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We have a big God not only in this life but also in the life to come. Faith has a big God, and that is what gives the Christian long-term security.
If you are not yet a follower of Christ, Satan comes to you and says, “Don’t be a Christian! If you become a Christian, your life will be restricted; you’ll be in a small world.” But the opposite is true.
When I came to the end of my enlistment in the United States Army, a sergeant said to me, “I hope, Son, when you go back out into that big world, you make it out there.”
I asked, “Why do you say that to me?”
“Because it’s a big world,” he said. “I’m in the army, and I serve Uncle Sam. My world is only so large, but because I serve the government, I’ve got security. But out there in that world all by yourself, you won’t have security.”
“Sir, I serve a bigger being than Uncle Sam,” I said. “My God is the God of the universe, and I trust that He will take care of me.”
As a Christian, you do not just serve yourself. If you are not a Christian, you have nothing bigger in your world than yourself, and you are only a speck of dust. Have you ever looked down from an airplane and thought that every little human being scurrying about in those little cars below is like a speck of dust? But God is the God of the universe—the God who has made billions upon billions of stars and galaxies. And the Christian can say, “This God is my God! My world is so much bigger because my God has promised that all things shall work together for good to me, that I may live to His glory through faith.”
Faith is the instrument by which I am united through Christ with the great God of the universe. Faith gives my life breadth and depth and height and meaning. If you are unsaved, your life is small and restricted; but if you are a believer, your life is large because you belong to a big God.
A little boy, eight years old, was dying. His father asked him, “Son, aren’t you afraid to die?”
“No, Dad,” the boy said. “You see, when George Whitefield came to town and I heard him preach, I heard about his big God, and ever since I’ve wanted to be with Whitefield’s big God.”
We have a big God not only in this life but also in the life to come. Faith has a big God, and that is what gives the Christian long-term security. The Christian has a life-death-eternity comfort: it is one comfort, and it is good for this life, in death, and for eternity—it is good for every situation forever and ever. In assuring us that Jesus is our only comfort in life and in death, the Heidelberg Catechism says so beautifully: “I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ; who, with his precious blood, has fully satisfied for all my sins.” This faithful Savior who died for me now sits at the right hand of the Father to live for me and to be Lord over my life so that He may prepare me to be with Him where He is. In these four studies, then, we shall be looking at this big God through the lens of faith, asking ourselves how this faith is operating in our lives.
Excerpt From
Portraits of Faith: What Five Biblical Characters Teach Us about Our Life with God
Joel R. Beeke
