Several years ago, I heard a sermon by Steve Anderson, a field administrator with Baptist World Mission, in which he delineated seven times that the Bible states, “God is not….”

I have spent countless hours studying what the Bible says God is and how His character is revealed through His Word, but I had never considered the clear statements that declare what God is not.

Over the next three blog posts that I write for InstaEncouragements, (third Friday of each month) I plan to share with you these seven statements and how they should challenge us as believers in our walk with the Lord. Since every Word of God is true and we know all of God’s Word (including these specific statements) has been given to us for our learning, (2 Timothy 3:16) let’s see what important truths we can glean and learn from these statements.

Have you ever looked up at the night sky and just wondered in awe about the stars and all that we see there? God tells us in Psalm 8 Whom we have to thank for these wonders in the night sky!

This is a familiar psalm that I have read scores of times in my life. But recently, the Lord encouraged my heart with some new thoughts about how He reveals His glory to each of us. ​

Have you ever noticed that much of the Bible and the lessons we learn from it are centered on suffering and people’s response to suffering? It is hard to find a story in the Bible of some saint who did not endure suffering. Peter spends much of his two epistles speaking of the inevitability of suffering for God’s people.

Many people have attempted to answer the question of why God allows suffering. I believe the Bible clearly answers this question in several passages. Elizabeth Elliot, the wife of missionary martyr Jim Elliot, spoke and wrote often about the suffering God allows in our lives because she said that abundant life is only borne out of suffering and death.

​I am not going to attempt to comprehensively answer this question today, but I want to highlight one major benefit of suffering in our lives – the comfort that only comes from God!

Have you ever done a study on the attributes of God? If you have, you may have come across some big theological words like:
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• Omnipotence
• Omniscience
• Omnipresence
• Immutability
• Transcendence

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​Maybe those words scared you off a little from that study, or maybe they challenged you to dig deeper into the character of God.

I love words! I love to take a word apart, figure out what it means, and then incorporate it into my vocabulary. ​

​Let’s take one of these big words, omniscience, and do just that today!

​I grew up in the home of a pastor and have spent all my life in the church. I remember from an early age hearing my Sunday school teachers tell us that we needed to read our Bibles and pray every day! The song we sang told us that then we would “grow, grow, grow.”

These necessities—Bible reading and prayer—were taught and modeled in my home and in my church. But, the older I have gotten, the more I realize how vital they are, not to make me a better Christian, but, much more importantly, to enrich and deepen my personal relationship with Jesus Christ. There are myriads of passages in Scripture that explain the need for these disciplines in our lives.

​It seems that this year through my personal Bible study and preaching I have heard that God is teaching me some practical things I need to learn and apply when it comes to my prayer life.

Have you ever been reading in one of the books of Kings or Chronicles and wondered what in the world was going on? Maybe like me, you get lost, at times, in the kings of the divided kingdoms and know that you need to spend more time setting all that straight in your mind.

But every so often, I find that even after being saved for more than thirty years and reading through the Bible several times, that same chapter, verse, or principle just jumps off the page and grabs me like never before! This, my friend, is the wonderful nature of the Living Word we have in our possession today.

​Paul said it this way in Romans 11:33: “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!” It is like digging for treasure every time we open God’s Word. Let’s look at one of these treasure passages I found recently in 2 Chronicles 20.

I think I have mentioned before that I am a single missionary serving the Lord in Peterborough, England.

There are not many days that I don’t encounter some kind of adventure. It might be learning something about the culture of England or navigating through a new city driving on the other side of the road or maybe dealing with a “flat” battery in my car. Just a normal day in the life of a single missionary, right?

​It was on a recent Sunday morning that I walked to my frost-covered car and found that the battery was dead or “flat” as we say here.

Thankfully, I made a few phone calls to cover my responsibilities at church and was met with the offer for a lift to the service and help later in the day to jump-start the car as well as help to get the battery replaced.