Knowing God, Chapters 7 and 8

Posted on September 10, 2015 by Barbara Harper

We’re continuing to read Knowing God by J. I. Packer along with Tim Challies’ Reading Classics Together Series. This week we are in chapters 7 and 8.

Chapter 7, “God Unchanging,” opens with the scenario of reading the Bible but not getting much out of it because it seems so far removed from one’s own life. “We don’t live in the same world. How can the record of God’s words and deeds in Bible times, the record of His dealings with Abraham and Moses and David and the rest, help us, who have to live in the space age?” (p. 76).

Packers answers that it is true that we might experience a different “space, time, and culture,” but “the link is God Himself. For the God with whom they had to do is the same God with whom we have to do,” (p. 76), and He hasn’t changed in the meantime. He quotes A. W. Tozer as saying, “He cannot change for the better, for He is already perfect; and being perfect, He cannot change for the worse.”

Packer then elaborates on the points that God’s life, character, truth, ways, purposes, and Son do not change. He lists a few texts where God is said to have repented, but those refer to “a reversal of God’s previous treatment of particular people, consequent upon their reaction to that treatment. But there is no suggestion that this reaction was not foreseen, or that it took God by surprise and was not provided for in His eternal plan. No change in His eternal purpose is implied when He begins to deal with a person in a new way” (p. 80).

While it is a comfort that “fellowship with Him, trust in His Word, living by faith, standing on the promises of God, are essentially the same realities for us today as they were for Old and New Testament believers,” it is a challenge as well. “How can we justify ourselves in resting content with an experience of communion with Him, and a level of Christian conduct, that falls so far below theirs?” (p. 81).

Chapter 8 explores “The Majesty of God,”and Packer asserts that “Christians today largely lack” the knowledge of God’s greatness and majesty, “and that is one reason why our faith is so feeble and our worship so flabby…Modern people…cherish great thoughts of themselves” but “small thoughts of God” (p. 83). The emphasis today is on the personal interest and care God extends towards His loved ones, and while that is a blessed truth, it can’t offset His majesty and greatness. The rest of the chapter is a wonderful walk through the Scriptures that give us glimpses of His majesty and a reminder that we need to “‘wait upon the Lord’ in meditations on His majesty, till we find our strength renewed through the writing of these things upon our hearts” (p. 89).

First steps to fitness

Posted on September 9, 2015 by Barbara Harper

Photo Courtesy of FreeDidigtalPhotos.net

I’ve known that I needed to and should lose weight for ages. I’ve made various fits and starts but haven’t stayed with a plan for more than a few months at a time. I keep thinking I’ll get to it – and before I know it another whole year has gone by, and my doctor gives me the same warnings he did last year.

Developing atrial fibrillation, though, and learning that diabetes is one of the risk factors for making it more of a problem, and being told once again that I am headed for diabetes if I don’t so something, has provided even more impetus than having watched my mom deal with the effects of Type II Diabetes.

So today (Tuesday) I started tracking what I eat with the MyFitnessPal app. It doesn’t “seem” like I eat that much – but obviously the evidence is to the contrary, and this will hep me pinpoint problem areas. I always find this part really tedious, which is probably one reason I don’t usually keep up with it very long. But it is eye-opening. (That has how many calories? A serving is only 1/2 cup?) I haven’t measured out those cups and tablespoons in the past, preferring to eyeball it, but I started doing so today, because approximating can be misleading. I imagine that after measuring servings for a while, one does get a better idea of what 1/2 cup of something looks like and won’t need to measure every time. One thing I really like about the app is that it has a scanner so you can use your iphone to scan the bar code of a food, and it puts all the nutritional information in there. Then when you use that food again, you can just click on it from your previous scans. Recipes will be a little harder to deal with, but, again, once they are entered, they are there to refer to again in the future, so hopefully the major part of the tedium will be just at the beginning.

I figured that was the best way to start, to target what I need to work on. My sweet tooth is one of my biggest problems, but I also tend toward comfort foods with sauces and cream-of-whatever soup, so I’ll be looking for ways to cut down on those kinds of things.

I did discover that the turkey sausage and hash brown breakfast I regularly have was not too bad calorie-wise if I kept the portion size down. With a tendency to low blood sugar, especially in the mornings, sometimes I feel like I need to eat a protein-based breakfast (which does hep) but also a really big breakfast. But the lower portions were satisfying without making me feel stuffed. I did have a sweet snack in the afternoon, but a smaller portion, and I had an apple for a later snack, something I haven’t done in ages. I was feeling pretty good about having 500+ calories left for dinner until I realized that, in listing the components of the leftover Labor Day burger I had for lunch, I had forgotten to include the burger itself. Duh.

Otherwise, the first day went well. Of course, the first day almost always goes well. 🙂 It’s staying with it after the first flush of motivation passes and I want the old habits back again that’s hard. And even though I know and to a certain extent am motivated by all the reasons I want to lose weight and get fit, I keep fooling myself by thinking, “Yes, well, this one snack or this one healthy meal or this one day (or several days) without exercise aren’t going to matter in the grand scheme of things.” But all together they do. A walk in any direction is made of of steps, and the more steps in the wrong direction, the farther from were we originally tended to be. So I am going to review my reasons to lose weight and use the I Deserve a Donut app (which helps you pinpoint why you think so and why you don’t need it) for help in keeping my motivation on track, as well as, first and foremost, prayer and trying to keep a Scriptural focus about it all.

I chafe at the time involved in driving to a gym, having to change into and out of special exercise clothes, exercising with other people, etc., so exercising from home works best for me now. I have several exercise DVDs, some from Leslie Sansone and some from the Biggest Loser, as well as a couple of exercise video games that I can cycle through so no one routine gets boring. Or more boring than it has to be. 🙂 I am familiar enough with most of them that I can turn off the sound and listen to an audiobook, but even with that I pretty much grit my teeth through exercising. I do feel better and have more energy when I exercise, but that’s not motivation enough to set aside things I enjoy doing more in order to exercise. But, I have heard other people say that they don’t really enjoy exercise, but they just make up their minds to do it. So I will do that knowing it is benefiting me no matter how I feel about it.

I had started a weight loss blog some years ago, and I don’t know that I will post regular updates here or there. But one reason I wanted to mention this is that I know some of you are on the same journey, some to lose weight or get fit in general, some specifically to deal with diabetes. I’d love to hear any tips you have to share!

Book Review: Through Waters Deep

Posted on September 7, 2015 by Barbara Harper

Through Waters Deep is the first in the the Waves of Freedom series by Sarah Sundin. All of Sarah’s books so far have been set in the WWII era, and this one is no exception. I love how she weaves historical detail into the story.

It’s the time when Europe is involved heavily in combat but America has yet to join the fray. Strong feelings among the isolationists, who don’t want the US to get involved, and the interventionists, who do, run high and cause conflicts, especially at the Navy shipyard in Boston where Mary Stirling is a secretary. Minor problems increase until some people begin to suspect that they are deliberate acts of sabotage, but is it an isolationist or an interventionist, or one trying to frame the other in order to get sympathy for his side? Mary’s work takes her all over the premises and into various offices, and she hears a lot of talk. She decides to make notes in shorthand (which no one would suspect) in case she overhears anything useful. But when she shows her notes to the FBI, they dismiss them as gossip and hearsay.

At a ship’s christening, Mary runs into an old high school friend, Jim Avery, now an ensign in the Navy. They are both changed from what they remember: they had been the quiet ones of their group and Jim had pined away for someone who was in love with someone else, so they had not really known each other well, but as Mary shows him around Boston, they each realize there is more to the other than they thought. When a definite and dangerous act of sabotage is found aboard Jim’s ship, tensions and suspicions escalate.

One underlying issue Mary has to deal with is that she has a strong aversion to being the object of attention. She wants to avoid being prideful and self-promoting, but it is more than humility. As the story unfolds we find the reason for her reluctance and panic, and she wrestles with what it means to “let your light shine” yet not put yourself forward, along with not missing opportunities God would have her take due to her wanting to stay in the background. I found this aspect of her character fascinating because I have wrestled with some of the same issues, and I have never seen this addressed anywhere except just a bit in C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity.

Jim describes himself as a “floater.” His two brothers who went into the Navy before him have ambitions to move up the ladder. Jim does not have that goal and just wants to float where the current of life takes him. He’s a hard worker and a caring person, yet has to realize his tendency to “float” looks like laziness and a lack of initiative. A good captain sees his potential and helps draw out his good points. That and the potential of missing opportunities in his relationship with Mary help him see that sometimes he needs to direct his steps, under God’s leadership and direction, rather than “floating.”

I’m not usually interested in romances just for the sake of romance, and Sarah’s books always go beyond just the romance to the deeper character issues as well as fleshing out what it might have been like to live in the setting. I love what Jim and Mary both had to learn and go through on their journey as well as the underlying mystery of the saboteur. Sarah does a great job conveying the feel of the times in the conversations and interactions of the various characters.

I loved this book, and I am looking forward to the next one in the series!

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on September 4, 2015 by Barbara Harper

It’s Friday, time to look back over the blessings of the week with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story and other friends.

This has not been a bad week, but the blessings haven’t been so overflowing and obvious as they have been the last two. But sometimes those kinds of weeks are when its best to go back and look for them lest we overlook them. So here are a few from this week:

1. Breakfast biscuits. I am up early, but not usually out and about til later morning. But I had to be one morning and rewarded myself with a breakfast biscuit on the way back home. Hadn’t had one in a while, and it was good!

2. Medical week is over! I have been thinking of this week that way because I had to go in early for fasting lab work one day (thus my early morning outing), had a visit with the heart doctor another day, and then my yearly physical another day. I chafed at having all that on the calendar in one week, but on the other hand, it was good to get it all done with.

3. Good visit with the heart doctor. Some of you have prayed for the situation with the heart rhythm problem and the attempted ablation from last month (thank you!). The visit this week was pretty anticlimactic. I was able to ask some questions and we talked about adjusting some medications a little. Other than that I don’t see him again for six months unless I am having problems. He advises not undergoing another procedure unless symptoms ratchet up significantly. We’ll hope that doesn’t happen. 🙂

4. A captivating new book, a true story based in my area. Will tell you more later!

5. FaceTime. I know I have mentioned it before, but I love being able to see my oldest son (who lives in another state) when we talk on the phone, and we even Face Time with little Timothy (and his parents 🙂 ) in-between visits sometimes even though we are in the same town. I love being able to do that.

Hope you’ve had a great week as well! Happy Friday!

Knowing God, Chapters 5 and 6: The Incarnation and the Holy Spirit

Posted on September 2, 2015 by Barbara Harper

We’re continuing to read Knowing God by J. I. Packer along with Tim Challies’ Reading Classics Together Series. This week we are in chapters 5 and 6.

Chapter 5, “God Incarnate,” is probably the most…I hate to say difficult or technical, because that immediately turns people off. It is a little more difficult and technical than the previous chapters, but not at all insurmountable. I love that Packer says, “This is the deep end of theology, no doubt, but John [in John 1] throws us straight into it” (p. 66). Some people prefer to avoid theological discussions and feel that, “We’re just supposed to love God and people. Why waste time on that stuff?” Because it matters. If people talk about loving Jesus but don’t know Him for Who He really is, they can be totally lost even while thinking all is right with the world. False steps either on the side of Jesus’ humanity or His deity lead to grave errors.

That said, I couldn’t possibly reproduce what Packer said in this chapter in distilled form. It would be long and involved and I just don’t have time this particular week. But it’s good reading to cement the truth that Jesus is totally God and totally man into our thinking, drawing primarily from John 1:1-14, Philippians 2:5-11, and II Corinthians 8:9.

A section particularly interesting to me involved what it meant for Christ to “empty Himself” in Philippians 2:6-7: “who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.” We know this doesn’t mean He set aside His deity, for He displayed omnipotence (still the storm, feeding 5,000+, raising the dead, etc.), omniscience (knowing others’ thoughts), and omnipresence (talking about being in heaven at the same time He was talking to people on earth – John 3:13)) while in human form. So what did He empty Himself of? “Does it not imply that a certain reduction of the Son’s deity was involved in His becoming man?” (p. 59). No, answers Packer. Such a theory is called kenosis, and it has been around in various forms for years. Packer discusses it and its manifestations and implications more fully and then says:

When Paul talks of the Son as having emptied himself and become poor, what he has in mind, as the context in each case shows, is the laying aside not of divine powers and attributes but of divine glory and dignity, “the glory I had with you before the world began, as Christ puts it in His great high priestly prayer (p. 60).

We now see what it meant for the Son of God to empty himself and become poor. It meant a laying aside of glory (the real kenosis); a voluntary restraint of power; an acceptance of hardship, isolation, ill-treatment, malice and understanding; finally, a death that involved such agony – spiritual even more than physical – that his mind nearly broke under the prospect of it. It meant love to the uttermost for unlovely human beings, that they through his poverty might become rich (p. 63).

I like the way he applies this truth to Christmas, when we celebrate the incarnation, the fact that God came to us in the form of a baby, to grow up as a human, yet still fully God, for the purpose of dying on the cross for our sins:

We talk glibly of the ‘Christmas spirit,’ rarely meaning more by this than sentimental jollity on a family basis. But what we have said makes it clear that the phrase should in fact carry a tremendous weight of meaning. It ought to mean the reproducing in human lives of the temper of him who for our sakes became poor at the first Christmas. And the Christmas spirit itself ought to be the mark of every Christian all the year round.

It is our shame and disgrace today that so many Christians–I will be more specific: so many of the soundest and most orthodox Christians–go through this world in the spirit of the priest and the Levite in our Lord’s parable, seeing human needs all around them, but (after a pious wish, and perhaps a prayer, that God might meet them) averting their eyes, and passing by on the other side. That is not the Christmas spirit. Nor is it the spirit of those Christians–alas, they are many–whose ambition in life seems limited to building a nice middle-class Christian home, and making nice middle-class Christian friends, and bringing up their children in nice middle-class Christian ways, and who leave the sub-middle-class sections of the community, Christian and non-Christian, to get on by themselves.

The Christmas spirit does not shine out in the Christian snob. For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor — spending and being spent — to enrich their fellow men, giving time, trouble, care, and concern, to do good to others — and not just their own friends — in whatever way there seems need (pp 63-64).

Chapter 4, “He Shall Testify,” is about the Holy Spirit. He asserts that preaching and teaching about the Holy Spirit has been sadly neglected but is vital, for He is fully God as well and testifies of Christ. “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” (John 14:26).

Again, I am not going to list point by point his instruction about the Holy Spirit – you’ll just have to read the book. 🙂 But one section that stood out to me was this:

In the Old Testament, God’s word and God’s Spirit are parallel figures. God’s word is his almighty speech; God’s Spirit is his almighty breath. Both phrases convey the thought of his power in action (p. 67).

He then discusses the parallels are mentioned in the creation account and in reference to Christ. This caught my eye because I had noticed a long time ago that in the passages telling us to “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly” (Colossians 3:16-25) and to “be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18-33), the aftermath is remarkably similar: speaking to ourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, letting the Spirit and the word affect all our relationships, etc.

After showing that one of the Holy Spirit’s ministries is to illuminate and convict people of God’s truth:, Packer says:

It is not for us to imagine that we can prove the truth of Christianity by our own arguments; nobody can prove the truth of Christianity except the Holy Spirit, by his own almighty work of renewing the blinded heart. It is the sovereign prerogative of Christ’s Spirit to convince men’s consciences of the truth of Christ’s gospel; and Christ’s human witnesses must learn to ground their hopes of success not on clever presentation of the truth by man, but on powerful demonstration of the truth by the Spirit (p. 71).

That’s not to say we shouldn’t share the truth of Christ since opening people’s eyes is His job and not ours: no, we must. We’re commanded to, and the Spirit used the Word to open eyes. But we trust in His working, not our “clever presentation.”

These chapters were beneficial to study, even though they tossed us for awhile into the “deep end of theology.” It’s good to “gird up the loins of our minds” sometimes and exercise them beyond what we’re used to.

Book Review: Everyday Grace: Infusing All Your Relationships With the Love of Jesus

Posted on September 1, 2015 by Barbara Harper

I’ve mentioned several times here that I read years ago in an old biography of a missionary who felt strongly the lack of love in her life, felt guilty about it, berated herself over it often, tried to spur herself on to do better, all to no avail. But when she began instead to meditate on God’s love for her, He began to transform her in ways she was unaware of until her husband told her people were commenting to him about the change in her.

In Everyday Grace: Infusing All Your Relationships With the Love of Jesus, Jessica Thompson takes this same principle and applies it to nearly every relationship we might have. She points out that most relationships operate on the basis of karma – I’ll do for you if you’ll do for me, or maybe I’ll do for you so that you’ll do for me in return. But Christianity operates on the basis of grace: God loved us and Jesus died for us when we were enemies, when we didn’t care, when we didn’t love Him, and He wants us to love others in the same way.

But how can we do that? He is God, and though he has saved and changed us, in our everyday lives our old fleshly nature too often evidences itself.

We are not basically good people who need a little instruction so that we can live up to our full potential. We are completely sinful people who need help from outside of ourselves in order to be made alive (p. 39).

We don’t just need a new list; we need a new heart. That is exactly what is promised to us in Ezekiel 11:19-20:

And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God (p. 47)

We can operate from a basis of grace because Jesus lived a perfect life, keeping all God’s commands in our place, and died, taking all of our sin and its punishment in our place.

My hope is that this book will help you “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8). That as I open up to you all that he is and all that he has done…as you taste this multifaceted relationship with God, it will transform all of your other relationships (p. 43).

Paul doesn’t just pray [in Ephesians 3:14-21] that the Ephesians would get their act together; he prays that they would somehow be able to comprehend the incomprehensible love of God in Christ (p. 49).

In subsequent chapters, Jessica discusses God as our Father and husband and how that influences our relationships with our spouse and children, Jesus as a friend, coworker, brother, and how that influences our relationships in each of those areas, as well as how our relationship with God directs our interactions with our communities and fellow church members. She ends with discussing the Holy Spirit’s help, dealing with difficult people, and “The Gospel for the Relationship Failure.”

In the chapter on friendship, she writes:

Jesus tells his disciples, “You are my friends if you do what I command you.”…It seems to be saying that he will be our friend only if we obey. But that isn’t what Jesus is saying at all. His friendship came first. This obedience is not what makes them friends; it is what characterizes his friends. I have lived most of my life under the assumption that if I am not obeying, then Christ doesn’t want any part of me. That is a terrible weight and it is a lie. God’s love for us in Christ always precedes our loveliness. His faithfulness always precedes ours, and his friendship is what brings us into relationship with him…If we are true believers in Christ, we will obey. That doesn’t mean we will obey perfectly…But it does mean that we will have a desire to obey. If your life is characterized by a growing desire to obey, you can be sure that you are a friend of Jesus. It is his very pronouncement of “my friend” that gives us the longing to be obedient to his commands. His love for us is what engenders a heart of obedience (pp. 76-77).

In a chapter on work, she writes:

While there is nothing wrong with doing a job you enjoy or looking for a job that you are passionate about, we have made a terrible point of our focus. We are setting out to fulfill ourselves instead of looking for ways to serve others. How often do we really think of our jobs as a way to be God’s hands, even if our job is just stacking books at the library? (p. 169)

[Jesus’] work wasn’t dependent on the one who received the benefit of his work. His work was only and always dependent on his love for God and his love for his people (p. 171).

I thought this from the chapter on church members was particularly lovely:

So we are humble with one another, not thinking we are better than others. We are gentle with each other, instead of beating each other over the head with a long list of “you-shoulds.” We can point out sin, when necessary, without distancing ourselves or acting like our friends have a disease that we might catch if they don’t get their acts together. We bear with one another in love, which is tough, especially if their sin affects us personally. And we are eager and excited to maintain peace, instead of eager and excited when we get a juicy bit of gossip about our friend. We remember that we are one body, and if I hurt you, I am actually hurting myself. We take a vested interest in each other and in loving one another. Lastly, we remember that all of our failures to live as one body have been paid for by the Savior. We don’t have to hide from our community when we sin against them. We confess and remember that even the sin of hurting others in the church was paid for on Christ’s cross. We pray for a new and deeper understanding of what he went through to make us one body; and we pray that this understanding changes who we are as individuals and as a community, one redeemed sinner at a time (pp. 161-162).

In the chapter on difficult people, she talks about not only people whose personalities rub us the wrong way or who have hurt us, but also those going through hard trials – not that they are difficult, but because we find it difficult to know what to say or how to comfort them. A few lines from that chapter were instructive to me:

Part of the reason I struggle to be around people who suffer is because I have to come to grips with my own inability to make everything better. I hate to see that I am actually not the Holy Spirit and I can’t bring them the comfort they need. I hate that I say the wrong things at times and I end up hurting more than helping. But I believe it is in embracing that very weakness that the Holy Spirit has more room to work. The more I try to make it better, the more I try to come up with the perfect verse, the more I am ultimately in the way. When I relinquish my desire to be the Savior and just grieve with my friends, the Holy Spirit does some pretty amazing work (p. 189).

While I found this book immensely helpful in many ways, I’m not eager to go out and buy everything Thompson has ever written. The truth grabbed me: for the most part, the writing did not. I haven’t spent a lot of time analyzing why, but it could have been a lot tighter and less wordy in places (and I realize I have no room to talk there. 🙂 ) There was a lot of repetition. Plus I think she went way too far in her speculations in some biblical situations that the Bible doesn’t spell out, like the ways in which Jesus was tempted, the situation between Paul and Barnabas’ disagreement, what was going on in Mary’s mind the time she and her other children tried to get in and see Jesus, and instead of instructing them to be admitted or going to the door, He told those He was teaching that whoever does His will is is family. Saying, “Mary might have thought or reacted…” in a particular way is one thing. Saying Mary did think and feel in ways that the Scripture doesn’t say or even indicate she did is dangerous (Thompson postulates that Mary doubted or forgot who Jesus was for a time). This kind of thing keeps me from fulling trusting Thompson’s handling of Scripture, but she seems better in exegesis and application than in speculation. On the other hand, speculation and imagination do serve her well in some areas where she doesn’t go too far, such as picturing Jesus working as a carpenter and encountering the same kind of people we encounter in the workplace.

I found much more that I did like in the book than I didn’t like, and I feel I could recommend it with a caution about those sections.

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

Join Us in Reading The Screwtape Letters in September

Posted on August 31, 2015 by Barbara Harper

I have been honored that Carrie has asked me to choose a book for her Reading to Know Classics Book Club for the past few years. Normally I choose a book I know, love, have reread multiple times, and am eager to share with others.

This year, however, I chose a book I have never read before: The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis. It is a series of letters that a senior demon writes to a junior demon-in-training in how to win a man to their side. I enjoy reading Lewis, but I have avoided this book. Years ago when I first became a Christian, there was an emphasis on spiritual warfare that was honestly a little wonky in places. I read some of that kind of thing at the time, but later on avoided it except for when I would come across it in my Bible reading or hear it preached in church. I was always a little afraid of the devil. I knew he was greater and stronger than I was. I also knew that Jesus in me was greater than him, but I’d still rather keep my distance. I had this subconscious naive notion that if I left the devil alone, I wouldn’t attract his attention and he wouldn’t bother me as much. Some friends and I discussed once that our flesh gave us so much trouble that the devil didn’t really have to do too much with us. Both are mistaken and unbiblical views. On the opposite extreme, I have also known people who give the devil too much credit and see him behind every problem or issue. It’s good to be balanced and Biblically-based in this area.

After reading some other Lewis books last year, I looked up some excerpts from this book online and felt that it was finally time to read it. The verse that keeps coming to mind is II Corinthians 2:11: “Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices.” It doesn’t pay to be ignorant of his ways. From what I have seen so far, Lewis handles this whole topic with irony and humor in some places but with convicting accuracy. I am looking forward to finally delving into this one because it is a classic I have neglected, because it is Lewis, and because I think it will be spiritually helpful.

Part of the enjoyment of a reading club, online or in person, is discussing the book with others who are also reading it. Carrie has a post here where you can let her know if you’ll be joining in, and at the end of the month she’ll have another post where we can share our thoughts or the links to our blog posts about the book. I think it is highly likely your library will have a copy, or you can find it in almost any form online (paperback, e-book, audiobook). Project Gutenberg Canada has a free online version here. I happened upon a good sale on the annotated e-book version last year – I’ll have to see if the extra notes are helpful or distracting. Whatever way you’d most enjoy reading it, I hope you’ll join us!

Laudable Linkage

Posted on August 29, 2015 by Barbara Harper

It’s been a few weeks since I have had time to share, but here are some thought-provoking reads discovered recently:

How to Repent Without Really Repenting.

For the Woman Who Is Simply Weary of Serving.

10 Ways to Overcome Spiritual Weariness.

How to Move On When You’ve Been Betrayed.

Invent a Ministry. HT to Challies. Love this. One of my themes is that ministry isn’t always in an official church-sponsored activity. It’s being available for God to use you all throughout the day. Another is the “Someone should…” or “The church should…” mentality, forgetting we ARE the church. I’ve been thinking about a possible blog post along these lines.

Unavoidable Tantrums. Good thoughts here.

12 Things That Every First-Time Dad Should Know.

Have This Conversation Before You Send Your Baby Back to School. I wouldn’t say, “Don’t strive to do your best,” but otherwise very sound advice.

The Dramatic, Adrenaline Soaked Life of a Missionary, or, It’s Not Like You Read in All Those Classic Biographies, and That’s OK. From a missionary we know in real life.

What It’s Like When You Publish a Book. Interesting thoughts on the type of people God uses (clue: messed-up ones, because that’s the only type available).

Sticking With It, on reading long books with dull spots, either personally or to children. I don’t think the author is advocating for never putting a book aside, but I like the analogy that life is going to be that way sometimes.

25 Ways to Ask Your Kids ‘So How Was School Today?’ Without Asking Them ‘So How Was School Today?’ HT to The Story Warren. I had to learn this with one child who would always just answer, “Normal.” I don’t think I used any of these, but I did learn to ask specific questions.

Finally, this cute little boy, his reaction to hearing he is going to become a big brother, and his accent are all adorable:

And this was sweet: an orphaned kangaroo hugging a teddy bear:

Happy Saturday!

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on August 26, 2015 by Barbara Harper

It’s Friday, time to look back over the blessings of the week with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story and other friends. This has been another wonderful week. Here are some highlights:

1. My birthday. I know I mentioned it last Friday, but it was just starting then. 🙂 My oldest son was still here for his visit, and everyone else in the family took the day off – not just for me, but so everyone could have the same day off to spend time together while Jeremy was here. I got thoroughly spoiled with lunch at a favorite restaurant on the river, Mittu making diner that evening, Coca Cola Cake from Cracker Barrel (did you know you could order a whole one? That’s a lot of chocolate – so good!), flowers, pink plates and cute napkins, and some thoughtful, loving gifts and cards. Best of all was having the whole family here.

“Mom and the boys”

Birthday dinner!

Birthday bouquet!

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2. Thanksgiving in August. Jeremy won’t be here for Thanksgiving this year – he traded that time to be here for Timothy’s first birthday last spring. So Mittu made Thanksgiving dinner one day while he was here.

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3. Missions conference at our church the first part of this week. We only got to attend on Sunday, but I enjoyed hearing one of our missionaries from Croatia and hearing updates from some of the others. We’ve only been here five years, so haven’t met all of our missionaries yet, and it was very nice to get to know some of them a bit better.

4. Lunch out Sunday. We don’t often eat out on Sunday unless we have company, but we had to get up way early in the morning to get Jeremy to the airport, and, although I dearly love having all the family here, I was pretty well wiped out by Sunday. I asked Jim on the way home if we could get take-out somewhere along the way, and he indulged me. Then I took one of the best naps ever. 🙂

5. A safety bar in the bathroom. I have balance issues and usually brace myself on the closet door frame when getting out of the shower. My husband happened to witness that one day and not long thereafter installed a safety bar. Much better and more secure!

After Sunday, it was a pretty quiet, routine week, which, as much as I love my family and get-togethers, was nice after a busy week. 🙂

Happy Friday!

Knowing God, Chapters 3 and 4

Posted on August 26, 2015 by Barbara Harper

We’re continuing to read Knowing God by J. I. Packer along with Tim Challies’ Reading Classics Together Series. This week we are in chapters 3 and 4.

Chapter 3, “Knowing and Being Known,” is one of those chapters that I wish I could produce in it’s totality, one in which I have numerous places marked.

Since Jesus said in John 17:3, “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent,” and since knowledge of God is commended throughout the Bible, what does it mean to know God?

It is clear, to start with, that ‘knowing’ God is of necessity a more complex business than ‘knowing’ a fellow-man, just as ‘knowing’ my neighbour is a more complex business than ‘knowing’ a house, or a book, or a language. The more complex the object, the more complex is the knowing of it. Knowledge of something abstract, like a language, is acquired by learning; knowledge of something inanimate…comes by inspection and exploration…But when one gets to living things, knowing them becomes a good deal more complicated. One does not know a living thing till one knows not merely its past history but how it is likely to react and behave and specific circumstances…

In the case of human beings, the position is further complicated by the fact that…people keep secrets. They do not show everybody all that is in their hearts…you may spend months and years doing things in company with another person and still have to say at the end of that time, “I don’t really know him at all.” We recognize degrees in our knowledge of our fellow men…according to how much, or how little, they have opened up to us (pp. 34-35).

Taking it one step further, Packer points out that if we’re meeting someone “above us” in some way, like a queen or president, that person takes the initiative into whatever relationship we might or might not have.

And God, who is so much more “above us” than anyone else, has taken that initiative, spoken to us, invited us into His confidence.

Knowing God is a relationship calculated to thrill a man’s heart. What happens is that the almighty Creator, the Lord of hosts, the Great God before whom the nations are as a drop in a bucket, comes to you and begins to talk to you through the words and truths of Holy Scripture. Perhaps you have been acquainted with the Bible and Christian truth for many years, and it has meant little to you; but one day you wake up to the fact that God is actually speaking to you – you! – through the biblical message. As you listen to what God is saying, you find yourself brought very low; for God talks to you about your sin, and guilt, and weakness, and blindness, and folly, and compels you to judge yourself hopeless and helpless, and to cry out for forgiveness. But this is not all. You come to realize as you listen that God is actually opening His heart to you, making friends with you and enlisting you a colleague…(p. 36)

What, then, does the activity of knowing God involve? Holding together the various elements involved in this relationship, as we have sketched it out, we must say that knowing God involves, first, listening to God’s Word and receiving it as the Holy Spirit interprets it, in application to oneself; second, noting God’s nature and character, as his Word and works reveal it; third, accepting his invitations and doing what he commands; fourth, recognizing and rejoicing in the love that he has shown in thus approaching you and drawing you into this divine fellowship (p. 37).

Packer talks about four analogies the Bible uses to help us understand how we know God: “in the manner of a son knowing his father, a wife knowing her husband, a subject knowing his king, and a sheep knowing its shepherd” (p. 37).

Then the Bible adds the further point that we know God in this way only through knowing Jesus Christ, who is himself God manifest in the flesh. ‘Don’t you know me…? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father’; ‘No-one comes to the Father except through me’ (John 14: 9,6 NIV). It is important, therefore, that we should be clear in our minds as to what ‘knowing’ Jesus Christ means (p. 37).

Packer discusses how the disciples knew and interacted with Jesus, and, since His death and resurrection, we can know Him in the same way except in a spiritual rather than physical (bodily) way, and we have more revealed truth than they did, and “Jesus’ way of speaking to us now is not by uttering fresh words, but rather by applying to our consciences those words of his that are recorded in the gospels, together with the rest of the biblical testimony to himself. But knowing Jesus Christ still remains as definite a relation of personal discipleship as it was for the twelve when he was on earth. The Jesus who walks through the gospel story walks with Christians now, and knowing him involves going with him, now as then” (p. 38).

After sharing several passages that talk about hearing Him (John 10: 27; 6:35; 10:7, 14; 11:25; 5:23-24; Matthew 11:28-29), Packer explains:

Jesus’ voice is ‘heard’ when Jesus’ claim is acknowledged, his promise trusted, and his call answered. From then on, Jesus is known as shepherd, and those who trust him he knows as his own sheep. ‘I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no-one can snatch them out of my hand’ (John 10: 27-28 NIV). To know Jesus is to be saved by Jesus, here and hereafter, from sin, and guilt, and death.

He closes the chapter by noting that “knowing God is a matter of personal dealing,…personal involvement,…and grace” (pp. 39-40).

Knowing God is more than knowing about him; it is a matter of dealing with him as he opens up to you, and being dealt with by him as he takes knowledge of you. Knowing about him is a necessary precondition of trusting in him (‘how could they have faith in one they had never heard of?’ [Romans 10:4 NEB]), but the width of our knowledge about him is no gauge of the depth of our knowledge of him.

Chapter 4, “The Only True God,” mainly discusses the second commandment about not making idols or bowing down and worshiping them. He spends a great deal of time explaining why he believes that commandment precludes pictures of Jesus, and I understand his points that any picture, sculpture, etc., in any kind of media will be limiting and may portray Him falsely. Christians through the ages have had various opinions about that (there have been some lively discussions on the Facebook group for this series.) I wrestled with it myself when my husband gave me a print of Jesus as the Good Shepherd having just found the lost sheep. I came to terms with it because I felt it wasn’t meant to be a representation of Him, but an expression of that truth of the Shepherd’s love and care for His sheep and the sheep’s rest in the Shepherd. But I have wondered if I should take it down so it is not a stumblingblock to anyone else.

Packer also cautions us to watch for wrong mental images about God, as they can be just as idolatrous and false as wooden or sculpted ones.

How often do we hear this sort of thing: “I like to think of God as the great Architect (or Mathematician or Artist).” “I don’t think of God as a Judge; I like to think of him simply as a Father.” We know from experience how often remarks of this kind serve as the prelude to a denial of something that the Bible tells us about God. It needs to be said with the greatest possible emphasis that those who hold themselves free to think of God as they like are breaking the second commandment (p. 47).

I hadn’t thought of it in exactly that way before, but I think this is the basis of the problem I had with a book that portrayed God as an artist and not a technician. It wasn’t a full and true representation of Him: though we can and do appreciate His artistry and creativity and eye for beauty in His creation, that is only one aspect of His character.

All speculative theology, which rests on philosophical reasoning rather than biblical revelation, is at fault here [emphasis mine here]. Paul tells us where this sort of theology ends: “The world by wisdom knew not God” (1 Cor 1:21 KJV). To follow the imagination of one’s heart in the realm of theology is the way to remain ignorant of God, and to become an idol-worshipper, the idol in this case being a false mental image of God, made by one’s own speculation and imagination.

In this light, the positive purpose of the second commandment becomes plain. Negatively, it is a warning against ways of worship and religious practice that lead us to dishonor God and to falsify his truth. Positively, it is a summons to us to recognize that God the Creator is transcendent, mysterious and inscrutable, beyond the range of any imagining or philosophical guesswork of which we are capable and hence a summons to us to humble ourselves, to listen and learn of him, and to let him teach us what he is like and how we should think of him (p. 48).

This book has been immensely helpful so far, and we’re only four chapters in. We’re taking them two at a time, and they’re not overly long or difficult. It’s not too late to join in!