They drink their fill of the abundance of Your house and You give them to drink of the river of Your delights.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Thirsty ?
They drink their fill of the abundance of Your house and You give them to drink of the river of Your delights.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
dreaming of manure
Constantly we find ourselves slipping into bitterness and apathy and gloom as we reflect on them ( past disappointments and present heartbreaks) which we frequently do. The attitude we show to the world is a sort of dried up stoicism, miles removed from the “unspeakable joy” which Peter wrote about ( I Peter 1:8). “Poor souls, “ our friends say of us, “how they’ve suffered.” And that is just what we feel about ourselves !
But these private mock heroics have no place at all in the minds of those who really know God. They never brood on might – have – beens ; they never think of the things they have missed, only of what they have gained.
“ But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ, “ wrote Paul. “ What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him… I want to know Christ ( Philippians 3:7-10). When Paul says he counts the things he lost rubbish, or “dung” ( KJV), he means not merely that he does not think of them as having any value, but also that he does not live with them constantly in his mind: what normal person spends his time nostalgically dreaming of manure ? Yet this, in effect, is what many of us do. It shows how little we have in the way of true knowledge of God.
( page 25 Knowing God J.I. Packer)
Thursday, August 18, 2011
words from another century
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
blood pressure medication or prayer ?
“ What gives so much force to the impulse of anger is the overwhelming sense that the offender does not deserve forgiveness. That is, the grievance is so deep and so justifiable ( in our minds) that not only does self righteousness strengthen our indignation, but so does a legitimate sense of moral outrage. It’s the deep sense of legitimacy that gives our bitterness its unbending compulsion. We feel that a great crime would be committed if the magnitude of the evil we’ve experienced were just dropped and we let bygones by bygones. We are torn: our moral sense says this evil cannot be ignored and the word of God says we must forgive.” ( Faith in Future Grace page 265)
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
wisdom from the 1600's
" Let not your first opinions, about the controverted difficulties in religion, where Scripture is not very plain, be too peremptory, confident or fixed; but hold them modestly with a due suspicion of your unripe understandings, and with room for further information, supposing it possible, or probable, that upon better instruction, evidence and maturity, you may, in such things, change your minds."
A Christian directory page 49
I was struck by the idea that some of our ideas are not ripe and need time to mature. I needed this exhortation from another century today.
Monday, April 25, 2011
persistence in prayer
( Matthew 7:7 ff)
I stumbled across this paragraph:
" ...His point seems to be that the secret of prayer is persistence. Keep at it, keep speaking, and even if nothing comes, speak again and again. And finally the answer is given. It may not be the kind of answer we want - the kind of stopgap peace and the kind of easy security, the kind of end to loneliness that we are apt to pray for. Christ never promises peace in the sense of no more struggle and suffering. Instead, He helps us to struggle and suffer as He did, in love, for one another. Christ does not give us security in the sense of something in this world, some cause, some principle, some value, which is forever. Instead, He tells us that there is nothing in this world that is forever, all flesh is grass. He does not promise us unlonely lives. Instead of all these, the answer He gives, is Himself. If we go to Him for anything else, He may send us away empty or He may not. But if we go to Him for Himself, I believe that we go away always with this deepest of all our hungers filled."
( adapted from Frederick Buechner Listening to your life page 132)