Category Archives: Faithfulness

God’s Compassion and Faithfulness (Psa 119.156)

Leave a reply

Great are thy tender mercies, O Lord:
Quicken me according to thy judgments (Psa 119.156).

A well-founded hope for the future seems in short supply these days. Just last night, a mother in New York seems to have deliberately driven her van with all four of her children aboard into the Hudson river after a domestic dispute. Only her ten-year-old son escaped drowning and was able to tell the authorities what had happened.1 Who knows exactly what were her motives? Still, she clearly did not have a well-founded hope for the future.
Continue reading →

My Covenant God (Psa 119.94)

Leave a reply

I am thine, save me;
For I have sought thy precepts (Psa 119.94).

It is superficial to ask a stranger, “Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?” If you are astute, you already know the answer, no matter whom you ask. Everyone has a “personal relationship” with Christ! Both parties are persons, and they are relating to each other in some personal way. Unbelievers are Christ’s enemies (Rom 5.10; 8.7; Col 1.21), and most would be shocked to hear that he is their enemy as well (Lam 2.5; Isa 63.10; Rev 19.11-13). That is very personal, and it exposes the sinner’s desperate need for reconciliation on both sides. God’s anger toward them must be appeased, and theirs for him replaced by grace with love. On the other hand, believers are Christ’s friends—another kind of personal relationship (John 15.13-14). A better question would be, “Do you have a special relationship with Jesus Christ?,” that is, “Does he love you more than others, and do you love him in return?”
Continue reading →

God’s Enduring Faithfulness (Psa 119.90)

Leave a reply

Thy faithfulness is unto all generations:
Thou hast established the earth, and it abideth (Psa 119.90).

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) announced that “God is dead,” by which he expressed his belief that the idea of God had been so generally rejected that it no longer remained relevant as the basis for morality or explaining the meaning of life. The “God is dead” concept was popularized in America during the 1960’s and taken a step further—that not only the idea of God, but God himself, had truly died. The fruit of this kind of intellectual perversity is nihilism, a philosophy that ethical values do not exist objectively but are falsely invented, and that life is utterly without meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value.1 Any right-thinking person shudders to consider the implications of all this for society. Indeed, this kind of atheism has already produced injustice and violence on a grand scale throughout the twentieth century.
Continue reading →