To be nigh unto God, and to be like unto Him, are the same. To be always with him, and perfectly like him according to the capacity of our nature, is to be eternally blessed. To live by faith in the contemplation of the glory of God in Christ, is that initiation into both, whereof we are capable in this world.”
If one of the greatest challenges facing our forefathers was maintaining doctrinal orthodoxy in the face of encroaching liberalism, one of the greatest challenges facing us today is maintaining spiritual authenticity in the face of encroaching secularism - how to be real in a world that does not share our values or respect our ministry.
People are frightened of themselves. It’s like Freud saying that the best thing is to have no sensation at all, as if we’re supposed to live painlessly and unconsciously in the world. I have a much different view. The ancients are right: the dear old human experience is a singular, difficult, shadowed, brilliant experience that does not resolve into being comfortable in the world. The valley of the shadow is part of that, and you are depriving yourself if you do not experience what humankind has experienced, including doubt and sorrow. We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying, I will pass through this, everyone I have ever admired has passed through this, music has come out of this, literature has come out of it. We should think of our humanity as a privilege.Marilynne Robinson
"Douglas Adams, author of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, once grouped technology into three categories. First, “everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal.” Then, “anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it.” Finally, “anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.”
― from "From the Garden to the City", Jon Dyer
Writing a novel from scratch, which is to say without training, was
such an unexpected odyssey that I was prompted to recall the
discoveries in my new book, Release the Bats – as much to remind
myself where the power lay as to pass the keys on to others trying
their luck. I didn’t read a lot before writing a novel, but I realise
now that certain books helped set me up. Writing fiction means writing
vibrant human characters, and luck is with us in terms of research, as
we haven’t essentially changed since we came down from the trees. So
the best grounding for a fiction writer must be one that explores
human nature with gloves off. There’s nothing like literature from
ancient Rome bemoaning consumer culture to show that nothing is new,
or literature from Habsburg Italy telling how to hire nuns for sex
from the mothers superior of convents to put Fifty Shades in
perspective. Which is to say that if we haven’t figured ourselves out
by now, there’s still time: we’re not going anywhere.
Satan, too, has his creed : Doubt God's Faithfulness. " Hath God said ? Are you not mistaken as to His commands ? He could not really mean just that. You take an extreme view, give too literal a meaning to the words:" . . . How constantly, and, alas, how successfully are such arguments used to prevent whole-hearted trust in God, whole-hearted consecration to God! ... How many estimate difficulties in the, light of their own resources, and thus attempt little and often fail in the little they attempt! All God's giants have been weak men, who did great things for God because they reckoned on His being with them....
Want of trust is at the root of almost all our sins and all our weaknesses ; and how shall we escape it but by looking to Him and observing His faithfulness ? ... The man who holds God's faithfulness will not be foolhardy or reckless, but he will be ready for every emergency. The man who holds God's faithfulness will dare to obey Him, however impolitic it may appear.Abraham held God's faithfulness and offered up Isaac, " accounting that God was able to raise him from the dead."
"If our hearts are right," he often said, we may count upon the Holy Spirit's working through us to bring others into deeper fellowship with God-the way the work began at Pentecost. We do not need to say much about the C.I.M. Let people see God working, let God be glorified, let believers be made holier, happier, brought nearer to Him, and they will not need to be asked to help."
" That Word had said, 'Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things (food and raiment) shall be added unto you.' If any one did not believe that God spoke the truth, it would be better for him not to go to China to propagate the faith. If he did believe it, surely the promise sufficed. Again, 'No good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly.' If any one did not mean to walk uprightly, he had better stay at home ; if he did mean to walk uprightly, he had all he needed in the shape of a guarantee fund. God owns all the gold and silver in the world, and the cattle on a thousand hills. We need not be vegetarians."
“How long have you had the glad tidings in England?” he asked unsuspectingly.The young missionary was ashamed to tell him, and vaguely replied that it was several hundreds of years.“What,” exclaimed Nyi in astonishment, “several hundreds of years! Is it possible that you have known about Jesus so long, and only now have come to tell us? My father sought the truth for more than twenty years,” he continued sadly, “and died without finding it. Oh, why did you not come sooner?”
"As the stewards of truth and teaching, we hold a sacred accountability to perpetuate the very convictions that give life meaning, secure our hope, and summon us and those we lead to concerted action."
We want to change the world by changing the way people think and then deploying them through organizational structures that set them loose in the world to accomplish great things. Leaders are the catalysts for making that happen.
If you don’t predetermine the conditions in which you’ll stop, you’ll quit pre-mature. According to Navy SEALS, most people stop at 40 percent of their actual capacity.
I wrote so I could say I was truly paying attention. Experience in itself wasn’t enough. The diary was my defense against waking up at the end of my life and realizing I’d missed it.
...the Christian who understands the gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit seeks God not primarily to gain reward or avoid punishment (since both are guaranteed in Christ anyway). Christians seek God for themselves. Without the gospel we may come and ask for things. Without the gospel, we may conceive of a holy God who is intimidating and who can be approached with petitions only if we are very good. Or we may conceive of a God whose "love" just means he regards everyone positively. To approach the first kind of 'God' is fearsome; to approach the second kind of God is no big deal. Thus without the gospel, there is no possibility of passioon and delight to praise and approach the true God.
You and I are in little (our sins excepted) what God is in large. Being made in His image we have within us the capacity to know Him. In our sins we lack only the power. The moment the Spirit has quickened us to life in regeneration our whole being senses its kinship to God and leaps up in joyous recognition. That is the heavenly birth without which we cannot see the kingdom of God. It is, however, not an end but an inception, for now begins the glorious pursuit, the heart’s happy exploration of the infinite riches of the Godhead. That is where we begin, I say, but where we stop no man has yet discovered, for there is in the awful and mysterious depths of the Triune God neither limit nor end.
It is important to know not only in general that the Bible is true but also that in the Bible God’s words are identical to his actions. When he says, “Let there be light,” there is light (Genesis 1:3). When God renames someone, it automatically remakes him (Genesis 17:5). The Bible does not say that God speaks and then proceeds to act, that he names and then proceeds to shape—but that God’s speaking and acting are the same thing. His word is his action, his divine power.
