Thursday, June 26, 2014

Praying to an Everlasting God (Prayer Summer 2014)

Petal in a can of paint

When I pray I am addressing an all-powerful (omnipotent) being. (See here.)

I am known by an all-knowing (omniscient) being. (See here.)

I am being spoken to by an all-loving (omnibenevolent) being. (See here.)

When I pray I am conferencing with a necessarily existent (everlasting) being.

God cannot not-exist. Existence is of God's essence. This gives God an ontological stability nothing else has.

God's everlastingness means that God never began to exist and will never cease to exist. God never came into being, because God IS. 

When Moses asked God "Who are you? What is your name?" God responded by using the verb "to be." 

God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 
I am has sent me to you.’”

Exodus 3:14

God said to Moses, "My name is I IS." 

I'm not forcing Greek philosophy onto the Hebrew text. The Hebrew hayah is hard to translate. It could mean "I will be who I will be." It's a form of the verb "to be." God is BEING. 

No wonder God has no fear. Nothing could ever, in  principle, harm God. In this way God is like a rock, except more solid.

This morning I am conferencing (= praying) with an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, everlasting, necessarily existent God. I am dialoguing  with a quite-secure Person. This gives me confidence and strength, to think and thank that such a God loves me as well.

Realizing this, who wouldn't have time to pray?

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BTW...

Occasionally I hear someone who thinks they have come up with a trick question ask "If God made the universe, who made God?" The answer, of course, is that this is a nonsense question. For if God is necessarily existent than God never began to exist. Only things that begin to exist have a cause. God is a Uncaused Being (in this sense akin to Aristotle's metaphysically necessary "Unmoved Mover."