86 Seconds Video Devotionals

God’s faithfulness is constant and unchanging. Even when we struggle to understand our circumstances, God’s faithfulness endures. God is true to his promises, so we have every reason to trust in him.

What exactly is the difference between knowledge and wisdom? It is well known that God has limitless knowledge, but his wisdom is less familiar. It is an important attribute to understand because knowledge without wisdom would look very different.

n ancient Hebrew, anything that was listed three times was meant to be taken seriously. Scripture describes God through many of his attributes, but holiness is the only one that is listed three times. God is pure, clean and totally separate from the things of the world. He is holy, holy, holy.

Everything and everyone that God has created is touched by his mercy. We can think of this aspect of God’s nature in a narrow sense, but it truly affects everything. We are created and sustained by the mercy of God.

God’s goodness means that, if you love him, he is always on your side. No circumstance, trial or tribulation could change that. God is deeply, totally good, and he will work things out accordingly in the end.

Have you ever taken a moment to really consider what God’s graciousness means? Even though we are part of God’s creation, we still choose to rebel against him. While we were in that broken, rebellious state, God chose to offer us redemption. That level of grace is almost impossible to comprehend.

All of God’s attributes are essential to who he is, but scripture seems to place a special emphasis on the fact that he is loving. God’s all-encompassing love is one of the ways that he makes himself known to us.

God’s transcendence means that every element of his character goes beyond our understanding. While God is certainly near to us, he is also majestic, glorious and well beyond our capacity to comprehend.

All glory ultimately comes from God. It is an integral part of his attributes, abilities and character. Just as the moon reflects light from the sun, God's creation can only reflect his limitless glory.

The God of justice, often portrayed in the Old Testament, makes many believers deeply uncomfortable. This week, Gary Wilkerson explores how this aspect of God is not only very necessary but also deeply loving. We need a God who will defend the weak and require justice for the world's wrongs. It's showing his love for those he is having his tender care over. When you know that God is just you know that he's going to provide ample care for every need that you possibly could have.

Today we're going to continue our series. A series that I hope is helping you grow in the Lord as we talk about the nature, character, and attributes of God. Today, we're talking about the omnipresence of God, the Omni meaning everywhere or all. Presence that is present everywhere. He's present as we record this video, he's present as you watch that. Isn't that amazing? He's present in all time in all space and all nature in every being. Behind me is a large field, and there's blades of grass there. And if you ever wonder how God be present to everything at the same time I was sitting out here looking one day, and I noticed the sun was shining across vast amounts of acres of fields, and the sun was having an independent relationship, so to speak, with every blade of grass. Every blade of grass got nurtured. Every blade of grass got the warmth. Every blade of grass got everything that the sun provides for it. Same thing was happening across the other side of the field. We may not understand how could God be present to me and billions and billions of other people all the same time. Well, he's like the sun and he shines on all of us and particularly on those who become his adopted children. That that presence now becomes the presence of his glorious grace, his power, his love, his healing - the characteristics of his healing nature. So he's present everywhere. I would say he's even present beyond what we understand as presence because that's our spatial understanding. He is even beyond space. He's beyond time. He's beyond -- the Bible says he's beyond finding out. That's a transcendent, glorious God that you and I should know with all our heart.

Over the past few months, the Attributes of God series has looked at who God is. These concepts are more than just words. They describe the character of God. Now, halfway through the series, is the perfect time to go back and learn more about the attributes we have covered so far. It is always worthwhile to learn more about God’s character.

For the past year and a half I've been working on a book on the attributes of God, the working title I have for the book is just simply called, 'God' because I want people to know God. Like Jeremiah says, 'you can boast and knowing God.' So this series is about knowing him and the series is about the attributes of God. Today we're going to talk about the omnipotence of God. And the reason I brought up the fact that I'm writing a book on this is because on most of these different attributes -- his love, his grace, his mercy, his wisdom, his wrath - I'm writing about 10 to 12 pages. On the omnipotence of God I've already written over 60 pages. It's not because it's a more important attribute, but because it feeds into every other attribute. He is -- God is love because he has the power to love. Sometimes we want to love, but we don't have the power to do it. God knows everything because he has the power to know everything. What I'm saying to you is omnipotence is so important to understand because it fuels everything else about God. Everything that he does, every will that he has. Every decision that he makes, he has the power to back it up. You and I could will to do a thing but we may not have the power to do it. Where God is absolute, when he has the power, when he has the will, he will bring forth the power to accomplish every single one of his purposes. That's why it's called omni potent. Potent meaning power; omni meaning all. He is all power. He powers the sun, the stars, the moon, and if he were to stop supplying his power to his creation, everything would fall apart. The Bible says he holds all these things together by his power. God is a wonderful god and he has power to change your life. He has power to heal -- power to meet every single need that you have.

This week we're talking about the omniscience of God -- that he is all knowing. It comes from two words, 'omni' all and 'science.' Which is more than we know is science today, but it's talking about the ability of God to know everything about all things every time. Now this really gets bizarre when you think that he knows everything, not only in the past, which we could know that if we had enough wisdom and insight to study history, but what's happening present everywhere around not just on Earth, but everything that's created. But not only that, he also knows everything of the future. God's omniscient goes around, beyond all that you and I could, in our finite minds, comprehend. Knowing that God is omniscient, meaning, not only does he know this vast amount, but he also knows the inner workings of our heart. He knows our mind. He knows our troubles. He knows our sorrows. Knowing that God knows everything about the universe is comforting to me because it shows how big and grand and glorious he is. But knowing that he knows the small details of my life is so precious to me. It says, like we see in nature here, 'he sees the sparrow fall to the ground and he knows about it.' He knows everything. He knows your troubles. He knows your trials and he has the power to change anything. And if you're going through something that's not changed right now, it is under the knowing hand of God and he knows the future that there's a time coming where he will make all things right. Maybe here on Earth. Maybe in the future in heaven, but God has a way of making all things well and he knows how to do it. Not only is his knowledge the knowledge of things, but as a knowledge of wisdom of how to work things out. So he's a good God, and he's taking care of you and he knows your heart.

What do we mean when we claim that God is sovereign? Gary Wilkerson contends that many believers say that God is sovereign but live as if God and Satan are equally powerfully forces or as if they are partially sovereign with God. This mentality is not biblical, and our spiritual lives will be much healthier with a correct view of God's sovereignty.

Impeccability, when's the last time somebody called you impeccable? The work you've done is impeccable. A teacher might have said, "That's an impeccable job you've done on that." Or an artist might say, "It's an impeccable piece of artwork." But it's really not; it's full of imperfections. It's not quite up to the highest standards possible. There's only one thing that is fully impeccable and that is God. He is without fault, he's without error. He's without anything being wrong. Peccable means that something's wrong, something's missing, something's amiss; 'a' means, it's not nothing is of 'miss' to God. He is perfect in all of his ways. He is pure in all of his ways. There is no other entity in all of creation, in all of the universe, in all of existence, that could say the same thing that it can only be said about God. That's why we can't have any other idols before God, because we would be lowering our standards and God wants us to live up to the highest good that he has for us. The highest good is to worship him and to know that he's impeccable. The good news is that a son, Christ Jesus, came to Earth as a man and even in his human form he was impeccable as well. He is without sin. He who knew no sin became sin for us. It was the impeccability of God in Christ Jesus that allowed him to be the lamb that was perfect. The pure lamb, the spotless lamb, the one who could pay the price because he had no sin himself. All of this is part of the glorious splendor of the impeccability of God, something worth you knowing. I encourage you to study more about this important subject.

Scripture makes it totally clear to us that God is infinite. And not only is the infinite infinite, he's the only one who is infinite. Everything else is finite; created. everything that we know, see experience is of the creature of the creator or of creation, and God is the source of all that. The difference between something that is infinite and something that is finite, what is infinite has been everlasting, eternal, always existing, always will exist. But not just in time, but in space; he's everywhere at all times and beyond, what we even know is space. Not only that, he's infinite in all of his attributes. We might have or share some of the attributes of God. These are called what are called the communicable attributes of God. Where God has them and we can have portions of them. But because we're finite, we are limited in our capacity to love or to be holy, or to be kind or be gracious. We have aspects of that, but it's finite. God is the only being in all of eternity that has all of those attributes not in proportions or measure; it's immeasurable. It's unfathomable. You cannot count the length and depth and height and width, not only of the love of God is the scripture says, but of every attribute of God because he's infinite. His powers infinite. His grace is infinite. Everything about God is amazing. So he never runs out. He never grows weary. He's never short of having the supply that you need for your life.

We're continuing our series on the attributes of God. Today I want to talk about the immutability of God; another big word. We've talked in the past about in comprehensibility, aseity - things that are quite difficult for us to understand because they're languages that we don't really use today. But the immutability of God - mutable means to change, so immutability means doesn't change; so God doesn't change. He says that in scripture himself, "I am the Lord, and I change not." Many of us think God changes all the time - he feels good about us; he feels bad about us. He's angry at us; he loves us. Now certainly those are characteristics of God that he makes known to us, but his very core nature, the being of God itself, is unchangeable. He is not partly love and partly anger. He's totally love and he gets angry. He is - he has the wrath of God that comes out of him, that's part of his nature and his character, and these things are unchanging. That's good news for us, because when your friends change, when your spouse changes, when your kids change, when you're teenagers grow up and they no longer respect you or honor you or seem to love you. A lot of things happen in the world around us there changing, but God never changes knowing that he's perfect, knowing that everything he does is absolutely perfect, that means you can trust that. You could say like the song says, 'Great is my faithfulness. Oh Lord my God, great is your faithfulness,' is new every morning. Now, he doesn't invent new unchangeable attributes, he stays the same and every morning, we wake up and we have that joy of knowing the goodness of God.

One of the least known attributes of God, least talked about, least preached about, least written about, and least known by even the Christian Church is this word called the aseity of God. Why would we want to talk about something that seems so archaic and ancient? Why would we want to talk about something that seems like everybody's forgotten today? Well, I would suggest to you that the aseity of God is at the core of the very nature, and essence of God. So let me explain it to you. Aseity is from two different words, 'a' being of and 'seity' of self or self, and so aseity means God is of himself. He's not put together by different parts; that simplicity, the simplicity of God. He's not created. He's the uncreated God. He has been internal - will always be - not like us. We have a future ahead of us of immortality, but we didn't go back in time. God has always been. The core meaning of this and why it's important to you is if God has this asesity, then he is existing in his own self, his own strength, his own power, his own love, every attribute of himself. He exists fully in the fullness of those attributes of God. So here's the brunt of it: he needs nothing - you and I need so much. We are always clamoring for other things outside - things to make us feel fulfilled. God is totally fulfilled all the time because he is of himself uncreated. His nature is eternally existent so you don't have God saying, 'oh, I need you to love me. I need you to worship me.' No, he desires that for our benefit, but he doesn't need it, because he's fulfilled in himself. That makes him an amazing, glorious God.

One of the attributes of God is called his immensity. Strange word to some degree isn't. It's not aware. We used very often, but it means vastness or grandeur or wide expanse. But this definition that's human in terms its finite in his terms in an infinite way, this idea of immensity goes beyond what we could measure, what we can think, what we can phantom in our own finite minds. The immensity of God is he's immense in all of his attributes, his immense in his love. He's immense in his grace. He's immense in his character - but it's also deals with time; he's immense in time. He fills out all time. He's immense in space; he fills out all space, but beyond that as well. You see spaces of finite understanding that we have, where in the infinite nature of God, he is not limited by our finite understanding. And so for him his spatial-ness is beyond anything that we would even phantom or comprehend at all. How is this important to us? Well, he's big enough for every problem we have. He's big enough to make himself known. He's glorious enough to make himself revealed in our worst crisis, our worst nightmares. He's immensely there for you. He's immensely able to do anything and beyond. It speaks of - for instance - his power. He could be powerful, but when we speak of the immensity of power, that means power is distributed equally in all options, in all places, in all circumstances. It's good to know that he is big enough for you and me, and every need that we have.

The Bible tells us that out of the heart flow the issues of life. What are the issues of life, what are these issues that flow out of our heart? Well, they can come from two sources. I have a bit of a list here, resentment, bitterness, being withdrawn from people, blaming others, living a life of shame, fear, addictions, neediness, demandingness, living a life out of scarcity or something else can flow out of your heart, love, grace, life, contentment, peace, joy, generosity and abundance. It's a choice we have to make: what kind of life we're going to live? What's going to come out of our heart? What comes out of our heart comes from who is in our heart and if Jesus lives in your heart, you're going to find some new things coming out of your life. If you see some of these older things coming out of your life, resentment and bitterness, then it's important we take the time to say, "God, I want that to be removed." Oftentimes we're praying, "Lord, remove lust and anger and greed," but we're not talking about some of these other issues of shame and fear, that those things would not issue from our heart, they would not come out of our heart and not be a part of our heart any longer. This is the transformation that Jesus promises to us. This is the abundant life that he talks about.

The past few weeks we've been looking at the. Introduction to the attributes, nature and character of God. It's taking us a number of weeks. Just introduce the subject and so deep it's so profound and we talked about the 21 different attributes that I want to take the next few months to describe with you and the first of these is called the in comprehensibility of God. Seems like a strange place, doesn't it? To start a series on the knowledge of God on how to know him by talking about him being incomprehensible, well, that word is changed over generations. It it used to mean inability to fully comprehend. It would be like you can know something, but not in exhaustiveness; now it's changed. If you look at the dictionary today, that word incomprehensible means unknowable, irrelevant, indiscernible inadequate in understanding or truth or reality. If I were to say to you, or maybe you were saying to me, let's put it that way. After listening to this 86 seconds, you know Gary what you just said was totally incomprehensible. I'd probably be offended. I would say no. I want this to be comprehend did but God's incomprehensibility means that he's more majestic, more glorious, more powerful, more infinite. The ancient scholar said it this way, 'The finite mind cannot fully exhaustively comprehend the grantor and glories of an infinite God.' We can know a lot about him, but we can't know all of him, and that's causes us to be in awe and wonder and worship that he's bigger than us, better than us. So it's not all about me now, it's about him and his glory.

First Corinthians Chapter 2 says that the Spirit teaches us the things of God. Yea, even the deep things of God. I believe you've been watching the series with us on the attributes of nature and character of God because you're hungry for the deep things of God. You're no longer satisfied with the pablum with a light touch, but you want to go deep into the things of God. So knowing who he is is important and vital to this and one of the things we're going to talk about today is the simplicity of God. Now we say that it sounds like we're talking about God being a simpleton, or that God is easy to figure out; he's so simple. No, he's far beyond finding out he's infinite at all of his attributes. But what simplicity means to us is that God is one. He says this in - throughout the scriptures. I'm Lord, God, I am one. God is called the Shema in Hebrew, and so he is one. He's not made up of different parts like you and I are. We're part angry and part kind; part wrathful and part loving, and we varied from place to place. But because God's unchanging he doesn't vary and so inside is very own nature is who he is. So in other words, the Bible says that God is love. He's not just doing love, his very nature is love. All of his attributes are one in him; they are a single entity of God, and out of those things he moves in all these realms. He moves in power; he moves and knowledge; he moves in wisdom, but who he is is all of those things wrapped up into the Lord. God is one God. This is good for us because now you can depend on him. He's going to be unchanging. He's going to be faithful. He's that solid rock for all of your needs.

I know it kind of sounds like we're spending a lot of time introducing a subject that we haven't even begun to talk about yet. But would you allow me the opportunity to take one more week just to give an overview of where we're headed in this series on the nature, character, and attributes of God? I divide the these things that I just talked to you about in three different categories. One I call the mysteries of God, and I have labeled seven of them. Secondly, the supremacies of God, and I've labeled seven. And then last but not least, the wonders of God, and I've labeled seven. It's in comprehensibility. Have you ever heard that word before? Aseity, simplicity, immensity, immutability, infinity, impeccability, sovereignty, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, justice, glory, transcendence, love, goodness, grace, mercy, wisdom, holiness, faithfulness. Who would not want to know a God like that? Who would not want to know the riches of the glories that are open up to us in heaven, treasures that we can have from the Word of God, from the Spirit of God, from Jesus Christ himself and the Holy Spirit's power illuminating the truth? He said the Holy Spirit will lead us into all truth and we'll remember those things that were taught to us. Sadly, many of us in the church have forgotten these things, these realities. Some have never even heard of these things that I've just listed before you, but they are all glorious truths that can lead us into a deeper faith. That's a kind of faith I really encourage you to have, that kind of faith that encourages me to do these 86 Seconds to help you grow in Christ.

Today someone asked me a very important question. He said, do you think that the church needs to go back to its classical Christian, historic doctrines, faith, the issues of the heart, the biblical issues? And I said, you know what? I don't know that we can go back to it in this generation, because I don't know if this generation has ever been introduced to it in the first place. Do we really know the mind of God? Do we really know the character, nature, attributes, and the very heart of God? To go back to something means we would have to have known it in the first place. Over the next few months I want to take some time with you and dig into the very depths of the heart of God. 1 Corinthians, Chapter two says, "we can know the things of God, yea, even the deep things of God." Isn't that profound that you don't have to live with a superficial knowledge of the Holy one. That you don't have to just kind of get little trinkets, little tidbits from the outskirts of His grace and His mercy. You can know Him in depth and in power. I want you to join me as we look at 21 different attributes over the next few months, and that's going to give us a deep knowledge of God. And if we'll use that knowledge of God to build our faith we'll be like Daniel. "but the people that know their God shall be strong and do exploits." I pray these 86 second messages will make you strong in the Lord, powerful, Holy, full of love and grace and truth so that you could be a young man, young woman, old man, old woman raised up in this hour to be a vessel for God's purposes.