurrection.
I’m confident you will be encouraged by it.
Prayer Requests
Pray for wisdom for our church (RBC) as our care team met Sunday to discuss our needs. We have quite a few members who are aging and carrying the complications of bodies that aren’t meant to last forever. We want to love them well where they’re at.
Praise report for Marian who had the back surgery. She is the owner and counselor at Avodah Therapy and member of our church. The surgery went super! She’s in recovery at home and probably facing the hardest part of all this, resting for 6ish weeks. Pray for her!
A sister in the church (RBC) is raising money for her mission trip to Africa. Please pray for her trip, that it is spiritually beneficial for her and the people she will minister to. Also, consider donating to her labor here: https://www.childrentolove.org/ under give > give now > team member support > Grace Averill in the memo.
Update: I mentioned Dale last week in my newsletter. One of our dear sisters and planting partner Gerry Roe read it and stopped by the same location and met him! She got to visit with him some. So encouraging to see how things get around.
