CHAPTER 1 GOD’S NATURE AND PROGRAM

Praise God!
God is Light!
God is Love!
God is Eternal Life!
God Comforts and Strengthens Us!

Praise God!
(Paul)
ROMANS 11:33-36
Oh, what a wonderful God we have! How great are his wisdom and knowledge and riches! How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his methods! For who among us can know the mind of the Lord? Who knows enough to be his counselor and guide? And who could ever offer to the Lord enough to induce him to act? For everything comes from God alone. Everything lives by his power, and everything is for his glory. To him be glory (and honor for) evermore.
(Paul)
2 TIMOTHY 1:9-10
It is he (God) who saved us and chose us for his holy work, not because we deserved it but because that was his plan long before the world began – to show his love and kindness to us through Christ. And now he has made all of this plain to us by the coming of our Savior Jesus Christ, who broke the power of death and showed us the way of everlasting life through trusting him.
(Paul)
1 TIMOTHY 1:17
Glory and honor to God for ever and ever. He is the King of the ages, the unseen one who never dies; he alone is God, and full of wisdom. Amen.
(Paul)
1 CORINTHIANS 8:6
There is only one God, the Father, who created all things and made us to be his own; and one Lord Jesus Christ, who made everything and gives us life.
(Paul)
1 CORINTHIANS 3:7
God is important because he is the one who makes (all) things grow.
(Paul)
2 CORINTHIANS 4:6
For God, who said, “Let there be light in the darkness,” has made us understand that it is the brightness of his glory that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ.

God is Light!
1 JOHN 1:5-10
This is the message God has given us to pass on to you: that God is Light and in him is no darkness at all. So if we say we are his friends, but go on living in spiritual darkness and sin, we are lying. But if we are living in the light of God’s presence, just as Christ does, then we have wonderful fellowship and joy with each other, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from every sin.
If we say that we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves, and refusing to accept the truth. But if we confess our sins to him, he can be depended on to forgive us and to cleanse us from every wrong. And it is perfectly proper for God to do this for us because Christ died to wash away our sins. If we claim we have not sinned, we are lying and calling God a liar, for he says we have sinned.
(SIN is thinking, speaking and acting against the Laws of God e.g. The Ten Commandments)

God is Love!
1 JOHN 4:7-21
Dear friends, let us practise loving each other, for love comes from God and those who are loving and kind show that they are the children of God, and that they are getting to know him better. But if a person isn’t loving and kind, it shows that he doesn’t know God – for God is love.
God showed how much he loved us by sending his only Son into this wicked world to bring to us eternal life through his death. In this act we see what real love is: it is not our love for God, but his love for us when he sent his Son to satisfy God’s anger against our sins.
Dear friends, since God loved us as much as that, we surely ought to love each other too. For though we have never yet seen God, when we love each other God lives in us and his love within us grows ever stronger. And he has put his own Holy Spirit into our hearts as a proof to us that we are living with him and he with us. And furthermore, we have seen with our own eyes and now tell all the entire world that God sent his Son to be their Savior. Anyone who believes and says that Jesus is the Son of God has God living in him, and he is living with God.
We know how much God loves us because we have felt his love and because we believe him when he tells us that he loves us dearly. God is love, and anyone who lives in love is living with God and God is living in him. And as we live with Christ, our love grows more perfect and complete; so we will not be ashamed and embarrassed at the Day of Judgment, but can face him with confidence and joy, because he loves us and we love him too.
We need have no fear of someone who loves us perfectly; his perfect love for us eliminates all dread of what he might do to us. If we are afraid, it is for fear of what he might do to us, and shows that we are not fully convinced that he really loves us. So you see, our love for him comes as a result of his loving us first.
If anyone says, “I love God,” but keeps on hating his brother, he is a liar; for if he doesn’t love his brother who is right there in front of him, how can he love God whom he had never seen? And God himself has said that one must love not only God, but his brother too.

God is Eternal Life!
1 JOHN 5:13-21
I have written this to you who believe in the Son of God so that you may know you have eternal life. And we are sure of this, that he will listen to us whenever we ask him for anything in line with his will. And if we really know he is listening when we talk to him and make our requests, then we can be sure that he will answer us.
If you see a Christian sinning in a way that does not end in death, you should ask God to forgive him and God will give him life, unless he has sinned that one fatal sin. But there is that one sin which ends in death and if he has done that, there is no use praying for him.
Every wrong is a sin, of course. I’m not talking about these ordinary sins; I am speaking of that one that ends in death.
No one who has become part of God’s family makes a practice of sinning, for Christ, God’s Son, holds him securely and the Devil cannot get his hands on him. We know that we are children of God and that all the rest of the world around us is under Satan’s power and control. And we know that Christ, God’s Son, has come to help us understand and find the true God. And now we are in God because we are in Jesus Christ his Son, who is the only true God; and he is eternal life.
Dear children, keep away from anything that might take God’s place in your hearts. Amen.
ACTS 17:22-31
So Paul, standing before them at the Mars Hill forum, addressed them as follows:
“Men of Athens, I notice that you are very religious, for as I was out walking I saw your many altars, and one of them had this inscription on it – ‘To the Unknown God’. You have been worshipping him without knowing who he is, and now I wish to tell you about him.”
“He made the world and everything in it, and since he is Lord of heaven and earth, he doesn’t live in man-made temples, and human hands can’t minister to his needs – for he has no needs! He himself gives life and breath to everything, and satisfies every need there is. He created all the people of the world from one common source and scattered the nations across the face of the earth. He decided beforehand which should rise and fall, and when. He determined their boundaries.”
“His purpose in all of this is that they should seek after God, and perhaps feel their way towards him and find him – though he is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and exist. As one of your own poets puts it, ‘We are the sons of God.’ If this is true, we shouldn’t think of God as an idol made by men from gold or silver or chipped from stone. God tolerated man’s past ignorance about these things, but now he commands everyone to put away idols and worship only him. For he has set a day for justly judging the world by the man he has appointed, and has pointed him out by bringing him back to life again.”

God Comforts and Strengthens Us!
(Paul)
2 CORINTHIANS 1:2-7
May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ mightily bless each one of you, and give you peace.
What a wonderful God we have – he is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the source of every mercy, and the one who so wonderfully comforts and strengthens us in our hardships and trials. And why does he do this? So that when others are troubled, needing our sympathy and encouragement, we can pass on to them this same help and comfort God has given us. You can be sure that the more we undergo sufferings for Christ, the more he will shower us with his comfort and encouragement. We are in deep trouble for bringing you God’s comfort and salvation. But in our trouble God has comforted us – and this, too, to help you: to show you from our personal experience how God will tenderly comfort you when you undergo these same sufferings. He will give you the strength to endure.
(Paul)
2 CORINTHIANS 12:9
God says to Paul, “I am with you; that is all you need. My power shows up best in weak people.”
(Paul)
1 CORINTHIANS 3:22-23
(adapted)
God has given us the whole world to use, and life and even death are our servants. He has given us all of the present and all of the future. All are ours, and we belong to Christ, and Christ is God’s.