Reflections on the Greatness of God

By Neville Coomer

This book has been produced as the result of a kind gesture from someone living in Northern Ireland, who sent me a bookmark with Psalm 46:10 and the words "BE STILL AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD." I decided to do just that! TO BE STILL - I found that very hard. Doing it daily, it became easier. It was not difficult to fill my mind with "The Greatness of God." I invited a wide variety of people to pen their thoughts on that subject. They have done so, willingly. As you read these beautiful thoughts, may your minds be illumined to know and appreciate God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hayes Press
• Release date: Jan 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215155400

Book preview

Neville Coomer

Reflections on the Greatness of God

First published by Hayes Press 2022

Copyright © 2022 by Neville Coomer

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

Scriptures marked ESV are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scriptures marked NKJV are from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scriptures marked NIV are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

Scriptures marked RV are from the HOLY BIBLE, Revised Version (Public Domain, 1885)

Scriptures marked KJV are from the HOLY BIBLE, King James Version (Public Domain, 1611)

Scriptures marked CEV are from the Contemporary English Version Copyright © 1991, 1992, 1995 by American Bible Society. Used by Permission.

Scripture quotations marked CSB have been taken from the Christian Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission

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Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; And His greatness is unsearchable.

Psalm 145:3 (NKJV)

Foreword

This book has been produced as the result of a kind gesture from someone living in Northern Ireland, who sent me a bookmark with Psalm 46:10 and the words BE STILL AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD. I decided to do just that! TO BE STILL - I found that very hard. Doing it daily, it became easier. It was not difficult to fill my mind with The Greatness of God. I invited a wide variety of people to pen their thoughts on that subject. They have done so, willingly. As you read these beautiful thoughts, may your minds be illumined to know and appreciate God.

Neville

Acknowledgement

I wish to thank very sincerely all who contributed these lovely articles, telling of God’s greatness. Without their very welcome help, there would have been no book! As I read these articles again, I became quite emotional. Lorna Woods gave her unstinting service in typing and compiling these articles from many areas of the world. I also wish to acknowledge the tremendous help and expertise from Martin Jones for launching several of my books. Maranatha!

1

Heavenly Father

Jesus taught His disciples to trust God as their heavenly Father. On resurrection morning the Lord appeared to Mary Magdalene and sent her with a message to His disciples about His forthcoming ascension: I ascend to my Father and your Father and my God and your God. Great grace is conveyed by these words. It is truly precious to have God as our heavenly Father. I was about twenty years old when the knowledge that God was my heavenly Father captured my heart in a special way while listening to the late Willie Horn read aloud the following hymn to the congregation in the Christian Institute in Glasgow:

Great God, and dost thou condescend

To be my Father and my Friend?

I, a poor child, and Thou so high,

The Lord of earth and sea and sky!

Yes, wondrous God, for I received

Thy Son, and on His name believed;

Now I´m a true born child of Thine,

And Thou His Father too art mine.

(Ann Taylor Gilbert)

My heart was quietly warmed as I sang those words together with the two-hundred strong congregation. It was the first time that I´d heard this hymn and even now, more than forty years later, the realisation that this great God reaches out to me as my heavenly Father still warms my heart. Many of us know how precious a relationship can be with an earthly father who protects and provides for his children. And how much more precious to enjoy perfect protection and provision from our heavenly Father! In the midst of all my imperfections as a child of God I nevertheless trust in His faithfulness, thankful for the promise, first conveyed to the Christians in Rome, that God is working all things together for my ultimate good (John 20:17; Romans 8:28).

James Johnson, Aberdeen, Scotland

Scriptures references from the Revised Version.

* * *

The Christian’s instinct of trust and worship are stimulated very powerfully by knowledge of the greatness of God.

(J.I. Packer)

‘I have chosen you!’ Keep that note of greatness in your creed. It is not that you have got God but that He has got you.

(Oswald Chambers)

2

God’s Handiwork

As I write, it is a clear evening in early March and getting cold; -4 is the predicted low temperature overnight. The compensation is that, with the clear sky, it is just at that point when the stars are beginning to come out so clearly, twinkling their light over the mind-bending distances between us. With this view it is easy to take a deep breath and begin to cultivate thoughts around the greatness of God in creation. You could fill a whole book on the five words in Genesis 1 alone, He made the stars also. He is, after all, the God of the big picture, never mind calling them each by name!

But I want to go the other way - small - to focus on the greatness of the handiwork of God in something we all have: a body. Its function right down to a cellular level is remarkable in the way it works together. For example, the main bones of your inner ear - hammer, anvil and stirrup - are no larger now in your adult frame than when you were one day old. At that point, your body had 350 bones - now it only has 206. And what of our skin, shedding its 90 million cells a day? Who would believe the toughness of the heel, the sensitivity of the eyelid or lips could come from the same living organ? To say nothing of our fingertips with their unique identity pattern that lasts a lifetime.

We are not immune to cut skin, a broken bone or other more serious injury. The ability the body has to repair and heal itself is exceptional. There is a network of 60,000 miles of blood vessels inside you to be looked after. One cut and the platelets with their floral shape rush to the scene. They meet together and form a web of fibrinogen to catch and collect red blood cells to clot the wound; not too much, or the vein or artery may block - just enough to heal.

I am no doctor, just fascinated by what goes on to keep me alive. As in the natural, so in the spiritual; in the Body of Christ amazing things happen that we cannot fully understand, but we live them out every day. He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul (Genesis 2:7).

Fergus Reilly, Paisley, Scotland

Scripture references from the King James version.

* * *

Satan fools and feigns, blows and bluffs, and we so often take his threats to heart and forget the exceeding greatness of God’s power to us.

(Leonard Ravenhill)

3

The Bee’s Knees

In the late 1700s, the expression the bee’s knees was used to describe something very small and insignificant. The connotation changed somewhere around the 1920s to mean outstanding or the height of excellence. A naturalist would tell you that is very appropriate because the hind legs of a honeybee are truly remarkable!

While the worker bee is out foraging for nectar, her hairy body becomes covered in pollen. Occasionally she grooms herself, brushing the pollen back toward her hind legs. She then presses it and packs it into her pollen baskets, concave structures on the lower hind legs that are surrounded by long, stiff hairs. These hairs help hold the pollen pellet in place and keep it from falling out as she flies. In 2017 study researchers used elastic string to tug on the pollen pellets stored in honeybees’ pollen baskets. According to Science magazine, the researchers found "the pellets, though seemingly precarious, were firmly attached: The force necessary to dislodge a pellet was about 20 times more than the force a bee typically experiences while flying - see https://savannahbee.com/blog/why-the-bees-knees-are-so-special/.

Of course, this is clear evidence for our great Creator God, but I wanted to turn our thinking to a man in the Bible who seemed to think he was the ‘bee’s knees’! His name was Simon and his magic tricks had made him a bit of a celebrity in Samaria, the city where he lived. He’d managed to accumulate quite a fanbase from the least to the greatest (Acts 8:10) and he’d convinced them he was somebody great – maybe he even called himself Simon the Great. That wouldn’t have been such a big deal in itself perhaps, but it became a problem when the people said of Him, This man is the power of God that is called Great. They were completely wrong, of course, and that became very clear when they saw the true power of God at work through Philip the evangelist in signs and great miracles of healing. This was the real deal and it caused great joy, opening up the way to the gospel that was then preached. Even Simon had to admit he wasn’t the bee’s knees after all and gave his life to our great God.

Perhaps we don’t see such signs and great miracles occurring in the same way in our post-apostolic era as the Samaritans did. Does that mean we can’t see the power of God that is called Great at work today? It doesn’t! A study of the rest of the book of Acts shows that the great power of our great God was at work in many different ways. For example, Acts 4:33 says, And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. In today’s world, it is exceedingly rare to see great power working in tandem with great grace. In fact, the only reason why it happened here was that it was God’s great power working through the apostles, not their own - and we can be sure that (like Paul and Barnabas later in Acts), they wouldn’t have taken the credit.

The same great power (and the same great grace) is available from the same great God today, and we should be praying that it will be manifested and experienced in each of our lives, and in collective service together.

Martin Jones, Hamilton, Canada

Scripture references from the English Standard Version.

4

Jehovah Jireh - Our Shepherd

God revealed Himself to Abraham as God Almighty (El Shaddai)¹ and the Judge of all the earth,² but on Mount Moriah - when a ram substituted for Isaac - God was honoured as Jehovah Jireh (the Lord will provide).³ As the father and son approached Moriah, Abraham said to Isaac, God will provide Himself the lamb⁴ which was fulfilled with the sacrificial death of the Lord Jesus in our place - about which John the Baptist prophesied ‘Behold the Lamb