The question is not whether we are good at theology, or “balanced” in our approach to problems of Christian living. The question is, can we say, simply, honestly…that we have known God, and that because we have known God the unpleasantness we have had, or the pleasantness we have not had, through being Christians does not matter to us? If we really knew God, this is what we would be saying, and if we are not saying it, that is a sign that we need to face ourselves more sharply with the difference between knowing God and merely knowing about Him.
–J. I. Packer
I want to know God… personally, intimately, deeply… and not just know about Him.
We’ve all done it…
Taken that wrong turn…
And some people have found that wrong turn to be a costly mistake… photo credit: www.komu.com/news/car-slides-off-roadway-into-lake/
Sometimes we feel as if we taken the wrong turn not just with our car, but with our entire life. We look back on the past and and we think, “Boy, did I choose the wrong way.” And we might even wonder if life has been permanently damaged because of that choice. If you feel that way, I have great news for you…
If I found I had driven into a bog, I should know I had missed the road. But this knowledge would not be of much comfort if I then had to stand helpless watching the car sink and vanish; the damage would be done, and that would be that. Is it the same when a Christian wakes up to the fact that he has missed God’s guidance and taken the wrong way? Is the damage irrevocable? Must he now be put off course for life?
Thank God, no. Our God is a God who not merely restores, but takes up our mistakes and follies into His plan for us and brings good out of them.
This is part of the wonder of His gracious sovereignty…. The Jesus who restored Peter after his denial and corrected his course more than once after that, is our Savior today and He has not changed….
Guidance, like all God’s acts of blessing under the covenant of grace, is a sovereign act. Not merely does God will to guide us in the sense of showing us His way, that we may tread it; He wills also to guide us in the more fundamental sense of ensuring that, whatever happens, whatever mistakes we may make, we shall come safely home. Slippings and strayings there will be, no doubt, but the everlasting arms are beneath us; we shall be caught, rescued, restored. This is God’s promise; this is how good He is.
Thus it appears that the right context for discussing guidance is one of confidence in the God who will not let us ruin our souls.
Our concern, therefore, in this discussion should be more for His glory than for our security — for that is already taken care of.
Isn’t that a beautiful description of how good God is to us. That if we have chosen Jesus as Savior and Lord, then no matter if we slip, we know that His arms are beneath us and that we will not ruin our souls. Our security in Him has been established already, so let us live for His glory!
(Quotes in today’s post are from Knowing God by J. I. Packer)
Your private devotional life has the power to kill you like nothing else does. By “kill you,” I mean that it has the power to kill the “me-ism” that is inside you (and me) that will again and again cause you to be in the way of, rather than part of, whatever it is that God is doing at the moment. Private personal worship is an effective tool of grace in the hands of God to kill those things in you that must die in order that you be what you have been called to be and do what you have been appointed to do in your place of ministry.
–Paul David Tripp
This is the quote that I have placed at the top of my annual “Personal Worship Plan” to remind me to make sure I have a solid plan of action to kill the things in me that keep me from becoming the person God desires.
Again, here is a blank copy of that worship plan if you would like to use it yourself: (Just click on this pdf image link to open or download the file.)
…rather than being a perfect portrait that assures people that the gospel is true, you and I are called to be windows through which people look and see the glory of the risen Lord Jesus Christ. It is our weakness that demonstrates both the essentiality and power of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Only His ever-present and powerful grace could enable a person, who still needs to be transformed himself, to be used as an instrument of His transforming grace in the lives of others. This frees us from pretending that we are what we are not. It frees us from boasting about what we could never have produced on our own, and it frees the people we serve from putting us on a messianic pedestal that should be reserved for Jesus only. We must preach to ourselves a gospel of ongoing weakness and sufficient grace.
–Paul David Tripp
Yesterday, I commented that we must show people who Jesus is, but we must remember that we are not a perfect reflection. We are not messiahs. Only Jesus is. Therefore, get rid of all the dirt, grime, and filth that could make it difficult to see through you; become as clear a window as you possibly can so they can look through you to see Jesus.
It is staggering that God should love sinners; yet it is true. God loves creatures who have become unlovely and (one would have thought) unlovable. There was nothing whatever in the objects of his love to call it forth; nothing in us could attract or prompt it. Love among persons is awakened by something in the beloved, but the love of God is free, spontaneous, unevoked, uncaused. God loves people because he has chosen to love them and no reason for his love can be given except his own sovereign good pleasure.
–J. I. Packer
Follow this idea…
God chose to love us when we were unlovable.
God placed within us His Holy Spirit.
God has given us the power to love others with His compassion.
Therefore, we can choose to love others with compassion and patience, even though they are difficult.
God tells us: Turn the other cheek, go the extra mile… why? Because it is what God did for you. Now do it for others to show them who God is!
