Book Review: Knowing God

Posted on November 9, 2015 by Barbara Harper

Even though I’ve been posting weekly summaries of my reading from Knowing God by J. I. Packer, I still wanted to do a general review, partly for those who did not want to keep up with the weekly readings, and partly for me to have a general review to link back to.

Even though this book has been considered a classic and has been in print for over 40 years, somehow I had never gotten around to reading it before, though I had heard of it and wanted to.

Packer says the most basic definition of a Christian is that he or she is a person who has God as Father. We are not all God’s children: we become His when we believe on Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.

Packer begins with the virtues of studying about God as well as the warning not to stop with just the academics, but to use what we learn to get to know God personally.

To be preoccupied with getting theological knowledge as an end in itself, to approach Bible study with no higher a motive than a desire to know all the answers, is the direct route to a state of self-satisfied self-deception. We need to guard our hearts against such an attitude, and pray to be kept from it (p. 22).

The psalmist [of Psalm 119] was interested in truth and orthodoxy, in biblical teaching and theology, not as ends in themselves, but as means to the further ends of life and godliness. His ultimate concern was with the knowledge and service of the great God whose truth he sought to understand (pp. 22-23).

He talks about what it means to know God, how knowing Him differs from knowing others, the different analogies the Scriptures use to illustrate our relationship to Him.

John 17:3: “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”

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 (pp. 39-40).

He discusses the need to know God as He truly is, not as our mental picture of Him is nor as He has been falsely portrayed by others.

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 (p. 48).

He discusses what it means to believe that Jesus is God Incarnate and yet also fully man, the person and ministry of the Holy Spirit, the truth of the Bible, the need for and nature of propitiation, what the Bible means by adoption, how God guides us, why we still have trials if we know Him and He loves us, and His full adequacy to handle whatever He allows in our lives. He covers in great detail several of God’s attributes: His immutability (His unchanging nature), His majesty, wisdom, love, grace, judgment, wrath, goodness, severity, and jealousy. Each of those topics is the subject of a whole chapter, and it’s impossible to give an overview of them here, but they were quite beneficial and helpful.

As I said in one week’s summaries, sometimes in the middle of a given chapter, it was easy to get occupied with the individual topics or chapters and forget that they are there in connection with how we know God, so it helped me to stop periodically and remember to tie the individual chapters back to the main point of the book. They do all have that connection even though it might not seem like it from the titles.

Though I didn’t agree with every single little point, especially those emphasizing a Calvinistic viewpoint, I did benefit from and can highly recommend the book. I appreciate that it is not full of theologicalese – terminology that only an academic could understand. I wouldn’t call it simple reading: there were a few places that were a little hard to follow. But for the most part I think an average reader could handle it fairly easily.

I am glad I finally made time for this book and thoroughly understand why it is considered a Christian classic. There were multitudes of places I marked and many memorable and helpful quotes in the book, many more than I can possibly recount here. But I’ll close with this one:

In the New Testament, grace means God’s love in action toward people who merited the opposite of love. Grace means God moving heaven and earth to save sinners who could not lift a finger to save themselves. Grace means God sending his only Son to the cross to descend into hell so that we guilty ones might be reconciled to God and received into heaven (p. 249).

For more information, my thoughts on a couple of chapters a week are as follows:

Chapters 1 and 2, “The Study of God” and “The People Who Know Their God”
Chapters 3 and 4, “Knowing and Being Known” and “The Only True God”
Chapters 5 and 6: “God Incarnate” and “He Shall Testify”
Chapters 7 and 8: “God Unchanging” and “The Majesty of God”
Chapters 9 and 10: “God Only Wise” and “God’s Wisdom and Ours”
Chapters 11 and 12: “Thy Word Is Truth” and “The Love of God”
Chapters 13 and 14: “The Grace of God” and “God the Judge”
Chapters 15 and 16: “The Wrath of God” and “Goodness and Severity”
Chapters 17 and 18: “The Jealous God” and “The Heart of the Gospel” (Propitiation)
Chapters 19 and 20: “Sons of God” and “Thou Our Guide”
Chapters 21 and 22: “These Inward Trials” and “The Adequacy of God”

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

Laudable Linkage

Posted on October 17, 2015 by Barbara Harper

With the 31 Days With Elisabeth Elliot series going on every day, I wasn’t sure whether additional posts during the week might be a bit much to keep up with; on the other hand, I don’t want to have an excessively long list of links to share at the end of the month, because I know that can be a bit much, too. So here are a few things I found of interest in the last couple of weeks:

How Your Bible Study Shapes Your Theology.

Hand in Hand, Heart Linked to Heart. A sweet piece about C. H. Spurgeon and his wife.

Why Modesty Scares Me.

Why Christians should Paint, Dance, Quilt, Act, Compose Music, Write Stories, Decorate Cookies, and Participate in the Arts.

The Pinterest feed changes: How to see more of what you want to see. And why you’ll never see all of it. If, like me, you have been frustrated with changes at Pinterest, this article shares how to fix a couple of them, and the powers that be at Pinterest seem to have reached out to this blogger with an interest, so maybe some of the comments there will reach the ears of someone who can and will do something about it.

Happy Saturday!

Knowing God, Chapters 11 and 12: God’s Word and His Love

Posted on September 24, 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 11 and 12.

I believe chapter 11, Thy Word Is Truth, is one of the most important in the book, not because God’s Word is more important that His love or grace or the rest of His attributes we’ll be looking at, but because without His Word we wouldn’t know about the rest. At least, not as much. God’s Word is His revelation to us: as one pastor put it, it is divinely brief. It doesn’t tell us everything that ever happened or everything God is thinking or doing, but it does tell us what He most wants us to know about Himself and how He wants us to live.

God speaks to us through three different means in the Bible: law or instruction, promises, and testimony: “information give by God about Himself and people–their respective acts, purposes, nature, and prospects” (p. 110).

Though God is a great king, it is not his wish to live at a distance from his subjects, Rather the reverse: He made us with the intention that he and we might walk together forever in a love relationship. But such a relationship can only exist when the parties involved know something of each other…we can know nothing about Him [God] unless He tells us. Here, therefore, is a further reason why God speaks to us: not only to move us to do what He wants, but to enable us to know Him so that we may love Him. Therefore God sends His word to us in the character of both information and invitation. It comes to woo us as well as to instruct us; it not merely puts us in the picture of what God has done and is doing, but also calls us into personal communication with the loving Lord Himself (p. 110).

But the claim of the word of God upon us does not depend merely upon our relationship to him as creatures and subjects. We are to believe and obey it, not only because he tells us to, but also, and primarily, because it is a true word. Its author is “the God of truth” (Psalm 31:5; Isaiah 65:16), “abundant in … truth” (Exodus 34:6 KJV); his “truth reacheth unto the clouds” (Psalm 108:4 KJV; compare 57:10) – that is, it is universal and limitless. Therefore his “word is truth” (John 17:17). “All your words are true” (2 Samuel 7:28 RSV).

Truth in the Bible is a quality of persons primarily, and of propositions only secondarily. It means stability, reliability, firmness, trustworthiness, the quality of a person who is entirely self-consistent, sincere, realistic, undeceived. God is such a person: truth, in this sense, is his nature, and he has not got it in him to be anything else. That is why he cannot lie (Titus 1:2; Numbers 23:19; 1 Samuel 15:29; Hebrews 6:18). That is why his words to us are true, and cannot be other than true. They are the index of reality: they show us things as they really are, and as they will be for us in the future according to whether we heed God’s words to us or not (p. 113).

Chapter 12 discusses the wonderful truth of the love of God. Packer notes that a lot of false ideas have sprouted about what it means that “God is love” (1 John 4:5, 16), and we have to look at what God’s love is as revealed in His Word.

When Paul says, “ the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us” (Rom 5:5 KJV), he means not love for God as Augustine thought, but knowledge of God’s love for us…Three points in Paul’s words deserve comment. First, notice the verb shed abroad. It means literally poured (or dumped) out. It is the word used of the “outpouring” of the Spirit himself in Acts 2:17-18, 33; 10:45; Titus 3:6. It suggests a free flow and a large quantity—in fact, an inundation. Hence the rendering of the NEB, “God’s love had flooded out inmost heart.” Paul is not talking of faint and fitful impressions, but of deep and overwhelming ones. Then, second, notice the tense verb. It is in the perfect, which implies a settled state consequent upon a completed action. The thought is that knowledge of the love of God, having flooded our hearts, fills them now, just as a valley once flooded remains full of water. Paul assumes that all his readers, like himself, will be living in the enjoyment of a strong and abiding sense of God’s love for them. Third, notice that the instilling of this knowledge is described as part of the regular ministry of the Spirit to those who receive him—to all, that is, who are born again, all who are true believers. One could wish that this aspect of his ministry was prized more highly than it is at the present time. With a perversity as pathetic as it is impoverishing, we have become preoccupied today with the extraordinary, sporadic, non-universal ministries of the Spirit to the neglect of the ordinary, general ones. Thus, we show a great deal more interest in the gifts of healing and tongues—gifts of which, as Paul pointed out, not all Christians are meant to partake anyway (1Cor. 12:28-30)—than in the Spirit’s ordinary work of giving peace, joy, hope and love, through shedding abroad in our hearts of knowledge of the love of God (p. 118).

God’s love does not contradict His holiness and justice:

“The God who is love is first and foremost light, and sentimental ideas of His love as an indulgent, benevolent softness, divorced from moral standards and concerns, must therefore be ruled out from the start. God’s love is a holy love. God…is not a God who is indifferent to moral distinctions, but a God who loves righteousness and hates iniquity, a God whose ideal for His children is that they should “be perfect…as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt. 5:48) (p. 122).

This goes along with much of what C. S. Lewis said in The Problem of Pain.

Packer describes or defines God’s love as follows: “God’s love is an exercise of his goodness toward individual sinners whereby, having identified himself with their welfare, he has given his Son to be their Savior, and now brings them to know and enjoy him in a covenant relation” (p. 123), then he expands in each phrase individually, a wonderful section in which to meditate on how great and full His love is.

One of the things I like best about reading a book together with others is that they bring out different emphases or even bring out points I missed. See Lisa’s post about God’s love and Tim’s about the Holy Spirit’s ministry of shedding God’s love abroad in our hearts for different perspectives of these chapters. I’m only able to keep up with these two with an occasional glance at the Facebook group for this project, but it’s enlightening to see what others got out of the same reading.

Finding Time to Read the Bible

Posted on May 31, 2015 by Barbara Harper

In a recent blog post I read (I’ve forgotten where), the blogger mentioned that the book she was reading on Bible study didn’t discuss where to find the time. I had the same thought with a book I am reading on the subject. I guess the authors feel that once we are assured of the importance of Bible reading and study, we’ll make it a priority and make time. And I think that’s pretty much what it comes down to. If by finding time we mean we want a time that magically opens up with the solitude and inclination we need without a dozen other things crowding in…I just don’t think that’s going to happen, at least not regularly. Years ago our assistant pastor spoke of struggling to make time for Bible reading, and said to our senior pastor, an older, godly man, “I guess you don’t have trouble making time for Bible reading any more, do you?” He just laughed.

Finding the time is always going to be a struggle. There are always duties, distractions, and people clamoring for that time, and even an Enemy of our souls fighting against it. Instead of getting discouraged about it, we can just accept that it is a common problem and prayerfully seek ways to deal with it. Perhaps reminding ourselves of reasons to read the Bible will renew our motivation.

We need to remember, too, that making time to read the Bible isn’t just about ticking off another duty. Every relationship thrives on communication. If we went for days without talking with our husbands except in the briefest necessary exchanges, we’d feel the effects pretty soon and realize we need some time alone together. Though sometimes we need to set up routines to establish good habits, taking time to read the Bible shouldn’t be a matter of rigid schedules, but rather of taking time to meet with the One Who loves us best.

So with these things in mind, here are some suggestions for carving time out to meet with the Lord:

1. Get up earlier or stay up later. I can hear you groaning. But for many of us, that’s the only way to get some time alone.

2. Keep the Bible handy. One friend with three small children close in age kept her Bible out in her kitchen. She couldn’t set aside a longer period of solitude, but she could read in smaller snatches through the day.

3. Listen. Some people like to listen to recorded versions of the Bible while driving, exercising, making dinner, etc.

4. Plan for it after a natural break in the day. It’s hard for many of us to stop in the middle of a morning or afternoon and put everything aside to read, but a break in the routine, when we’re shifting gears anyway, can help us work in some time for reading, like after a meal, after taking the kids to school, etc.

5. Meal time, especially if you eat alone.

6. Waiting time. We usually pull out our phones or a book if we have to wait at a doctor’s office or in car line at school, but that can be a good time for some Bible reading.

7. Establish a routine. Once we get used to setting aside a certain time for Bible reading, it’s not such a scramble to look for that time every day.

8. Don’t wait for perfection. One problem with a routine is that we can’t always figure out how to function when the routine is disrupted, like when we’re traveling or someone is sick or we have small children at home. I wrote a post some time back called Encouragement for mothers of young children about the topic of trying to find time for devotions with little ones in the house. Though I normally like getting up early and having solitude and quietness for Bible reading, that just didn’t work with little ones. Yet God enabled me to read and profit from it while they kept me company or played near me, even though usually I couldn’t concentrate under those circumstances.

9. Anything is better than nothing. Normally I like a good amount of time for Bible reading or study, but when a few moments was all I truly had, God often gave me just what I needed in those few moments in just a verse or two.

10. Talk with your husband, roommates, siblings, whoever you live with. Years ago I caught part of a radio program where the preacher was scolding women who wanted to spend early morning time to have devotions, saying the husband as the leader should have that time, since the wife had “all day” in which she could have devotions. The man obviously had not spent a whole day at home alone with kids. That mentality is so wrong on many levels. Not long after that a missionary speaking at our church mentioned protecting that time for his wife, a much better example of servant leadership and love. If the only way either parent can have devotions is for one of them to watch the children, then they can do that for each other. If a particular time of day is the best time for two people in a house, they can work out different locations if they get too distracted in the same room. Whatever conflict there might be about time and place preferences, talk with each other to work out the best solution for both and be willing to compromise.

11. Pray. In the blog post I referred to earlier, I mentioned that sometimes I’d get to the end of the day and lament to the Lord that I had no idea when I could have read my Bible that day. I began instead to pray at the beginning of the day for wisdom and alertness for those moments when I could, and that made a profound difference.

12. Set something aside. If we have times to read other books, peruse Facebook, watch TV, or play games on our phones, we have time to read the Bible. I admit, if I sit down to relax for a few minutes with a book and realize I haven’t read my Bible yet that day, I don’t always have the best attitude about laying down my book and picking up my Bible. But when I confess that to the Lord and then go ahead, He graciously speaks to me through His Word. We do need time to relax as well, but that shouldn’t come at the expense of time in God’s Word. He knows our needs, and we can ask Him for both time to spend in His Word and for some down time.

What about you? What ways have you found to make time for Bible reading?

Sharing at Thought-Provoking Thursday and Works For Me Wednesday.

Praying for the Lost Scripturally

Posted on April 15, 2015 by Barbara Harper

Photo courtesy of pixgood.com

My late pastor used to frequently emphasize that we not let our praying fall into “Christian cliches,” but that we pray Scripturally. That doesn’t mean we used prayers or phrases in the Bible as magic words or a magical formula, but by seeing examples in the Bible of how and what to pray, we can know we’re praying in line with God’s will.

One night at the beginning of a prayer meeting, he mentioned noticing that there didn’t seem to be many instances in the Bible of Christians praying for unbelievers to become believers, though there were examples of their praying for a number of other things. This wasn’t his message for the night or anything he studied out: if he were preparing a sermon he would have developed the thought more fully before mentioning it. It was more just a thought that had occurred that day that he was throwing out there. Of course it’s certainly not wrong to pray for unbelievers. Paul said in Romans 10:1, “Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.” But my pastor encouraged us to think of Scriptural ways to pray for them. This is something I am going to be watching for the next time I read through the New Testament, but here are a few thoughts along this line.

1. We can pray for God to send someone to tell them of Jesus. In Matthew 9:37-38, Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.” That was something I prayed for my mother often. She was not open to talking to me about her spiritual condition, we lived 1,000 miles apart, and she was not inclined to go to church, so I prayed God would send someone across her path, perhaps a coworker, who would be a good testimony to her. At her funeral, where my former pastor presented the gospel clearly, I heard a number of “Amens” behind me and was astonished at the number of people who evidently knew the Lord there. I don’t know exactly how they were able to share with my mom, but I was touched at how God had answered that frequent prayer.

2. We can pray for their hearts to be “good ground.” In what we call the parable of the sower in Matthew 13, Jesus talks about various people’s hearts as ground that the seed of the Word is dropped into. It doesn’t take root and grow in some because it’s snatched away, in others because their heart is stony, in others because thorns choke it out. But the one with “good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit.” Though we’re not specifically instructed to pray this way, I’ve prayed at times for hearts of lost loved ones to become good ground, for the stones to be removed, the bedrock underneath to be broken up, the thorns to be kept back, so that the seed of the Word can take root and bring forth fruit. I think God does that in some by bringing circumstances into their lives to soften them and by bringing them under the sound of the Word that they reject at first, but which gradually breaks down the stoniness. I think apologetics ministries are most helpful here: I’ve seen these types of ministries as well as creation-based ministries scorned a bit because they’re not the gospel. Most, however, include the gospel and I think they help make way for the gospel.

3. We can pray for God to draw them to Himself. John 6:44 says, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.”

4. We can pray for the Word of God to have free course in their lives. 2 Thessalonians 3:1 says, “Finally, brethren, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may have free course, and be glorified, even as it is with you.” I love the term “free course” there – to me it conveys the idea of being unhindered.

I’ve also prayed that God would “open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me” (Acts 26:18). Though in that passage that’s not part of a prayer, it’s what God says He will do through Paul, I don’t think it is too much of a stretch to ask God to do the same through others. I’ve also prayed that people would realize that whatever they’re trusting in is not dependable and will not satisfy in the long run, or that whatever is keeping them from salvation is not worth it: though I can’t think of an instance in the Bible where that kind of thing is recorded as a prayer, I don’t think those are unbiblical prayers: I think they’re in keeping with the tenor of Scripture.

What do you think? Are these valid ways of praying for unbelievers? Do you have Biblical ways you pray for them?

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Ephesians 3:14-21

Book Review: Songs of the Morning: Stories and Poems for Easter

Posted on April 6, 2015 by Barbara Harper

Songs of the Morning: Stories and Poems for Easter was compiled by Pat Alexander and includes excerpts from the writings of C. S. Lewis, E. B. White, Dickens and others, some (mostly poems) written by children. I had bought it ages ago from a clearance section, put it on my shelf, noticed it it off and on through the years, and kept forgetting about it at Easter time. Finally this year I remembered to pull it out in the weeks preceding Easter. I like to read something devotional pertaining to Easter during that time, and while this wasn’t that exactly, it was both pleasant and beneficial.

I don’t think I realized, or I had forgotten, that it was geared primarily to children, probably the same age as those who would be able to read the Narnia series. But adults can gain from it, too.

I like that it couches the Easter story within historical context. The first section is “How It All Began” and begins with a short excerpt from a children’s Bible about God creating the world and sin entering in (Pat Alexander also wrote The Lion’s Children’s Bible, which I had not heard of before this, so I don’t know how well it expresses Biblical truth, but the excerpts I read here were fine). Then there are Narnia excerpts about the founding of Narnia and the White Witch and a couple of other sources to further illustrate those truths.

Other sections follow a similar pattern and focus on the birth of Christ, the triumphal entry on Palm Sunday, the crucifixion, and the resurrection. There’s also a section of “The Greatest Love,” with several historical and story illustrations of sacrificial love (like Sydney Carton’s in A Tale of Two Cities and a story about a boy’s dog risking its life to save the boy’s), one called “It’s All Right,” dealing with how new life in Christ should affect our lives in practical terms, like forgiveness of others, and a final one called “A New Beginning.”

The stories come from a variety of countries. Some are old, some are new. Some are from adults’ work, some from children’s books. Some are fun, some are serious. Pat did a fine job putting all these sources together. It doesn’t look like the book is in print any more, but there are copies that can be purchased online, or perhaps you can keep an eye out for it at library sales and such.

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

Laudable Linkage

Posted on April 4, 2015 by Barbara Harper

Here are some noteworthy reads from the last couple of weeks:

Shine Like Stars: Give and Rejoice {Philippians 2:17-18}. What it means for our lives to be poured like like a drink offering. Hit me right where and when I needed it.

10 Things We Don’t Want Our Kids to Learn From Church.

What these ladies did to turn a friend’s day around, and what they received in return. Loved this!

Why Can’t Christians Intelligently Discuss Current Events. “I suspect that by yelling so loudly about nearly everything, we’re obscuring the big thing (Matt. 12:36).”

Responding to the Increasingly Short Shelf-Life of Worship songs, HT to Challies. Songleaders/music pastors/worship leaders have an abundance of songs to choose from, and being able to project the words for all to see enables us to sing more than just what’s in the hymnbook. That’s good in many ways but complicates things in other ways. Though this was written to song leaders and such, it helped me to see what big job it is to choose songs from the multitude we have available. I especially appreciated his caveat that some songs are for just a season. It used to bother me that we heard some songs often for a while and then not at all – kind of like a current “hit” – but then I realized that even the older hymn-writers wrote many songs that we know nothing about now, so that must have happened then, too.

This is a neat overview of the Bible for kids, showing how it all points to Christ:

https://vimeo.com/123430346

Have a good weekend!

Laudable Linkage and a Jan Karon Video

Posted on March 21, 2015 by Barbara Harper

I didn’t do one of these last week because I only had two or three – and now this week I have several. That’s how it goes sometimes. But here is some noteworthy reading found in the last couple of weeks:

Moms Need Theology Too. Excellent. Not just for moms.

Adding to Our Faith? Good study of what 2 Peter 1:5 means when it talks about things we need to add to our faith.

5 Things People Blame the Church For – But Shouldn’t.

A Good [Wo]man is Easy to Find. Excellent piece about finding a mentor.

From Lesbianism to Complementarianism – one woman’s testimony.

Dear Gay Community: Your Kids Are Hurting. From the daughter of a gay couple.

An 11-Year-Old Boy’s Open Letter to Sports Illustrated.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss’s Advice to Young Writers and Speakers.

Solid Food for Little Ones. A list of books for young children that teach about God. Keeping in mind for future reference when my little grandson gets older.

Remember Card Catalogs? As a former librarian and avid reader, I loved this piece about people who take the old cards from library card catalogs and illustrate them.

I thought this was really cool. With a nerdy family who loves the Marvel universe films, Iron Man being one on them, I loved this video of Robert Downey, Jr. (aka Iron Man) delivering a bionic arm to a boy who has only a partially developed right arm.

And for Jan Karon fans, I saw on her Facebook page this announcement about her newest book coming out this fall!

I loved hearing her talk and watching her expressiveness! I also saw this post on her Facebook page saying that there might be a movie about Mitford and asking for suggestions about who should play which part. I hope if this comes to pass that they let her have creative control. I have mixed feelings – I love the books and would definitely see any film made from them, but I’m not sure I’d want any images other than the ones in my head. 🙂 But we’ll see.

Happy Saturday!

Book Review: Becoming More Than a Good Bible Study Girl

Posted on February 2, 2015 by Barbara Harper

A few years ago I served a very brief stint as a book reviewer for a particular publisher. I love to read and love to talk about books, so what could be better than being given books for FREE to review, right? But the publisher sent me six books at a time every month. They didn’t expect me to read and review all six every month, but still – I didn’t want reviewing for a publisher to take over my reading time, so I dropped out. One of the books I received for review during that time was Becoming More Than a Good Bible Study Girl by Lysa TerKeurst. I don’t think I had heard of Lysa before that time (since then I have read two of her other books), but this title caught my eye. I determined to read it “sometime,” and it got put in a box of unread books all awaiting the opportunity to see the light of day. I did get it out at one point and put it on a bookshelf – but still didn’t get to it. That’s one reason the TBR Challenge is good for me. At any rate, the copy I have is an advanced reader copy from 2009 (ahem…blush!), and on the back it says it is an “uncorrected proof,” so it may be a bit different in places from the version you can buy today. But the bulk of it should be the same.

When I first saw this book, I thought it was going to be about getting more from one’s Bible study. Though Lysa does discuss that in a couple of chapters, the overall purpose of the book is to move Bible study from our to-do list and just acquiring knowledge, to living out what God is teaching us, to enjoy a deeper connection with God.

Lysa says in the first chapter:

I want my life with Jesus to be fulfilling. I want my beliefs to work no matter what life throws at me. I want to be so certain of God’s presence that I never feel like I have to face anything in my own strength or rely on my own perspectives. My strength will weaken during hard times. My perspectives get skewed by my emotions.

I want total security no matter what happens. In other words, I want my relationship with Jesus to be enough to keep me sane and together and still fully devoted. Is this possible? True fulfillment no matter what?

Fulfillment means to be completely satisfied. How might our lives look if we were so filled with God’s truths we could let go of the pain of our past, not get tripped up by the troubles of today, or consumed by worries about tomorrow?…Just going through the motions [of prayer, Bible study, etc.] will not in and of themselves fill our souls. They must be done with the great expectation and heart cry for God to lead us into a deeper and more life-changing connection with Him (p. 25).

The rest of the book fleshes out that purpose, discussing being “good enough” (and how we aren’t except through Christ), not feeling like we measure up, our relationships, our thoughts, our ministries, when our “ugly comes out,” when we’re hurt or offended by God.

A few more quotes I noted:

“Why doesn’t Jesus work for me?” is never the right question. Instead, when circumstances shift and we feel like we fall short, we should ask, “How can I see Jesus even in this?” (p. 41).

Don’t we get into God’s Word so it can get into us? So that it can interrupt us, change us, satisfy us? How sad to simply settle for learning facts about the Bible when it was meant for so much more (p. 74).

Just because you…achieve what you always thought would make you feel special does not fix that deep-down internal insecurity. External achievement never equals internal acceptance (pp. 86-87).

Too many of us live with an uncontrolled thought life. It is possible to learn to identify destructive thoughts and make wiser choices. Instead of letting those thoughts rumble freely about in my mind, I make the choice to harness them and direct them toward truth (pp. 99-100).

Grace doesn’t give me a free pass to act out how I feel, with no regard to His commands. Rather, His grace gives me consolation in the moment, with a challenge to learn from this situation and become more mature in the future (p. 123).

Satan would love for us to pick ourselves apart, to obsess on the negative. When we do, we become hyper self-focused and take our eyes off of Jesus and the mission set before us. Many of us spend years trying to hide or fix what we perceive as personal flaws. Jesus would love for us to see ourselves as a package deal of unique qualities that He – the author and perfecter of our faith – saw as necessary for the life He’s calling us to live (p. 164). (She’s not talking here about not confessing sin: she discusses that in other places, but here she is referring to accepting how God made us).

Ask Jesus to help you fully understand the joys of obedience. Also, ask Him how you can be a woman fully committed to obedience without slipping into a legalistic approach to life. We must always remember our goal is pursuing revelations of Him. Our focus can’t be just following rules but following Jesus Himself (pp. 174-175).

I realized that most times it’s not the big things along my spiritual journey that tempt me to get off track. It’s a culmination of small daily aggravations I know God could fix but doesn’t. But what if instead of seeing these aggravations as inconveniences, I saw them as reminders to draw near to God? (p. 197).

How I long never to diminish God by loving lesser things. Rather, I want to make much of God by diminishing lesser things. May I make less of me, less of this world, less of the temporary…so that I may be a vessel more full of God, more full of eternal perspectives, more full of His everlasting! (p. 200).

Having a set of goals is a good thing for many people. But when a goal takes your focus off God and His daily intentions for you, it can cause trouble. Being driven by my plans can shift the focus of my heart from following God and being open to His unfolding invitations, to following only that which leads me closer to my desires. For me, I started falling into a trap of making plans each day around what I wanted to see happen. Anything that wasn’t part of my plan became a distraction and an unwelcome interruption (p. 211).

I have many more marked but should probably stop there. I particularly liked the chapters “Beyond Sunday Morning,” where she talks about looking at a verse phrase by phrase to discern its meaning, and “Unlikely Lessons From a Pineapple,” a great chapter talking about drawing lessons from the lives of people in the Bible, even familiar ones that we might feel we’ve known all there is to know since we were children.

I was especially blessed by a chapter where she talks about waiting for God’s timing in our calling and serving Him in the mundane, everyday tasks He has placed before us until then, realizing that they are our ministry unto Him, not a hindrance or interruption of our ministry. I came to that chapter the day after posting The Back Burner, which is along a similar vein, and was touched at God’s timing and confirmation of the truths He had been teaching me.

I appreciated Lysa’s personal experiences, transparency, and sense of humor throughout the book, but most of all I appreciated her high view of Scripture that was not an end in itself but a means of knowing and experiencing God.

There were just 2-3 minor places where I disagreed with her interpretation or application just a smidgen, but they’re not big enough to go into. I would just mention one place where, in communion with God, things were flooding her mind that she felt were from the Lord, she says, “Bits and pieces of Scripture were woven throughout, and it made me smile. It confirmed that this was, in fact, God speaking” (p. 197-198). Satan uses Scripture, too (Matthew 4), and just because thoughts come to our minds that contain Scripture doesn’t mean they are automatically from the Lord. A lot of cults have been founded on bits of Scripture wrongly interpreted and taken out of context. I’m not trying to diminish the experience she was telling about, and I feel sure she’d agree with what I am saying, but just the way it was phrased could, I thought, be confusing to some readers who might think that if a thought contained Scripture, that meant it was confirmation from the Lord.

Overall I thought this was a wonderful book that fulfilled its purpose to encourage women to go beyond checking the boxes in their Christian lives to deepening their relationship with God.

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

Laudable Linkage

Posted on January 24, 2015 by Barbara Harper

Its been another good week with some thought-provoking posts to ponder:

Open Roof Hospitality. Very convicting to me. If I had been the lady of the house whose roof was being torn up so people could bring their paralytic friend to Jesus, my first emotion would not have been gratitude and joy, I’m sure.

Pressing In To the Ungrateful.

Is It Possible For Christians to Idolize the Bible?

Seven Questions to Ask Before Having a Difficult Conversation.

The 3-Second Pause That Can Save a Morning and Spare Some Pain.

Six Observations About Speaking to Pastors Right Before They Preach. Although these are especially true for pastors for obvious reasons, many of them hold true for anyone. Once when my husband was the head usher in a very tightly packed church and was trying to find seats for people right before the service, someone who was also a neighbor chose that moment to tell him that he thought the lawn mower that we often let him borrow had been stolen. Hard to concentrate on anything in the service after that. 🙂

The Do Not Depart site has been focusing this month on what we can learn from the lives of Godly Women: Inspiring Stories of Faithful Daughters, mostly from the past. You know how much I love biographies, so I have enjoyed this series. So far they’ve shared from the lives of Corrie ten Boom, Susanna Wesley, Elisabeth Elliot, Helen Roseveare, Harriet Tubman, and Monica of Hippo (Augustine’s mother).

I saw this on Facebook and thought it rang very true. 🙂