David:        Just so you know, this visit will not be like our last Before We Go visit in which we talked about the incredibly difficult refugee problem at our nation’s southern border.

Karen:        And that was a heavy topic. Probably visited again in the future, but not today. Today we’re going to talk about complimenting God.

Intro:          Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife, noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

David:        A word we hear a lot in church circles is the word worship. Let’s see if we can define it.

Karen:        Let’s start with Webster’s, okay?

David:        Ok. That’s not a bad place to begin.

Karen:        Webster dictionary defines worship as reverence for a deity. A church service showing this reverence is called a worship service and a worship service attributes worth to God.

David:        You can take a different part of the worship service and it doesn’t necessarily a tribute worth to God. It’s almost addressed, well, it’s addressed in the sermon to the listeners. But the whole of the service is meant to attribute worth to God. So, it is a worship service.

Karen:        Let’s go to the Mains family children’s dictionary.

David:        That’s a funny thing to us because the kids would, they were growing up, they say, I don’t understand. You know, then we’d have to say.

David:        I don’t know what you are talking about.

David:        Then we’ll have to say, let’s put it in your language so you can understand. We said that worship is paying God a compliment and that’s the topic we want to tackle today.

Karen:        In fact, let us state one key biblical truth and because you are the biblical truth statement greeter. Why don’t you say it?

David:        Okay, here’s what we’re talking about today. Becoming proficient at complimenting God will prove to be a powerful spiritual practice.

Karen:        Okay.

David:        I’ll say one more time. It came pretty fast. Becoming proficient at complimenting God will prove to be a powerful spiritual practice.

Karen:        So, in David Mains fashion, you sat yourself down and began to write out a list of attributes most of us recognize and they include God is love.

David:        Okay, that’s an easy one. God is all powerful. He’s omnipotent if you use a big word with kids. God is truth.

Karen:        This is a wonderful exercise.

David:        Keep going, Karen.

Karen:        He’s eternal. He’s holy. He is spirit.

David:        God is wise. He’s a creator. He is omniscient. You know what that means?

Karen:        All knowing.

David:        Okay. He is personal. We’re kind of running out of where most people would say they know the answers. And so, what we’d like to do today is we want to talk about aspects of who God is that aren’t talked about that much. You can’t find a hymn on some of these. But anyway, see if it is interesting to you and then maybe you will do exactly what we’ve done in our lives. We’ve kept a list of all these different things.

Karen:        It’s a wonderful spiritual exercise that has been for us.

David:        Okay, for example, I would start out and I would say God is multilingual.

Karen:        Oh, that’s gorgeous. He doesn’t have to have translation for all these prayers that are coming from all these countries with all these different languages. Oh, that’s wonderful.

David:        Yeah, but it’s kind of overlooked because we’re in the rutted area. We say the same thing repeatedly. You got an idea? God is what?

Karen:        He’s a creator of this world, and also of the world to come.

David:        I like that. I like that.

Karen:        I can’t imagine what the world to come is going to be like.

David:        But when you say just looking at this world that he has made, this is amazing. And then to know that he’s prepared a place for us and it’s going to be absolutely jaw-dropping.

Karen:        Let me just do a little personal illustration of that. When we moved into the house here in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois is known for its black loam soil. Just everywhere you travel in this flat land of Illinois. If you’re going in the country, they’re just black loam.

David:        It’s great soil.

Karen:        Great soil for growing. We moved into the clay streak. We bought a house, and we were just on clay, a streak of clay. I can remember many a summer sitting in the backyard just crying because I had to recreate. Well, I lived here for what, 45 years now? I had to recreate the soil. Talk about a godlike experience. There were many times I thought, oh God, how am I going to do this? But you compost, you bring in bags of good topsoil, just all kinds of things you go through.

Well, my garden is gorgeous now because I worked with the soil and recreated it. And that helps me understand about why it took the Lord centuries to create all these worlds. If just creating soil that things could grow and took me as long as it did, no wonder. I have an understanding of God I didn’t have before.

David:        Back to our list, okay? God is a great gift giver. People say about me sometimes and it pleases me a lot. You’re very good in terms of the gifts you give to other people and I’m glad for that, but that’s nothing like God is. God is just a wonderful gift giver.

Karen:        Just a personal note about that with you, David. I never think about gifts for the kids as far as their birthdays or anniversaries. You are on top of it all the time and you do wonderfully. I think about the food we’re going to serve.

David:        Well, that’s a gift.

Karen:        It is, but you know, you just, you love to do it and you do it beautifully. So that’s an attribute of God. That’s true.

David:        Here’s one that I like. God, I praise you that you are the life changer.

Karen:        Oh gee, that’s beautiful.

David:        Yeah, and that’s something we don’t even have to define it. Let’s continue with the list we’ve worked on here.

Karen:        You’re the promise keeper.

David:        Yeah.

Karen:        Is that beautiful? All the promises of God that we read in the scriptures.

David:        Reminds me of that great movement of men.

Karen:        Oh yeah, the promise keeper movement.

David:        That was saying I will keep my promises to you, God, but if you reverse that, God keeps his promises to us. That’s really neat, okay?

Karen:        He’s always available. You don’t have to make an appointment with God. I’m trying to get into this.

David:        Got to get through the secretary.

Karen:        For instance, I’m trying to get into my dentist because I need some dental work done. He’s booked up for three months out. God is not that way. God is not that way.

David:        I’m laughing because these are wonderful thoughts and they work into one’s prayer life and you allow them to. God is a miracle worker. Everybody knows that.

Karen:        We know that. And sometimes we don’t see, because we’re so busy or we’re so grossed in our humanity, the miracles that he’s working in our life. So we need to take time and remember that, yeah, we prayed for years for that certain person to become a Christian and they did extraordinary. But then we forget about it. We need to continually thank him for the miracles he does.

David:        I like this one and I think it would make a fantastic hymn or an openness to a congregation to say, verify what we’re saying here by your own experience. But it’s that God has a subtle sense of humor.

Karen:        Subtle. I’d say he has an outrageous sense of humor sometimes.

David:        Well, it could be both. I think that, say his creation, I can see the Godhead working at this. You know, that’s a nice little animal. You know, we put that one together.

Karen:        Black and white when striped on the back and it stinks.

David:        You jumped ahead of my punchline, but that’s horrible.

Karen:        It sends a terrible aroma.

David:        How are we going to help this little guy? So he’s not just wiped out very quickly. Well, I got an idea.

Karen:        Well, indeed, the minuscule evidence of that is look at bugs. You just look at the bugs, the variety of bugs, the minutiae of creation, the insects of the world. Some of them are beautiful and some of them are ridiculous.

David:        It doesn’t matter. They’re so important.

Karen:        Even on that level, there is this creative mind at work.

David:        It’s probably unusual for God to hear this, but I think the Godhead may say, “Hey, they got it. We had fun doing that.” Good. God is patient. Even with hard heads like me. “God, I praise you that you are patient because I know it’s taken me a lot longer to get to this place than you anticipated. I’m kind of slow to learn. Thank you that you are patient.”

Karen:        And when his patience reaches its end, he’s not above giving us obvious nudges.

David:        You’re talking from experience.

Karen:        From experience. Yeah. You haven’t paid attention to me. I’ve been very patient with you and I’m going to have to give you a push. He’s the God who knows who we are and knows how to behave with us.

David:        God is personal. I don’t know many individuals who would be able to say Karen’s middle name is such and such or David’s middle name is such and such that God knows what those are.

Karen:        He knows what our middle name is. Well, my middle name is Sue, so everyone else does, but God has always known.

David:        Yeah, he has. He is personal. He understands us through and through. Here’s one. God, I praise you that you are my bodyguard.

Karen:        Oh, that’s beautiful.

David:        It’s not something that I thought of myself. You picked this up from say the psalm.

Karen:        Yeah, David.

David:        David says, “…though an army surrounded…”

Karen:        Right. Oh, evidence of his belief in God’s care. It’s extraordinary.

David:        And I like that idea of a bodyguard.

Karen:        That’s beautiful.

David:        I feel God has been that way for me during the course of my life. God is not just the great Creator, but he by his very nature is creative. Do you like creative persons?

Karen:        I love creative persons. They think outside the box. My God, he’s that way, isn’t he?

David:        He’s the ultimate creative individual, if you put it that way.

Karen:        Here’s one. He understands what suffering is all about.

David:        Well, we just did about face to me. That, yeah, God, you understand the pain. You understand just the wrenching aspect of all of that.

Karen:        You enter through your love into the pain of humanity. But the greatest example of that was he sent His Son to die for us, and that we would be delivered from our suffering and our sin.

David:        A lot of, Karen, when you talk about great literature, whatever movies, there’s a certain aspect that’s very important is the timing of it all. When do you bring that in so that the impact that you’re wanting to have the audience experience is understood and felt? I think God is that way in terms of our lives as well. His timing is amazing. Just when I needed a special evidence of his love for me. Bang! There it was.

Karen:        Something was there.

David:        Yeah. And to be able to say to God, I didn’t miss it. I want you to know that I understood totally what you were doing, and I’m so very, very grateful. And I just want to say, like you would say, yeah, you told me that yesterday. I don’t think God says that. Yeah, I’m glad it overwhelmed you.

Karen:        Yes.

David:        That’s what I wanted to do.

Karen:        And what that means, we have to pay attention. You can’t just say, hey, thanks God. In passing, you have to sit down and say, oh, wow, wow, wow. You have to look at it and say, at the moment I needed it the most, or used a person who I never knew what’s stepping. I mean, just all kinds of ingredients going to this, but we need to be paying attention.

David:        Yeah, and to say, “God, I’m impressed. I’m grateful. I remember the time I first prayed this. I don’t know how to express it to you, God, but you are the heavy lifter.” Let me illustrate it.

Karen:        Okay.

David:        When I was younger, I had a friend who asked me if I would help him move from the apartment. He was on the second floor. You know, I was dumb enough to say yes. Now I can claim I’m too old to do that. I don’t help people move. He had a grand piano.

Karen:        A baby grand or something. Oh, my goodness. Okay.

David:        And I didn’t even think about it, but there were four of us. We needed to take it down to the ground floor. And I mean, that’s like being asked to pick up an elephant.

Karen:        You can’t roll it down the stairs, obviously.

David:        Well, you can, but you might lose one of the guys. I don’t know. And Karen at the right time, again, in God’s timing, a fellow came along. He was about six, five muscular. And the first time we picked that piano up, I mean, I thought, I know we got to get it down those stairs. It is impossible. You know, I’m a little guy. When this new guy who came who was big and strong, when we picked it up with him, it was still a heavy load, but I wasn’t straining like everything because someone came along who was just a heavy lifter. And we actually got that thing down to the ground floor. And I thought to myself, again, if so and so hadn’t come, there’s no way in the world. And one of us probably would have died in the process.

Karen:        Or have been injured.

David:        I look at my life and I can say to God, all during my life, you have been the heavy lifter.

Karen:        It’s beautiful.

David:        You’ve taken the rough part. I get to kind of tag along and say, look at what we just did.

Karen:        Yeah.

David:        We got that piano down from that second floor down to the first floor. Wasn’t that amazing? But if we hadn’t had the heavy lifter, we wouldn’t have made it.

Karen:        So, here’s one I like. He is beyond our imagination. We can imagine what God is and who he is and how he behaves. I’ve been reading the physicist’s book, John Polkinghorne. He was English. He was the Anglican priest, but he was also a physicist. And so, he looks at the creation of the world through these two lenses. And he said there should be no contrariness between science and faith because they’re both seeking the same thing. They’re seeking truth. They just have different disciplines or different approaches.

David:        Different approaches.

Karen:        It has been so informative. It’s stretched me. I mean, I’m reading about creation and terminology. I’ve never used myself or understood. I’ve had to look up words. But my mind has been stretched. So, the concept of God being beyond our imagination for me has been really opened up by reading Polkinghorne’s work. He’s dead now, but his work is just extraordinary.

David:        He continues to live.

Karen:        He continues to live through his writings.

David:        Yeah. God is not to be mocked. He’s not to be made fun of. He’s not to be, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, not dead at all. Sometimes in my life I have been stupid enough to do that.

Karen:        You say you’re so great. What are you going to do for me, Lord? Or you’re not acting in my life, you know? Yeah. That’s a very human kind of response.

David:        Yeah. I’m glad that he is not mocked. I think that’s a good thing. And I’m grateful for it. We could go on and on. God is a peacemaker.

Karen:        A day planner.

David:        Oh, that’s good. That’s good. Where did you get that from?

Karen:        Well, he is my day planner. You know, I sometimes…

David:        Yeah, we got a new day. Yeah. I have a little agenda, but you’re my day planner.

Karen:        Well, I’ve learned…

David:        I love that. That’s so good.

Karen:        I have a huge list. I always have lists. I’m thinking, I’ll forget the list. God, what did you want to do in this day? And then I sometimes get more done than I ever thought I would get done.

David:        I think God is a recruiter.

Karen:        A true friend. A true friend, one who does never abandon us.

David:        This is kind of a common word, but it also brings up thoughts that are different. God is a provider. God is not time-bound the way we are. God, you’re my problem solver.

Karen:        He’s not only a friend, but he’s friendly.

David:        I have to work with that one. I like that. That’s nice. He’s friendly. I think that God is a master of surprise.

Karen:        Yes, yes.

David:        Okay, you’re saying yes, yes, and I’m assuming that some of our listeners are saying yes.

Karen:        Didn’t see that one coming.

David:        His nature is mind-boggling. I like this. Karen, you can develop it if you want. God is unshockable. He’s seen it all.

Karen:        He’s seen it all through the centuries. Right. Humanity doesn’t surprise him.

David:        God is all powerful, but he doesn’t have power-outs.

Karen:        Oh, honey, that’s beautiful. Power-out with no power-outs.

David:        I think God’s getting a kick out of this. I don’t know if he is or not. I find myself drawing much closer to the Lord when I’m able to talk to him in what is a new language in a way.

Karen:        I have a spiritual practice. Let me just share this with people who would like to take this conversation into their lives personally and further if they’re not doing it already. I’ve kept a prayer journal for 45 years. However, anyone journals just continue it, but every day I connect with God and I start with one kind of praise.

So, I’ve done this sort of exercise that we’re doing right now in my journal every day. Then in my journal, I go into a period of thanks. I list all the things I’m thankful for because often those are answered prayers. Then after that, I’ll make a list of prayer requests that I have. When I have answered prayers, I go back into the journal and I make a notation in that list of prayer requests that this has been answered and how. This has developed to me a keen awareness of who God is and of his work in my life.

So, I recommend it for those listeners to the podcast who haven’t started. It’s never too late to start an exercise like this. Then there’ll be days or weeks when you don’t work in your journal because of the discipline you’re trying to get going. Go right back into it. Don’t chastise yourself. Just pick up your journal and start again and keep it going. See if you can keep it going for the whole year.

David:        Here’s what we’re talking about today. Becoming proficient at complimenting God will prove to be a powerful spiritual practice.

Karen:        Want me to repeat that? Becoming proficient at complimenting God will prove to be a powerful spiritual practice.

David:        Okay, just a question between the two of us because nobody else is listening right now. Do you think that we’ve captured someone’s imagination that they’re going to try this?

Karen:        That’s sort of in God’s realm. You have to do what he does.

David:        Okay, we did what we’re supposed to do.

Karen:        He has to do what he’s supposed to do.

David:        Okay, I’m willing to leave it there because he’s good as a follow-up.

Karen:        Yeah.

David:        I sent my servant to tell you this and you didn’t pay any attention. I sent you the prophets.

Karen:        I’m going to have to nudge you a little bit more.

David:        Okay, enjoyable topic. It was kind of fun.

Dean:         What a wonderful topic, David and Karen. You could go on and on and on for hours and hours and we still would not exhaust all of the wonderful things that God means to us.

Karen:        Oh, thanks, Dean. That’s true, isn’t it? It’s so true.

Outro:        You’ve been listening to the Before We Go podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address, hosts@beforewego.show. That’s all-lower-case letters. hosts@beforewego.show. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please remember to rate, review and share on whatever platform you listen. This podcast is copyright 2024 by Mainstay Ministries, Post Office Box 30, Wheaton, Illinois 60187.