Svenson: you can't do it all

Balance is necessary and attainable—not easy, but possible. When we understand that we are finite and that it is okay to be finite, then we can begin to accept our limits with comfort.  What we do we do well—but we do not do it all.

Margin (loc.3168)

Svenson: envy stops friendships

We relate better to others when the relationship is stabilized by contentment. If every encounter with my neighbor reminds me of something I covet, that relationship becomes tenuous. Envy makes it hard to have friends—everyone I know has something I do not.

Margin (loc.2625)

Fighting fear with fear (Tripp)

Fear can be an ungodly and dangerous thing. Fear can overwhelm your senses. It can distort your thinking. It can kidnap your desires. It can capture your meditation so that you spend more time worrying about what could be than considering the God who is. Fear can cause you to make bad decisions in the short term and fail to make good decisions in the long run. Fear can cause you to forget what you know and to lose sight of who you are. Fear can make you wish for control you will never have. It can cause you to distrust people you have reason to trust. It can cause you to be demanding rather than serving. It can cause you to run when you should stay and to stay when you really should run. Fear can make God look small and your circumstance loom large. Fear can make you seek from people what you will only get from the Lord. Fear can be the soil of your deepest questions and your biggest doubts. Your heart was wired to fear, because you were designed for life shaped by fear of God. But horizontal fear cannot be allowed to rule your heart, because if it does, it will destroy you and your ministry.

Fear is only ever conquered by fear. Awe of God really is the solution here. Only fear of God has the spiritual power to overwhelm all the horizontal fears that can capture you heart. These relational-situational-location fears are only ever put in the proper place and given their appropriate size by a greater fear---fear of the Lord. Perhaps this is a good portion of what is being said in Proverbs when it declares, "Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom." Allowing yourself to be twisted and turned by whatever fear seizes you at the moment is an unwise, unstable, and unproductive way of living. Living to alleviate fear never leads to being fear-free. It simply makes you more afraid of fear, more fear-alert, and ultimately more fearful. Only when God looms larger than anything you're facing can you be protected and practically freed from the fear that either paralyzes you or causes you to make foolish decisions.

Paul Tripp

Kant: everything is not everything

“Give a man everything he wants,” declared Immanuel Kant, “and at that moment, everything will not be everything.”

Margin (Loc.2531)

Svenson: Godliness and Contentment

Godliness is an attitude whereby what we want is to please God. Contentment, explains J. I. Packer, “is essentially a matter of accepting from God’s hand what He sends because we know that He is good and therefore it is good.”

Margin, loc.2459

Manton: the sun, not the town clock

"Know that the Lord has set apart him that is godly for Himself."  Therefore, it is no excuse for him to say, "I do but as others so."  He is to reckon his hours by the sun, not the town clock.

Puritan Golden Treasury, p44

Svenson: needs and desires and freedom

There is great confusion as to how we distinguish needs from desires. The list of what we call “needs” today is certainly much longer than the list was in 1900, which in turn was much longer than the list at the time of Christ. If the list expands each year, is this an expansion God approves of? “The cultivation and expansion of needs is … the antithesis of freedom,” teaches economist E. F. Schumacher. “Every increase of needs tends to increase one’s dependence on outside forces over which one cannot have control.”

Margin, (loc 2303f)

Svenson: doing the opposite of money

Money is powerful. It is so powerful, taught Jesus, that it competes head-to-head with God. “For Mammon’s work is the exact opposite of God’s work,” explains French sociologist Jacques Ellul. “Given this opposition, we understand why Jesus demands a choice between Mammon and God. He is not speaking of just any other power, just any other god; he is speaking of the one who goes directly against God’s action, the one who makes ‘nongrace’ reign in the world."  Before we can accomplish anything righteous with money, we first need to understand this power, confront it, and with the help of God, demolish it. How is it possible to break the substantial power money holds over us? Very simple—give it away. “There is one act par excellence which profanes money by going directly against the law of money, an act for which money is not made,” says Ellul. “This act is GIVING.”  

Margin (loc.2272f)

Svenson: money doesn't help so much

Most of what people really want in life—love, friendship, respect, family, standing, fun—is not priced and does not pass through the market,” explains Gregg Easterbrook. “If something isn’t priced you can’t buy it, so possessing money may not help much.

Margin (loc.2263)

Postman: machine ideologies

In Technopoly, we are surrounded by the wondrous effects of machines and are encouraged to ignore the ideas embedded in them.  Which means we become blind to the ideological meaning of our technologies.

Technopoly, p94

Sin, grace, assurance and a painful finger

Sense of sin may be often great, and more felt than grace;  yet not be more than grace.  A man feels the ache of his finger more sensibly than the health of his whole body;  yet he knows that the ache of his finger is nothing so much as the health of his whole body.

Thomas Adams, quoted in A Puritan Golden Treasury, p23

Assurance on the path of light and shadow

None have assurance at all times.  As in a walk that is shaded with trees and chequered with light and shadow, some paths and tracks in it are dark and others are sunshine.  Such is usually the life of the most assured Christian.

Ezekiel Hopkins, quoted in A Puritan Golden Treasury, p22

Awe and worry

Finally, as I face my weaknesses and the messiness of the local church, what gives me rest of heart? Glory gives you rest. It is the knowledge that nothing is too hard for the God whom you serve. It is the surety that all things are possible with him. It is knowing, with Abraham, that the one who made all those promises is faithful. There may seem to be many horizontal reasons to be anxious, but I will not let my heart be captured by worry or fear, because the God of inestimable glory who sent me has made this promise: "I will be with you." I don't have to play games with myself. I don't have to deny or minimize reality in order to feel okay, because he has invaded my existence with his glory, and I can rest even in the brokenness between the "already" and the "not yet."

Paul Tripp, Gospel Coalition.