Pastor's Notes - February 2008

Here we are at the shortest month of the year. It's interesting how the shortest month of the year can often seem the longest to those of us living in Michigan! This month we will begin a sermon series on the attributes of God. I hope that you don't find the idea of this subject boring or to heavy. I believe that it is actually very practical. If we are going to love God and serve Him, we need to know Him. I'd like to quote a part of the introduction to a sermon given by the great C. C. Spurgeon back in 1855. I believe that he capsulated well the importance of studying about God.

There is something exceedly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the Divinity. It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep that our pride is drowned in its infinity...No subject of contemplation will tend more to humble the mind, it also expands it. He, who often thinks of God, will have a larger mind than the man who simply plods around his narrow globe...The most excellent study for expanding the whole soul, is the science of Christ, and Him crucified, and the knowledge of the Godhead in the glorious Trinity. Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man, as devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of Deity. And, whilst humbling and wxpanding, this subject is eminently consolatory. Oh, there is, in contemplating Christ, a balm for every wound; in musing on the Father, there is a quietus for every grief; and in the influnce of the Holy Ghost, there is a blasam for every sore. Would you lose your sorrow? Would you drown your cares? Then go plunge yourself in the Godhead's deepest sea; be lost in His immensity; and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated. I know of nothing which can so comfort the soul; so calm the swelling billows of sorrow and grief; so speak peace to the winds of trial, as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead. It is to that subject I invite you..

(quoted in J. I. Packer, Knowing God, Intervarsity Press: Downers Grove, Illinois, 1973)

I Look forward to searching God's Word to get to know Him better. I hope you are looking forward to that as well.