The
Bible contains the mind of God, the state of man, the way of salvation, the
doom of sinners, and the happiness of believers. Its doctrines are holy, its
precepts are binding, its histories are true, and its decisions are immutable.
Read it to be wise, believe it to be safe, and practice it to be holy. It
contains light to direct you, food to support you, and comfort to cheer you.
It
is the traveler's map, the pilgrim's staff, the pilot's compass, the soldier's
sword, and the Christian's charter. Here Paradise
is restored, Heaven opened, and the gates of hell disclosed. Christ is its
grand subject, our good the design, and the glory of God its end.
It
should fill the memory, rule the heart, and guide the feet. Read it slowly,
frequently, and prayerfully. It is a mine of wealth, a paradise of glory, and a
river of pleasure. It is given you in life, will be opened at the judgment, and
be remembered forever. It involves the highest responsibility, will reward the
greatest labor, and will condemn all who trifle with its sacred contents.
-- Unknown, found inside a
Gideon's New Testament
#3478
It is easy to see that you
and I have been created to worship. We’re flat-out desperate for it. From
sports fanaticism to celebrity tabloids to all the other strange sorts of
voyeurisms now normative in our culture, we evidence that we were created to
look at something beyond ourselves and marvel at it, desire it, like it with
zeal, and love it with affection. Our thoughts, our desires, and our behaviors
are always oriented around something, which means we are always worshiping --
ascribing worth to -- something. If it’s not God, we are engaging in idolatry.
But either way, there is no way to turn the worship switch in our hearts
off.
-- Matt Chandler in The Explicit Gospel
#3477
"For
all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…" (Romans 3:23 NKJV)
Whatever
weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your
sense of God, or takes off the relish for spiritual things then it is sin for
you, however innocent it may be in itself.
-- Suzanna Wesley
#3476
Jesus came into Galilee,
proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is
fulfilled, and the kingdom
of God is at hand; repent
and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:14b-15)
When we think of kingdom, we
often think of place, but the kingdom
of God is not a place: it
refers to the reign of God, or God's in-breaking, saving activity.
Eschatological living means envisioning life in light of the saving activity of
God in our midst -- not only what He has already done, but also what He
promises to do in the future. God's kingdom is not fully manifest yet; we live
between the beginning and the completion.
-- Ben Witherington III in Christianity Today,
October 15, 2012
#3475
Philippians is Paul’s
happiest letter. And the happiness is infectious. Before we’ve read a dozen
lines, we begin to feel the joy ourselves -- the dance of words and the
exclamations of delight have a way of getting inside us. But happiness is not a
word we can understand by looking it up in the dictionary. In fact, none of the
qualities of the Christian life can be learned out of a book. Something more
like apprenticeship is required, being around someone who out of years of
devoted discipline shows us, by his or her entire behavior, what it is. Moments
of verbal instruction will certainly occur, but mostly an apprentice acquires
skill by daily and intimate association with a ‘master,’ picking up subtle but
absolutely essential things, such as timing and rhythm and ‘touch.’ When we
read what Paul wrote to the Christian believers in the city of Philippi, we find
ourselves in the company of just such a master. Paul doesn’t tell us that we
can be happy, or how to be happy. He is simply and unmistakably happy. None of
his circumstances contribute to his joy: He wrote from a jail cell, his work
under attack by competitors, and after twenty years or so of hard travelling in
the service of Jesus, he was tired and would have welcomed some relief. But
circumstances are incidental compared to the life of Jesus, the Messiah, that
Paul experiences from the inside. For it is a life that not only happened at a
certain point in history, but continues to happen, spilling out into the lives
of those who receive Him, and then continues to spill out all over the place.
Christ is, among much else, the revelation that God cannot be contained or
hoarded. It is this ‘spilling out’ quality of Christ’s life that accounts for
the happiness of Christians, for joy is life in excess, the overflow of what
cannot be contained within any one person.
-- Eugene Peterson’s introduction to the book of
Philippians in The Message
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