image by Ioc Nguyen from Unsplash J.I. Packer's book Knowing God was a classic that I'd often heard my parents recommend, but when your home has shelves of theological and Christian books and your parents are somehow always discovering a new gem of a book every other day, you get a bit desensitized after a while. I mentally stowed Knowing God away on my endless To-Read list and figured one of these days--after I'd finished the stack of half-read books waiting for me patiently on my desk/bedside/bookshelf--I'd get into it. ...knowing at the same time that the chances weren't all that good, considering how many times I'd said that to myself about multiple books. Reader, I am proud to report I finally did get to it. And it was a lot more simple and straight-forward than I expected, for an old book. I thought, to help consolidate what I'd read (and also to compile my notes since my handwriting isn't the most legible) I would do a short chapter by chapter series of posts breaking down the main points of each chapters, and some of the key quotes and discussion questions which I felt were the most helpful. So for chapter 1! Packer begins by establishing why he wrote this book, his premise on what it meant to know God (and what it was NOT) as well as why it was important: "The conviction behind the book is that ignorance of God--ignorance both of His ways and of the practice of communion with Him--lies at the root of much of the church's weakness today." The knowledge of God's nature and character is practical and deeply relevant for life (preachh!) contrary to popular opinion that theology is stuffy/academic and only necessary for Bible seminary students and pastors. 5 foundations which should characterize our knowledge of God: 1. God communicates to us via the Bible 2. God rules over all things for His glory 3. God is Saviour and actively manifests His love through the saving work of Jesus 4. God is triune 5. Godliness = responding to the revelation of God with trust and obedience, faith and worship, prayer and praise, submission and service. True religion = a life lived and seen in the light of God's word. Packer also warns that before we embark on learning about God, we need to examine our hearts to discern our motivations for doing so, and ask ourselves this question: "Why do I want to know about God, what will I do with this knowledge?" Theological knowledge will only feed our egos if we pursue it for its own sake, if we "seek it for the wrong purpose and value it by the wrong standard." Our desire to grow in knowledge of God should be practical, rather than theoretical--in order to know God and enjoy Him better. (This, by the way, is something I had learnt myself, but never was able to articulate so clearly and powerfully. I agree with him one hundred percent. If we only seek knowledge about God for its own sake, and fail to apply it to our lives practically, we are in huge danger of becoming proud, self-righteous hypocrites blinded to our own sins, like the scribes and Pharisees) "We must seek, in studying God, to be led to God." How do we ensure this? By meditating on each truth that we learn about Him--dwelling on it, so that it has an impact how we think of and relate to God. This should give rise to praise and prayer--how we grow in love in delight and enjoyment of God. Packer defines meditation = purposefully dwelling on knowledge of God: "talking to oneself about God, arguing oneself out of moods of doubt and unbelief into a clear apprehension of God's power and grace." It is "an experience of being humbled and exalted" as we draw near to God and realize a little more what He is like, and what that means for us right now in our lives.
0 Comments
image by Bel Ragay from Unsplash In my Search the Scriptures study on Luke, there was one question in particular that caught my attention. For Luke 17: 20-37, it asked me to examine what were a) the similarities and b) the differences between the Kingdom of heaven, and the second coming of Jesus. I had never thought of these two things in relation to each other before, so it took me a while to consider this. Let's be honest. These are concepts that are familiar to us, but which we seldom see as directly connected to the everyday Christian life--to our life right now. At least, that was how I thought of them. The second coming is a concrete, specific event, a turning point between the season of mercy and the season of judgment (v 26-30) The second coming as Jesus described it was a definitive point in time where God's people would be taken and separated from those who were not. And God's people would not all be in the same place, in a single community or group--out of two doing the same task/in the same place, only one would be taken (v 34-36) Instead, v 31-33 was the reminder of what would matter in that day--whether we had lived our lives according to God's priorities or our own. In contrast, the kingdom of heaven is the abstract, ongoing, intangible life/growth in the souls of believers around the world through the power of the gospel (v 21) As Jesus explained, the kingdom of heaven was not a place, but rather where our hearts were before God. This was in direct contrast to what the Jews had understood (and hoped it to be) at the time. They had envisioned a kingdom of heaven defined by the very concrete boundaries of culture, location, and nation, and which would be established through a tangible event, the rebellion. There was a very specific identity for God's people, an identity based on external factors. Both the kingdom of heaven and the second coming as described by Jesus in this passage emphasized the individual soul's relationship with God as demonstrated through a heart of obedience, rather than externalities. Do I look forward to the second coming with a confidence and hope that rests in the person of Christ as my Saviour? Or do I place my hope in the affiliation, the lifestyle, the church, or the works which I subscribe to? What are we doing to further the kingdom of heaven right now? Rather than seeing it as some comfortably symbolic concept in the distant future which has no direct personal connection to ourselves. In our context, this would be the spreading of the gospel and the ongoing ministry of the church in cultivating those in their congregations, but also the everyday impact of the Word in our lives and how it changes our hearts. We are living out the kingdom of heaven, right now, in our spiritual growth (or the lack thereof) and our obedience each day. |
a small voiceWe write to know ourselves. categories
All
Click to set custom HTML
archives
September 2021
|