Thinking about God

God Hides His Face

Psalm 30:7

By your favor, O  Lord,you made my g mountain stand strong;you h hid your face;I was i dismayed.

God Hides…

When things are wonderful

Psalm 30

1 I will s extol you, O  Lord, for you have drawn me upand have not let my foes t rejoice over me.2 O  Lord my God, I u cried to you for help,and you have v healed me.3 O  Lord, you have brought up my soul from w Sheol;you restored me to life from among those who x go down to the pit. 1

4  Sing praises to the  Lord, O you y his saints,and z give thanks to his holy name. 1

5  a For his anger is but for a moment,and b his favor is for a lifetime. 1

c Weeping may tarry for the night,but d joy comes with the morning.

God Hides…

When we are self-reliant

Psalm 30

6  As for me, I said in my e prosperity,“I shall never be f moved.”

God Stops Hiding…

When we depend on Him again.

Psalm 30

8 To you, O  Lord, I cry,and j to the Lord I plead for mercy:9 “What profit is there in my death 1

if I go down to the pit? 2

Will k the dust praise you?Will it tell of your faithfulness?10  l Hear, O  Lord, and be merciful to me!O  Lord, be my helper!”11  You have turned for me my mourning into m dancing;you have loosed my sackclothand clothed me with gladness,12 that my n glory may sing your praise and not be silent.O  Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever!

God Hides…

His Wisdom and Plans

1 Cor. 2

6 Yet among e the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not f a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age g who are doomed to pass away. 7 But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God h which God decreed before the ages for our glory. 8 None of i the rulers of this age understood this, for j if they had, they would not have crucified k the Lord of glory. 9 But, as it is written, l “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,nor the heart of man imagined,what God has m prepared n for those who love him”—

God Reveals Secrets to His Children

1 Cor. 2

10 these things o God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even p the depths of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts q except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now r we have received not s the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. 13 And we impart this t in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit u interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. 1

Rom. 16

25 Now to him who is able to strengthen you k according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ l according to the revelation of the mystery m that was kept secret for n long ages 26 but o has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God p to bring about the obedience of faith— 27 to q the only wise God r be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen.

Jer. 31

31 "Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. 33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more."

God’s Biggest Secret?

Col. 1

24 Now j I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh k I am filling up l what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions m for the sake of his body, that is, the church, 25  n of which I became a minister according to o the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, 26  p the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. 27  q To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are r the riches of the glory of p this mystery, which is Christ in you s the hope of glory.

And that is enough to raise our thoughts to what may happen when the redeemed soul, beyond all hope and nearly beyond belief, learns at last that

she has pleased Him whom she was created to please. There will be no room for vanity then. She will be free from the miserable illusion that it is her doing. With no taint of what we should now call self-approval she will most innocently rejoice in the thing that God has made her to be, and

the moment which heals her old inferiority complex for ever will also drown her pride deeper than Prospero’s book. Perfect humility dispenses with modesty. If God is satisfied with the work, the work may be satisfied with itself; “it is not for her to bandy compliments with her Sovereign.”

CS Lewis

It is written that we shall “stand before” Him, shall appear, shall be inspected. The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only

possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination, shall find approval, shall please God. To please God...to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness...to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist

delights in his work or a father in a son—it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.

Weight of Glory

CS Lewis