‘Quoting Packer’
THERE IS a difference between knowing God and knowing about God. When you truly know God, you have energy to serve Him, boldness to share Him, and contentment in Him.
There is tremendous relief in knowing that His love to me is based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me.
‘Wait on the Lord’ is a constant refrain in the Psalms, and it is a necessary word, for God often keeps us waiting. He is not in such a hurry as we are, and it is not his way to give more light on the future than we need for action in the present, or to guide us more than one step at a time. When in doubt, do nothing, but continue to wait on God. When action is needed, light will come.
The simple statement, ‘God is for us’, is in truth one of the richest and weightiest utterances that the Bible contains.
The Holy Spirit’s main ministry is not to give thrills but to create in us Christlike character.
To know that nothing happens in God’s world apart from God’s will may frighten the godless, but it stabilizes the saints.
Not until we have become humble and teachable, standing in awe of God’s holiness and sovereignty… acknowledging our own littleness, distrusting our own thoughts, and willing to have our minds turned upside down, can divine wisdom become ours.
Every time we mention God, we become theologians, and the only question is whether we are going to be good ones or bad ones.
The healthy Christian is not necessarily the extrovert, ebullient Christian, but the Christian who has a sense of God’s presence stamped deep on his soul, who trembles at God’s word, who lets it dwell in him richly by constant meditation upon it, and who tests and reforms his life daily in response to it.
The battle against pride in the heart is lifelong, so humility should become an ever more deeply seated attitude of living.
Even when we cannot see the why and wherefore of God’s dealings, we know that there is love in and behind them, and so we can rejoice always.
Living becomes an awesome business when you realize that you spend every moment of your life in the sight and company of an omniscient, omnipresent Creator.
I am graven on the palms of His hands. I am never out of His mind. All my knowledge of Him depends on His sustained initiative in knowing me. I know Him, because He first knew me, and continues to know me. He knows me as a friend, One who loves me; and there is no moment when His eye is off me, or His attention distracted for me, and no moment, therefore, when His care falters.
The Son of God came to seek us where we are in order that he might bring us to be with him where he is.
God uses chronic pain and weakness, along with other afflictions, as his chisel for sculpting our lives. Felt weakness deepens dependence on Christ for strength each day. The weaker we feel, the harder we lean. And the harder we lean, the stronger we grow spiritually, even while our bodies waste away. To live with your ‘thorn’ uncomplainingly – that is, sweet, patient, and free in heart to love and help others, even though every day you feel weak — is true sanctification. It is true healing for the spirit. It is a supreme victory of grace.
A God whom we could understand exhaustively, and whose revelation of Himself confronted us with no mysteries whatsoever, would be a God in man’s image, and therefore an imaginary God, not the God of the Bible at all.
There are no small sins against a great God.
The sins of God’s children do not destroy their justification but they mar the children’s fellowship with their Father.
We must seek, in studying God, to be led to God.
We never move on from the Gospel, we move on in the Gospel.
If our theology does not quicken the conscience and soften the heart, it actually hardens both.
Any theology that does not lead to song is, at a fundamental level, a flawed theology.
In revelation, God is the agent as well as the object. It is not just that men speak about God, or for God; God speaks for himself, and talks to us in person.
God the Father is the giver of Holy Scripture; God the Son is the theme of Holy Scripture; and God the Spirit is the author, authenticator, and interpreter, of Holy Scripture.
Holy people glory, not in their holiness, but in Christ’s cross; for the holiest saint is never more than a justified sinner and never sees himself in any other way.
Grace means God moving heaven and earth to save sinners who could not lift a finger to save themselves.
The life of true holiness is rooted in the soil of awed adoration.
The purpose of the church is to make the invisible kingdom visible through faithful Christian living and witness-bearing.
The more you praise, the more vigor you will have for prayer…the more you pray, the more matter you will have for praise. TAP
