Perfect Word Pictures Reveal a Perfect God

Richard G. Starshak

Description

Surrounded by the creation ... air, water, fire, mountains, beauty, planets and stars ... yet how easy it is to miss the real message in it all!

Is it really possible to look out at everything in front of us, all the visuals, images and word pictures, in fact, all of creation, and still miss the main point? Are we missing what God is shouting out to us to see? Are we missing so much of a perfectly designed universe, filled with multitudes of pictures and images right before us, as we hurry through life? Herein lies a much deeper discovery of how much God has laid before us, in declaring who He is, what He is doing through His perfect creation, through His own figurative language, and through an unlimited amount of visual images specifically revealing a God who wants to be known ... and how we are to respond to it all!

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Christian Living
• Inspirational
• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: WestBow Press
• Date de parution: 22 décembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781664278554
• Langue: English

Extrait

PERFECT WORD PICTURES REVEAL A PERFECT GOD
 
HOW TO FOREVER THINK DIFFERENTLY ABOUT WHAT WE SEE BEFORE US!
 
 
 
 
Richard G. Starshak
 
 
 

 
 
Copyright © 2022 Richard G. Starshak.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.
 
 
WestBow Press
A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.westbowpress.com
844-714-3454
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from The New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6642-7856-1 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6642-7855-4 (e)
 
 
 
WestBow Press rev. date: 12/12/2022
CONTENTS
Dedication
Preface
Chapter One Building Meaning Through Word Pictures and Images
Chapter Two Speaking A Different Language
Using Figurative Language
Chapter Three Five Basic Tenets
1. It’s All About God
2. God Created Us Not to be Uninformed, Irrelevant, and Unwise, Without Direction, Hope, or Understanding
3. God Desires to Deeply Reveal Himself to Us
4. God’s Revelation is Described in Human Terms, Using Everything That is Given by Him, to be Seen by Us
5. God Commands and Compels Us to Know Him In Every Way Possible
Chapter Four God’s Perfect Plan
God’s Call … For Our Attention
God’s Call … To See His Works
God’s Call … To See His Pictures
God’s Call … To Acquire Knowledge, Understanding, and Wisdom
God’s Call … To Love
Chapter Five How God Continually Speaks To Us
God’s Dimensional Creation
God’s Pictures in the Natural World
God’s Pictures in Our World
God’s Pictures in Life and Death
We don’t live to sleep, we sleep to live!
God Speaks to Us in the Scriptures
Six Seven Word Pictures in Scripture
1. The Natural World
2. Things of the World
3. Positions in Life
4. Authority and Headship
5. Conflict
6. Money
7. Choices
Chapter Seven God’s Name in Word Picture
The Old Testament
The New Testament
Chapter Eight Proverbs … Practical Pictures
Chapter Nine Parables … Personal Pictures
Chapter Ten Prophecy … Predictive Pictures
Chapter Eleven Pictures of Grace, Mercy, and Blessings
Grace
Mercy
Blessings
Chapter Twelve Picture the Change in Me!
See It!
Engage It!
Use It!
“What’s in it for me?”
“What’s me in it for you?”
DEDICATION
This is so written and given to anyone who is simply looking about and wondering if there is more to life than what you might be seeing. Are there things you are observing but not perceiving? Are you missing something that you are seeing but not fully understanding or comprehending? Are you living life but missing God? This is written especially for you as an easy read, but also with the depth to challenge everything you see and sense before you, in every moment, of every day going forward! Enjoy the challenge in the words, pictures, and images that you are about to encounter!
PREFACE
Not a single man or woman has ever looked out upon our world and not grasped the uniqueness, the beauty, the awesomeness, or the intricacies of it all! Have you ever seen a sunset that leaves you speechless? Have you looked up to see the tops of the trees way up there, a mountaintop in the fog, or a spectacular cloud formation?
Is there a time when you saw the approaching storm clouds, saw the display of lightening, and maybe even trembled a bit at the sound of thunder? Do you remember the snowfalls you played in as a child, or maybe the blizzard you endured one particular winter? Do you recall the first days of spring, ballgames, swimming, birthdays, graduations, or weddings?
On a bigger scale, have we all not pondered over the size of the universe or how it got there, how gravity works, when was the beginning of time, how small is the tiniest particle, or how does life know how to live? Have we not considered how complex the human body is? How can it all work together? We live. We breathe. We move and talk. Our hearts beat steadily for 80 to 100 years. In all this, we think, reason, contemplate, communicate, draw, design, and create things. We have purpose. We grow, love, encourage one another, protect, and nurture. We also feel for those who need help. We give things away. We work and relax. We can also be mean, self-centered, and proud. We are truly the most unique of all living things!
Who among us has not asked, “Is there a god?” Or who among us has gone further to ask “How can there not be a god?”
This book is written to all those who have the thirst and desire to look at the world around them and acknowledge that there must be something more, a bigger picture to all of this, a purpose that encompasses the entire meaning of life “if I only had the eyes to see” what is really going on! Are we truly seeing and grasping a bigger picture that captures the meaning of it all, a picture that surrounds us each and every day?
Whether you come from outside the realm of a deity, or maybe from the standpoint of an acknowledgement of a higher power or some kind of great designer, or maybe you are one who both acknowledges and affirms that a God Almighty set this all before you, this book will speak to you.
I assure you that this will arouse the curious, the wanderer, the seeker, and all of you in between who desire to see God and His revelations afresh, with a deeper, fuller, more overflowing, more descriptive, more meaningful, and more exhausting set of eyes than ever before. And if you are considering who such a God might be, how could such a One not be so insightful, wise, and powerful to establish Himself before us, that in every way imaginable, we see His attributes being continually revealed in a way that we can understand? Not as God would understand, but as we would understand in human form? Is it possible that we are missing something that seems inconceivable to miss ?
Yet, what if every last thing was actually designed, and thusly created with us in mind, to reflect a bigger picture or deeper truth? Could a God who put it all in motion from the beginning possess that kind of ingenuity and power to have actually taken every piece of the creation into consideration? Has He created us people, with all our attributes and endeavors, to reflect a world of Himself? And to make sure we get it, has He assigned some to write out words that match what we are seeing of Him, most visually, all around us? Are these words built upon those very images we see every day that pass through each of our lives?
If God has such arrayed His glory before us, in an unimaginable array of things, objects, pieces of nature, light and dark, mountains and valleys, animals, gardens, kings and queens, and an endless parade of visual images from morning till night, is it too much to acknowledge, even with casual observation, of His extraordinary entity, that it is all here for a higher purpose? That everything is set in its proper place? Is not one piece is a mistake? Can anything be missing?
If God has indeed laid out both a perfect physical world, and a set of perfectly descriptive words, then God has indeed established a definitive way that He can communicate to us in our own human terms. If He speaks of glory, He can use the mountains. If He speaks of suffering, He can choose the valleys. If He alludes to authority, He can show forth a king, or He can choose a servant to depict service, obedience, and humility. We build our house on the “solid rock” and not on “sinking sand.” We work through the “storms of life.” We walk the “winding road” and enter through a “narrow gate.” We need our “daily bread” to nourish our spirits as we look for a “lamp” to “light our path.” We “sow” good and truthful words to yield a “harvest” later. There are “open doors” and “walls to scale” and “bridges to unite.” We “invest” now for a better “return” later. We look for “windows of opportunity.”
We see such big things described in even daily occurrences and happenstance. How would we even come close to picturing entering into His house someday (as we discuss deeper in Chapter Five), if it were not for the entering into the myriad of houses that we do over our own lifetimes? Some are of humble means, others moderately decorated, and some (if only in magazine pictures) of beauty, glamour, royalty and richness. We can only picture His house someday because we can picture our houses today! We have the images now to imagine later .
Each of us experience a multitude of images every day, as we “clothe ourselves” with things, “redeem” valuable things,