"Everything I Ever Needed to Know About God"
by Tom Goodman
September 27, 2006

Do you remember Robert Fulghum’s little book, Everything I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten?  The whole thing could fit on a single page of typing paper.  I bet you had a photocopy of it on your refrigerator at some time.

Fulghum wrote, “Most of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do, and how to be, I learned in kindergarten.”  I have a slight adaptation:  Everything I Ever Needed to Know About God I Learned in My First Childhood Prayer:

          “God is great, God is good.
          Let us thank him for this food.”

In that prayer, I learned that God is powerful and that God cares for us.  Every new crisis in life is really a trial to see if we have learned those two things yet.

On Sunday mornings at Hillcrest, we’re using the Apostles’ Creed as an outline to discuss basic Christian beliefs.  This Sunday, we’ll look at who God is.  As the Creed puts it: “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.”  The God who made the world is both “Almighty” and “the Father.”  In other words, God is great and God is good.

In Knowing God, James Packer writes:  “Knowing about God is crucially important for the living of our lives.  As it would be cruel to an Amazonian tribesman to fly him to London, put him down without explanation in Trafalgar Square and leave him, as one who knew nothing of English or England, to fend for himself, so we are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it.  The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place, and life with it a disappointing and unpleasant business, for those who do not know God.  Disregard the study of God and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfolded, as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you.  This way you can waste your life and lose your soul.”

Join us this Sunday at 9:30am or 10:45am for this important study.  To catch up with the series, listen online (iTunes or website).  You can receive a free book when you attend Hillcrest during our current sermon series, or you can order copies online by clicking here.  To learn more about the book, read the introduction by clicking here or check out the website at www.AnchorCourse.org.

—Tom


Links to Your World

Your “homework assignment” this week is to read Chapters 5-6 in The Anchor Course  to get ready for this week’s sermon.  You might also want to check out the article, Does the Argument From Mind Provide Evidence for God? by J. P. Moreland.