Breaking the first commandment

Tonight I completed J.I. Packer's classic Knowing God.   I strongly urge you to read it.  I thought my favorite chapter was number 19 "Sons of God," then I read Ch. 20 "Thou our Guide."  Ch. 20 should be required reading for every new Christian, especially in any church that has a new believer's class.  Then I read Ch. 21 "These inward Trials."  I do not normally dog-ear books.  I like to protect my books... p. 243 is now dog-eared.

Then I read Ch. 22.  This is the chapter that prompted this post.  I will quote some passages, but first some background:  Packer is unpacking (sorry could not resist) Paul's words in Romans 8:32-35.  Verse 32: "He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?"  Commenting on this, Packer writes, "We are unlike the Christians of New Testament times.  Our approach to life is conventional and static; theirs was not.  The thought of "safety first" was not a drag on their enterprise as it is on ours... Why are we not free enough from fear and anxiety to allow ourselves to go full stretch in following Christ?... in our heart of hearts we are afraid of the consequences of going the whole way into the Christian life... We feel that the risks of out-and-out discipleship are too great for us to take... we are not persuaded of the adequacy of God to provide for all the needs of those who launch out wholeheartedly on the deep sea of unconventional living in obedience to the call of Christ... we feel obliged to break the first commandment just a little, by withdrawing a certain amount of our time and energy from serving God in order to serve mammon (italics added)... let us call a spade a spade.  The name of the game we are playing is unbelief (italics in original), and Paul's "he will give us all things " stands as a rebuke to us... Are we, perhaps, still assuming that a person's life consists, partly at any rate, in the things he possesses?"  Packer says we live this way, "out of unbelief, pure and simple."

"Have you been holding back from a risky, costly course to which you KNOW in your heart God has called you? Hold back no longer.  Your God is faithful..."

Give yourself a blessing, read Knowing God.

Checking into Education

Short clips worth checking out:

Valedictorian

IndoctriNation

Dunkirk

"God only Wise..."

I have been reading Packer's Knowing God.  If you have read it, you know the value of it.  If you have not read it - borrow it, check it out, purchase it.  Determine to read it immediately.  Do not get it and set it on the shelf to read "some day."

Ch. 9 "God only Wise"
"God's almighty wisdom is always active, and never fails. All his works of creation and providence and grace display it, and until we can see it in them we just are not seeing them straight.  But we cannot recognize God's wisdom unless we know the end for which he is working.  Here many go wrong.  Misunderstanding what the Bible means when it says that God is love (see John 4:8-10), they think that God intends a trouble-free life for all, irrespective of their moral and spiritual state, and hence they conclude that anything painful and upsetting (illness, accident, injury, loss of job, the suffering of a loved one) indicates either that God's wisdom, or power, or both, have broken down. or that God, after all, does not exist.  But this idea of God's intention is a complete mistake: God's wisdom is not, and never was, pledged to keep a fallen world happy, or to make ungodliness comfortable (italics added)."

Do you ever wonder why God does / allows certain things?  Ever wonder why He does NOT do what we want... in our time?  The key from above is "we cannot recognize God's wisdom unless we know the end for which he is working."  We must learn to ask, "what is God's goal in this situation?  Likely it is to teach us something... maybe patience... maybe we have forgotten genuine faith involves not seeing.  If we can see __________ it really is not faith.  Perhaps we have allowed our faith that God is God to become slack and HE is helping us grow stronger in that area.  In all things we can know He leads us into situations and areas that will make us more like Christ.  Are we looking at our circumstances with an eye to that, or are we too consumed with ease and pleasure that growing in Christ-likeness is not on our radar?

"we cannot recognize God's wisdom unless we know the end for which he is working."