Fully behold.

These are a couple of similarly themed excerpts from sermons by Barry Keldie. You can look up his podcasts on Itunes if you’re interested. This struck me though, not only as being truth, but as powerful and convicting truth.

“So many of us build our spirituality on personal experience alone. We credit or discredit God based on what He’s done in our lives. And God is revealed, as much as He will be revealed until He comes back, in the scriptures, not in your life, although He does work in your life. It’s the truth.

In the church today, we throw these words around, that “God told me to do this,” or “God is leading me to do this.” If God’s leading you, He wrote it down. We live in this relative, subjective, everything’s what I feel world, No. Read the book. Who is God in the book? The scriptures are external, they’re objective, they can’t be manipulated, they don’t change no matter how bad or how good your day is, scripture reads the same. No matter what culture says, no matter what presidents or kings are in power, scripture is the same. Whether you’re in joy or tragedy, scripture is the same. It’s fixed.

Hebrews 4:12 says that the word of God is living, sharper than any two edged sword. It’s able to pierce and divide soul, spirit, bone, and marrow. And what it means there is it’s able to discern you. It’s able to lay you bare, vs 13 says. And you know how he does it? The Bible in every single page is revealing God to you, that’s how it does it. Most of us read the Bible completely backwards. What does this mean for me, what does this mean for me, what does this mean for me? And the first question should be, “Where is Jesus?” “Where is God?” “Who is God in this?” Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for this. He said, “You read the scriptures searching for eternal life and you don’t see that they’re all about me.” And don’t we do that? We search the scriptures looking for some graces, some way to fix our marriage, some way to do better in our Christian living. And we miss the beauty, the glory, the majesty of God. We miss it. So God in all of His glory is condensed to a textbook. And it’s all the difference in the world of studying the stars, or being in space. We miss the beauty and the wonder and the revelation of fully beholding God.”

But, we don't have to. We can read scripture looking for God, exploring the intricacies of His character, and growing in love for Him. That's where the hope is found. In knowing that we can live among the stars.