Welcome back to the Winter Bible Study, a time in the offseason to reflect and spend in God’s Word. The passage we are using this year is short but contains so much for us to reflect on. We are looking at three areas; Be still, Know, and God. This week we continue to look at the big subject, I Am God. What does it mean to be God? Greetings in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Psalm 46:10a; NLT; Be still, and know that I am God.
As we challenge ourselves to learn how to be still and know God, what do we need to know about God? We have explored God as Creator and God’s existence as the Trinity; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. There are a couple of areas I want to cover before we conclude our study; God’s love for us, His creation, and God’s provision for forgiveness and restoration of our relationship with Him. I believe that will give us a good, basic understanding of God.
The most familiar passage that comes to mind about God’s love for us is John 3:16.
John 3:16; NLT; “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
Love isn’t a common subject in the garage area, but we can talk about passion. We have seen racers express a passion that enabled them to accomplish things thought impossible. I have come to admire the passion that racers have and the willingness to do almost anything to race.
That same passion exists in Jesus, He has a passion for His creation and he was willing to die for us to restore our relationship with God. A few years back Mel Gibson made a film to depict that, The Passion of the Christ. This is a powerful movie that helps us understand the sacrifice Christ made and the love and passion that motivated Him to accomplish that.
If you look at our race uniforms you will see His last words uttered from the cross; “It is finished”. Christ completed the first part of the task he came to earth to do, make a sacrifice to cover the sins of man. I still am amazed when I read this scripture;
Romans 5:8; NLT; But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.
As we discussed last week Jesus is characterized in Scripture as a servant, He came to serve, not to be served. Serving others sacrificially is born out of love. Yes, we can serve with the wrong motives; what’s in it for me, selfishness, but that is not the service that love motivates.
Philippians 2:6-8; NLT; Though he (Jesus) was God, he did not think of equality with God
as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.
The racing world is centered on one thing, performance. Our value and importance is hinged on how we perform. When we win, we are on the top of the world, but let the results falter and changes are made, jobs are lost, lives are redirected and devalued. As long as you perform well you are of value.
God does not look at things that way. We are his creation and our value is determined by Him. We are the crowning of creation. He loves us so much He made a provision for our sins to be forgiven. Christ accomplished that on the cross. Nothing can separate us from God and His love for us in Christ Jesus. Romans 8 is a wonderful chapter that helps us understand our value to God, I’d encourage you to take a moment and read it this week.
Romans 8:35; NLT; Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love?
Romans 8:38-39; NLT, And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Love is lavished on us from a gracious and merciful God. He made provision for restoration of the relationship he wants to have with us. Don’t be confused, it was because God loved us, not the other way around.
1 John 4:9-10; God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.
We sometimes get confused into thinking we have the power to initiate, restore and maintain a relationship with God. That is not true. We have believed a lie that we can be good enough to stand in God’s presence. The Word says that no matter how good we think we are we all have fallen short of the glory of God, and for that the wages of sin is death, eternal separation from God.
Simply, man is corrupted by the desire to serve himself. Pursuing that desire leads to all kinds of difficulties that we cannot overcome. We are on the road to death and destruction. God gives us another path to consider. He extends to us the path that leads to eternal life in heaven with him.
Romans 10:9; NLT; If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
That leads us into next week, forgiveness and restoration.
Run the race in such a way as to win, throw off everything that hinders and focus on Jesus. Until next time, remember God loves you and Jesus is Lord over Auto Racing! God Bless. Remember, that your prayerful support and donations help us continue this ministry. Thank You.
