Choose Love (4 page)

David said that truly “the heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork” (Psalm 19:1). That means God is revealed and can be seen in His creation. “The heavens declare His righteousness, and all the peoples see His glory” (Psalm 97:6). A person has to be
spiritually blind by choice
in order to not see God’s goodness and greatness.

The evidence for God is everywhere.

One of the ways God shows His love to us is in all that He has made—in His creation. It is here for
our
enjoyment and appreciation as well as His own pleasure. “Come and see the works of God; He is awesome in His doing toward the sons of men” (Psalm 66:5).

His works are evidence of His love for us.

Some people (theists) believe God is the Creator and the giver of life. Others (naturalists) believe there is no God and nothing exists outside of what is in the physical world. They say there is no spiritual world because they can’t see it. But their spiritual eyes are not open; therefore, they cannot see spiritual things. They influence others into believing God does not exist even though they cannot prove it. They say that God is a myth, a figment of imagination. They say He
is dead, not even pausing to account for the fact that if He is dead, He must have been alive, therefore He must have existed. And if He is dead, where is He buried and what happened at the funeral? They have no answers.

Some people
choose
to believe God never existed. They point to everything bad and say, “If there is a God, how could He allow all the evil in the world?” But the truth is, all the evil in the world exists because of those who
chose
to separate themselves from God and His ways. They now choose to serve evil over serving God.

God is real
. Evil is also real. We have a choice between two realities. And we must make that choice as to which one we will serve.

God, the Creator of Everything, Did Not Create Evil

God is the Creator of all things, but He did not create evil. He did create beautiful angelic beings to dwell in heaven with Him. However, the most beautiful angelic being of all created by God was an archangel called “Lucifer,” among other names. His name means “day star,” “shining one,” “light-bringer,” “sun of the morning,” and “light-bearer.” He was the luciferous one—so beautiful that he became enthralled with his own beauty. In his self-focused, self-centered, and prideful manner, he chose his own will over God’s will. He wanted to
be
God instead of
serve
God. So he rebelled against God, influencing a third of the angels to go along with him. As a result, he and they fell to earth and became Satan and his demons.

Isaiah said of Lucifer, “How you are fallen from heaven” (Isaiah 14:12).

Jesus said of Lucifer, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:18). Jesus wanted to assure His disciples that He had witnessed Satan’s fall and had now given them “authority… over all the power of the enemy” (Luke 10:19).

Before Lucifer/Satan fell, he made his pride and self-will known in five proclamations against God in Isaiah 14:13-14, all starting with “I will.” He said:

“I will ascend into heaven.”

“I will exalt my throne above the stars of God.”

“I will also sit on the mount of the congregation.”

“I will ascend above the heights of the clouds.”

“I will be like the Most High.”

He was so full of himself that his pride motivated him to make a terrible choice. As a result, he lost his position as the leader of worship in God’s kingdom because he worshipped himself instead of God. But God, as always, had the final word. He countered every threat Lucifer made, saying he could no longer claim any of the beautiful names describing him and he would end up in the lowest pit of hell. Once a beautiful created being, by his own self-will he became independent from God and fell from everything God had for him. (In Isaiah 14, Isaiah is also referring to the evil king of Babylon, who acted like the devil and is foreseeing that because of the king’s pride he will be brought down in the same way Satan was.) By choice, Satan became God’s enemy—the opposite of God—and is the source of evil in the world.

God is not the source of evil in your world or in your life. Yet when evil manifests, many people blame God for it. But it is actually God’s enemy—and yours—trying to destroy you and others. Evil does not exist because of a lack of God’s love. Evil exists because of a choice to rebel against God and reject His love.

The power of evil is real, but God’s power is far greater. Evil gains power through deception—that is, getting people to believe lies about God and reject God’s truth. The power of evil is sustained by those who choose it and support it. When you are on God’s side—when you choose to open your heart to God and receive His love—the enemy will try to influence you to believe lies about God.

Everything you don’t know about God will be used against you by the enemy of your soul
.

Read the sentence above 20 more times or until it is etched in your mind.

One of the reasons you need to know God well—
who
He is,
what
He does, and
all
He can and will do in your life—is that the enemy will try to deceive you about each of these things and tempt you into losing hope and faith in God. What follows are some of the things you need to know about God that the enemy, and the people who do his bidding, do not want you to know and will lie to you about them.

You Must Know God Created You

It is important to understand that you were not randomly spawned. God made you with a spirit and soul. You were not an accident.

David said, “
You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb.
I will praise You, for
I am fearfully and wonderfully made
; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well…
Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written
,
the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them
” (Psalm 139:13-16).

The same is true of you. God saw you as you were growing in your mother’s womb. All your days are recorded in His book of your life. One or both of your parents may have failed you, but God has not and will not. He has loved you from the beginning, and He waits for you to open up to receive His love.

The enemy may come to tell you that you are an accident—unplanned, unwanted, and without purpose—and nothing good will happen to you unless you make it happen or you sell out to him to make it happen. But quite the opposite is true. Never allow the enemy of your soul to tell you any differently.

You Must Know God’s Love Is Real

God’s love is real because
He
is real. And He is love.

Remember, God doesn’t just
have
love; He
is
love. That is who He is. And His love is there for anyone who opens up their heart to it.

Human love is like a vapor you can’t see unless someone chooses
to demonstrate it in what they say or do, but God’s love
can be
seen. When your spiritual eyes are opened, you can see manifestations of His love all over your life. Those who don’t sense God’s love don’t really know Him. Jesus said to some of those who did not receive Him, “I know you, that
you do not have the love of God in you
” (John 5:42). He recognized that they did not have God’s love in them and therefore did not really know God. Many people don’t really believe God loves them because they don’t know Him.

Do you really know that God loves you? Do you truly believe it? Do you actually feel it or sense it? Because if you don’t, He has so much more waiting for you to receive from Him.

If you
do
believe God loves you, is it personal? Do you ever doubt it? Do you see the manifestations of His love for you every day?

It’s easy to understand why people don’t recognize God’s love for them when they have been through many difficult or tragic things and are bruised, wounded, damaged, and hurt. They think,
Where is God in all this? He must not be there for me
.

The truth is, God is always where He is asked to be
.
Yes, God is everywhere
.
But the great manifestations of His love and power are only clearly seen wherever He is invited to be
.

Too many people don’t invite Him into their lives in any way and then wonder why He doesn’t do their bidding. Have you invited God to manifest Himself in your life? If not, it’s never too late.

If you have already invited God into your life, ask Him to reveal Himself to you in a new and deeper way. No matter how long we have walked with the Lord, we all continue to need greater revelation of Him and His love for us.

Don’t let the enemy—or anyone who serves God’s enemy—tell you that God and His unending love for you are not real.

You Must Know God Is Good

God is good all the time, and you can trust that—even when bad things happen
. We all know bad things happen to good people, but all of us are really only good to the degree that we allow God’s
goodness to flow into us. We keep that from happening when we resist the flow of His goodness and love to us in some way.

That’s why it is important to grow daily in our knowledge of God. We not only need to learn new things about Him—because there is always more to learn—but we must also understand new depths of the things we already know. For example, we may know that God is good, but it will be a never-ending journey of discovery as to
how
good God is. We may already know that God loves us, but we will be ever-learning that no matter how much we
think
He loves us, it is far more than we can even fathom.

I have heard too many comments from people saying something like, “I don’t know if I can believe in a god who allowed this bad thing to happen,” as if God exists according to the way we believe. We don’t have a designer god whom we design according to what we want. That would, by mere definition, not be God. The truth is, God
is
who He is
.
And we cannot alter that fact no matter what we believe.

It is the height of arrogance to think
we
can decide who God is. He already
is
. What we
do
decide is whether to believe in who He is.

“God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM’ ” (Exodus 3:14).

God is who He is, and it is up to us to decide whether to learn more about Him. We do that by spending time with Him in His Word and in prayer. The more we know
about
Him, the better we will know Him and the deeper our love for Him will grow. Just recognizing that He exists and is the God who can be known is the first step. It is not up to us to make God in our image. We are made in
His.

God is who He is, and we do not affect or change that in any way
.

We must hold steadfastly to this truth that the psalmist said about God: “I
would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the L
ORD
in the land of the living” (Psalm 27:13).

Too often we lose heart when things don’t go our way because we don’t firmly trust God and His loving-kindness toward us. God’s Word invites us to “
taste and see that the L
ORD
is good
; blessed is the man who trusts in Him!” (Psalm 34:8).

David often instructed his own soul to do the right thing. He
said, “O my soul, you have said to the L
ORD
,
‘
You are my Lord, my goodness is nothing apart from You
’ ” (Psalm 16:2).
Apart from God’s goodness poured into our lives, our goodness is limited
.

It’s not enough to only remember that God is good. We must also praise Him for His goodness. The Bible says, “The earth is full of the goodness of the L
ORD
” (Psalm 33:5). “Oh, that men would give thanks to the L
ORD
for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men!” (Psalm 107:8).

Whatever we praise God for, the enemy cannot use against us
.

God is good. Don’t let anyone tell you any differently. Whoever tries to convince you that God is not good doesn’t have your best interests at heart.

You Must Know God Is Holy

Holiness is one of God’s main attributes
.
In fact, everything about Him can be seen in the light of His love and holiness
.

We are made in God’s image, but we do not have any of His attributes without His enablement. We can only live in holiness as we are willing to separate ourselves from all that is unholy or ungodly and look to Him to fill us with Himself.

Moses said, “Who is like You, O L
ORD
, among the gods?
Who is like You, glorious in holiness,
fearful in praises, doing wonders?” (Exodus 15:11).

Hannah, a devoted servant of the Lord said, “
No one is holy like the L
ORD
,
for there is none besides You, nor is there any rock like our God” (1 Samuel 2:2).

David said, “Give unto the L
ORD
the glory due to His name;
worship the L
ORD
in the beauty of holiness
” (Psalm 29:2).