Dear Reader,

For the past month, I have forgotten all about the characteristic of God for this month. In my defense I knew it was one of the “omni”s, I just didn’t know which one, or what it meant in simple terms. However, God did not forget, and even though I didn’t understand how the things I have been learning about this past month went with this newsletter, God knew exactly what I needed to know.

So when I saw the words “omniscient” and “all-knowing” I had to stop and praise God because that’s exactly the part of Him He had been showing me all month. Not only this time around, but with each characteristic I have written about so far, God has taken the time leading up to when the newsletter is due to show Himself as that to me.

May I introduce you to the God who is all-knowing?

God is Omniscient

Who is God? What makes Him omniscient?

In his book, A Skeptic’s Search For God, Ralph O. Muncaster’s requirement that he determined the God and Creator must have is that He could perfectly foretell the future. He explained that in science if something is beyond a certain probability it is beyond the ability of happening by chance because it is so unlikely.

Ralph found the chances of all the things God had prophesied in the Old Testament, about the Old Testament, could only have happened if He was indeed God and knew the future. They were too detailed and specific to happen by chance. And the same was true when he looked next to the prophecies about Jesus and how He fulfilled them perfectly.

When and/or where do I see evidence of this characteristic in my life?

This past month I took up a writing project for a friend. He asked me to write a poem* or quote to go into a gift box for his friends who were beginning to have their first children. I knew immediately I wanted to base it off of Psalm 139:13-18.

I had already been learning about how purposefully God had created me. The intentionality with which He placed every moment in my life and designed me. I also knew about some books found in Revelation 20:12 about us that will be used to judge us. Timothy Keller pointed out the connection to Matthew 7:1-2 and how God won’t judge us by His standards but by the standards we place on others and don’t follow.

But those books? The books that hold every detail of our lives, every good and bad thing we will ever do, every choice we make, every word we said and the intent it was said, was written before we lived a single one of those days, did a single one of those actions, or spoke a single one of those words. For Psalm 139:16b says: “all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be” (emphasis added).

*The final result of the poem I wrote is the header photo.

How does this trait affect how God sees me?

I often get blinded by disappointment and despair of how things are now. I get discouraged and lose hope. But God does not get hung up by the details of now nor does He allow my shortcomings to undermine His love for me because He already sees what the outcome will be and who I am and will be in Christ.

“He has made everything beautiful in its time.” He already knows how He’s going to take this hardship to form something beautiful in me. He already knows how He’s going to use my shortcomings to proclaim His grace and strength. He already knows how He is going to redeem and restore every one of my pains and hurts to tell a beautiful story of His love for me.

While I can only see the broken pieces of the here and now, God sees how they will all come together to form a beautiful piece of art.

Because of this perspective, what has God done?

I watched an interview that Christina Patterson of Beloved Women did with Iris P. Bryant about overcoming people-pleasing. As they were discussing how Iris began her podcast and the purpose she has in helping women overcome their brokenness, she shared an exercise she did during her own healing process.

Iris had a vessel she broke, glued back together, then painted over the crack lines with gold paint to show the beauty in our brokenness. During this process she recognized how God was doing the same thing in her heart, transforming her brokenness into beauty.

Another pottery lesson someone else shared was the fact that a clay pot is broken to the point where its shards are not too big but before they get too small. These perfectly sized shards are then mixed into the new clay in order to strengthen the new pot.

God is taking our broken pieces and mixing them with the newness of who we are in Him in order not to hurt us, but to strengthen us and make us beautiful.

How does this new understanding affect my response and how I live my life?

I can trust God.

I can trust what He is doing.

I can trust His timing.

I can trust because even when I cannot see or understand, I can lean on God’s knowledge and understanding because I know that He knows what He is doing and when the results will become evident.

I would like to challenge you with memorizing both Proverbs 3:5-6 and Isaiah 55:8-9 because the more we recognize God’s wisdom and that He does indeed know everything, from every detail of our lives to how He will work it all for good, the more we can relax and have peace in the hard times because we understand He has a plan even when we can’t see the blueprint for that plan.

Until next time when we will take a look at how God is patient.

With love in Christ,

Rachel

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All Bible quotations are from the New International Version (NIV) unless otherwise noted.