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Word of the Week: Theology Proper

After several weeks of hiatus, I’m back to posting a regular word of the week theology post. Our most recent theme addressed the doctrine of revelation. In these posts we explored terms related to the Word of God and how we can trust it.

The next theme we are going to work through is theology proper, or the doctrine of God. In the spring, I posted on theology as something more than an academic discipline. In the next number of posts, I’m going to work through terms related specifically to the doctrine of God.

Remember, theology is the study of God and God’s relation to the world. The doctrine of revelation (our most recent theme) studies how God makes himself known to us through general and special revelation. The doctrine of Christ (which we started with in January) studies how God revealed himself to us through his Son, Jesus Christ. In theology proper, we are going to reflect on the character, attributes, and glory of God. This will be a daunting task.

No book, article, sermon, or blogpost can exhaust the wonders, glories, and majesty of God. One of the reasons for the hiatus over the last few weeks is my personal hesitancy in how to explore the doctrine of God adequately and accurately in a blogpost format.

As a result, the subsequent posts regarding God, his character, his person, and his attributes will be limited. I will attempt to choose terms that I can explain clearly and accurately in the limits of a blogpost. I will also aim to reflect what I believe to be one of the primary truths of Scripture–God is knowable.

Theological terms and doctrinal studies can become academic or dry. As a bit of a theology nerd, I have been known to bore a congregation (or my family) by diving too far down into theological minutia. But this is not what theology is supposed to be. Theology is supposed to be about God making himself known and accessible to us.

Jesus prayed in John 17:3, “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

The primary purpose of studying the doctrine of God is to know God through Jesus Christ. My hope is that the posts that follow in the weeks to come will help us to know God better.

In his classic book, Knowing God, J. I. Packer observed:

We must say that knowing God involves, first, listening to God’s Word, and receiving it as the Holy Spirit interprets it, in application to oneself; second, noting God’s nature and character, as his Word and works reveal it; third, accepting his invitations and doing what he commands; fourth, recognizing and rejoicing in the love that he has shown in thus approaching you and drawing you into this divine fellowship.

J. I. Packer, Knowing God, 37.

So let us approach these posts in the following ways:

  • We approach the study of God with humility recognizing the greatness, majesty, and grace of God.
  • We approach the study of God with curiosity recognizing that we will never exhaust the truth and truths about God in our finite understanding.
  • We approach the study of God with fear (awe and reverential respect) recognizing that God in his holiness is to be feared.
  • We approach the study of God with faith recognizing that God revealed himself to us through his creation and his Word reflecting God’s desire to make himself known to us.
  • We approach the study of God with gratitude recognizing the privilege of knowing God and being known by God.
  • We approach the study of God with perseverance recognizing that we will never exhaust the knowledge of God in our finitude.
  • We approach the study of God with submission recognizing that what God reveals about himself to us should result in repentance, change, and obedience in our relationship to him.

In next week’s post, we will begin with several of the primary names God uses in Scripture when he reveals himself to us.

Photo by KEEM IBARRA on Unsplash

When God’s Answers Don’t Match Your Prayers

God astounds me. God is always working, acting, intervening, and saving.

I must admit that often God surprises me. There have been times over the past couple of years where I have been praying diligently for God to save, to heal, or to help in a particular way only to have God save someone I wasn’t expecting or to have God work in a surprising way.

Recently, my devotional reading has brought me back to the book of 1 Samuel. When God called Samuel in chapter 3, God told Samuel about the judgment he was going to bring to Eli and Eli’s family. Think about this for a moment. The first message God gave to young Samuel was not about blessings and glories and miracles, but rather about judgment. Just a few chapters later (but decades later for Samuel), the people of Israel asked for a king. It was a sinful request, and Samuel told them so. Samuel brought the prayer to God. And God told Samuel that he was going to give his people what they asked for even though it was not what they should ask for. Samuel had to receive and deliver this message as well.

Samuel’s experiences are not isolated. Sometimes God answers our prayers as we ask them, and sometimes he doesn’t. Move forward to Acts 12. Herod beheaded James, but God brought about a miracle to release Peter from prison. Why did God rescue Peter but not James? Why does God intervene sometimes and other times it appears that he does not?

As I preached yesterday on the subject of walking wisely in our homes from Proverbs 22:6, I thought of many moms and dads, grandmothers and grandfathers, faithful children and straying children. There are some in my congregation who have prayed diligently for their adult children and grandchildren to come back to the Lord. They’ve prayed, they’ve begged, and they’ve encouraged. Yet it seems like nothing is happening.

Within the last couple of weeks, prayers that I’ve prayed on behalf of others have been answered exactly as I prayed. Other prayers have not. In some cases, God has obviously intervened and healed. In other cases, God has delayed to intervene.

Why? Why is it that sometimes God answers quickly and other times God doesn’t seem to answer at all? Why is it that sometimes God answers in a very different way than we’ve prayed?

I’ve wrestled with these questions as a Christian and as a pastor. And while I don’t have all the answers, I do want to offer a few reminders that might help us through these questions.

  1. Remember: God’s faithfulness is not limited by our experiences. God is faithful no matter what we experience. God has made an absolute promise to us, “I will be with you always” (Jesus in Matthew 28:20). And God’s promise to be with us through the indwelling Holy Spirit is sure and certain. God’s promise to be with us means that sometimes he will be with us through our struggles and difficulties and not always rescue us from our struggles and difficulties. The testimonies from Scripture as well as our own experiences bear this out. Sometimes God intervenes. Sometimes God orchestrates the miraculous. Sometimes God delays. Sometimes God appears to be silent to our burdens. But always God is faithful. That he is with us through our struggles even when we pray that he would rescue us from our struggles is testimony to God’s grace and compassion.
  2. Remember: God’s faithfulness is not limited by our prayers. For Christian growth and maturity, we must pray. And one of the reasons we do pray is because we believe God is able to do more than what we ask (Eph. 3:20). But just because God is able, doesn’t always mean that he will. Prayer for us us is an act of faith. When we pray in the right spirit, we acknowledge our inabilities and God’s sovereignty. And when we pray, we should ask God to intervene, to heal, to rescue, to save, and to restore. We pray to God out of what we know and trust that God knows more and his timing is best.
  3. Remember: God’s faithfulness is not limited by our understanding. We pray to God out of what we know and trust that God knows more and his timing is best. Yes, that’s a repeat sentence. But we need to remember it. Our prayers and our experiences are limited by our understanding. There is so much that we just don’t know. God’s ways are higher than our ways (Isaiah 55:9). God knows everything. He knows how answering our prayers fit into his purposes. It is this recognition that God’s understanding is greater than ours that led Samuel and others throughout the Bible to continue praying even when their circumstances exceeded their understanding.

Where does that leave you and me with our burdens, worries, fears, and prayers? Continue to pray about them. Bring them to the Lord. But remember, you don’t have all the information. You don’t know all. Pray anyway. Pray boldly. Pray big. God can answer any prayer you bring. But even if he doesn’t answer your prayers the way you pray, God is still faithful.

Photo by Emily Morter on Unsplash