From Depletion to Abundance

Posted on November 10, 2015 by Barbara Harper

In Mark 6:31-44, after a long period on ministering, Jesus and His disciples were so thronged with people that they couldn’t even find time to sit down and eat. He told them to “Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while.” They all got into a boat, but the people saw them and outran the boat to get to the place they were landing before they did. When Jesus “saw much people,” instead of being irritated that His plans to get alone and rest were foiled (as I would likely have done), He was rather “moved with compassion toward them, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd.”

He spent time teaching them, and “when the day was now far spent,” and they were in a setting where there was no place to buy food, the weary disciples wanted Jesus to finally send the people away. But instead, He told them, “Give ye them to eat.” Besides there being no place to buy bread, they could not have afforded enough to feed all the people (5,000 men plus women and children) anyway. He asked them what they had, which was five loaves and two fish. When everyone was seated in an orderly fashion, Jesus “looked up to heaven, and blessed” the food and broke it into pieces to give to the disciples, who in turn gave it to the people. Not only was everyone satisfied, but there were 12 baskets of food left over.

As I read this familiar account this morning, several truths stood out to me.

Jesus is concerned about our physical and emotional needs as well as our spiritual ones. It is not wrong to feel weary and make plans to get away some times. But when those plans are thwarted, I am not to cling to my “right” or “need” to be alone and regroup. God knows those needs, but if He allows someone in need of ministry to come into my path, I am to have compassion on them and minister to them. I should not be irritated with them or with Him or at the circumstances. That compassion will come as I look away from my own needs and desires and see others in their need.

But when I am depleted and don’t have enough to give, I’m not off the hook. I’m not excused from giving. He instructs me to give what I have, and when He blesses it, it’s not only sufficient, it’s abundant. Though the disciples couldn’t find time to eat, in ministering to others, they were fed. Like those Macedonians in 2 Corinthians 8, who gave liberally even out of their poverty, we’re to give even when we know what we have isn’t enough. In His hands, it’s turned into more than enough.

This doesn’t mean we’re to ignore our needs, not take care of ourselves, and run ourselves into the ground. There is still the principle employed on airplanes where people are instructed to put their own oxygen masks on before they help others with theirs.

But God doesn’t usually call on us to minister to someone when we’re feeling the most spiritual and ready. Often it comes when we’re depleted from already giving, like the disciples after a busy day of teaching and healing, or a mom after a full day of teaching, training, clothing, feeding, changing, and entertaining a little one, or a father after a long day at work, or a teacher or caregiver or nurse or minister or anyone who has already given just about all they thought they had. What we have in ourselves is never enough anyway, but when we’re “running on empty,” and we ask God to bless, fill, and use us, He ministers to us through our ministry to others.

How I praise Thee, precious Savior,
That Thy love laid hold of me;
Thou hast saved and cleansed and filled me
That I might Thy channel be.

Refrain:
Channels only, blessed Master,
But with all Thy wondrous pow’r
Flowing through us, Thou canst use us
Every day and every hour.

Just a channel full of blessing,
To the thirsty hearts around;
To tell out Thy full salvation,
All Thy loving message sound.

Emptied that Thou shouldest fill me,
A clean vessel in Thy hand;
With no pow’r but as Thou givest
Graciously with each command.

Witnessing Thy pow’r to save me,
Setting free from self and sin;
Thou who bought me to possess me,
In Thy fullness, Lord, come in.

Jesus, fill now with Thy Spirit
Hearts that full surrender know;
That the streams of living water
From our inner man may flow.

~ Mary E. Maxwell

(Sharing with Literacy Musing Mondays, Me, Coffee, and Jesus, Thought-Provoking Thursday, Soul Survival)

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 November 7, 2015 by Barbara Harper

It has been a few weeks since I have been able to share with you some interesting things found around the internet. Perhaps you’ll find something of interest in the following:

3 Things to Tell Yourself When Others Prosper While You Suffer.

Thank God for Your Normal, Boring Life.

Grieving Over the Holidays – What You Need to Know.

14 Reasons to Memorize an Entire Book of the Bible. Though some of this addressed to preachers, other parts of it are applicable to us all.

“Mama, What Does $*@#%! Mean?” Wise advice for how to handle those times when, no matter how protective you’ve been, your child overhears a bad word.

Why I Show Children Hospitality (Even Though I Am Not a Parent), HT to The Story Warren.

Please Don’t Be Intolerant. As Inigo Montoya says, I think many people use that word without knowing what it really means.

Why Readers Are Skipping Crucial Parts of Your Story.

The Most Instagrammed Location In Every State.

12 Ridiculously Warm Products For People Who Are Always Ridiculously Cold. I am usually warmer than everyone else, but I know people who are always cold and could use some of these.

There were so many more Write 31 Days series than I could possibly read, and I dipped in here and there with quite a few, but a few I kept up with almost daily were:

Tools to Memorize a Bible Chapter.

31 Days of Hope for Caregivers.

31 Glimpses Into the Unquiet Mind. A mother and daughter share the daughter’s journey with bipolar disorder and the long journey to diagnosis and treatment.

31 Uplifting Quote Graphics.

31 Ways to Snag a Literary Agent.

Happy Saturday!

Knowing God, Chapters 21 and 22: Trials and God’s Adequacy

Posted on October 29, 2015 by Barbara Harper

We’re finishing Knowing God by J. I. Packer along with Tim Challies’ Reading Classics Together Series with chapters 21 and 22.

Chapter 21, “These Inward Trials,” discusses the problems of believing, or, worse yet, teaching, that the Christian life will be a “bed of roses,” when the Bible tells us repeatedly that we will have trials in this life. Thinking that there won’t be any more trouble after one becomes a Christian “is bound to lead sooner or later to bitter disillusionment” (p. 245). Either they will think they’ve been deceived, or they’ll think something is wrong with their faith or practice.

We still have our old nature within us and the devil and the world system opposed to us, not to mention potential conflicts with others, believers or not, who also still have a sin nature. We need Biblical understanding of sanctification, spiritual warfare, and growth in grace.

Packer’s definition of grace is one of the best I have ever seen: “God’s love in action toward people who have merited the opposite of love” (p. 249). God’s grace saves us, revives us, transforms us, and will some day raise our bodies to glory. The work of grace leads us to “an ever deeper knowledge of God, and an ever closer fellowship with Him. Grace is God drawing us sinners closer and closer to Himself” (p. 250).

How does God in grace prosecute this purpose? Not by shielding us from the assault of the world, the flesh and the devil, nor by protecting us from frustrating and burdensome circumstances, nor yet by shielding us from troubles created by our own temperament and psychology; but rather by exposing to us all these things, so as to overwhelm us with with a sense of our own inadequacy, and to drive us to cling to him more closely. This is the ultimate reason, from our standpoint , why God fills our lives with troubles and perplexities of one sort and another: it is to ensure that we shall learn to hold him fast. The reason why the Bible spends so much of its time reiterating that God is a strong rock, a firm defense, and a sure refuge and help for the weak, is that God spends so much of his time bringing home to us that we are weak, both mentally and morally, and dare not trust ourselves to find, or to follow the right road (p. 150).

Chapter 22 studies “The Adequacy of God” primarily from Romans, primarily from Romans 8. After the despair of Romans 7, Romans 8 encourages and edifies by pointing us to “the adequacy of the grace of God” to deal with a number of things and teaching us of “four gifts of God given to all who by faith are “in Christ Jesus”: righteousness (no condemnation), the Holy Spirit, adoption, and security (p. 258). Packer reminds us that “God is for us” and encourages us to “let evangelical thinking correct emotional thinking” (p. 260).

This is one of the longest chapters in the book with Packer unpacking many truths from Romans 8, but that will give you a little glimpse. There were a couple of paragraphs of a Calvinistic bent that I did not agree with, but otherwise it was very good. The last section of this chapter is called “Learning to Know God in Christ” and gives a nice overview of all that the book has discussed.

Overall I’ve much enjoyed the book and can see why it is considered a Christian classic. I am glad to have read it.

31 Days With Elisabeth Elliot: The Key to Supernatural Power

Posted on October 29, 2015 by Barbara Harper

This is from Elisabeth’s book, Keep a Quiet Heart. At first I was only going to include an excerpt of a few paragraphs, but as I read over it, I couldn’t leave anything out:

The world cannot fathom strength proceeding from weakness, gain proceeding from loss, or power from meekness. Christians apprehend these truths very slowly, if at all, for we are strongly influenced by secular thinking. Let’s stop and concentrate on what Jesus meant when He said that the meek would inherit the earth. Do we understand what meekness truly is? Think first about what it isn’t.

It is not a naturally phlegmatic temperament. I knew a woman who was so phlegmatic that nothing seemed to make much difference to her at all. While drying dishes for her one day in her kitchen I asked where I should put a serving platter.

“Oh, I don’t know. Wherever you think would be a good place,” was her answer. I wondered how she managed to find things if there wasn’t a place for everything (and everything in its place).

Meekness is not indecision or laziness or feminine fragility or loose sentimentalism or indifference or affable neutrality.

Meekness is most emphatically not weakness. Do you remember who was the meekest man in the Old Testament? Moses! (See Numbers 12:3). My mental image of him is not of a feeble man. It is shaped by Michelangelo’s sculpture and painting and by the biblical descriptions. Think of him murdering the Egyptian, smashing the tablets of the commandments, grinding the golden calf to a powder, scattering it on the water and making the Israelites drink it. Nary a hint of weakness there, nor in David who wrote, “The meek will he guide in judgment” (Psalm 25:9, KJV), nor in Isaiah, who wrote, “The meek also shall increase their joy in the Lord” (Isaiah 29:19, KJV).

The Lord Jesus was the Lamb of God, and when we think of lambs we think of meekness (and perhaps weakness), but He was also the Lion of Judah, and He said, “I am meek and lowly in heart” (Matthew 11:29, KJV). He told us that we can find rest for our souls if we will come to Him, take His yoke, and learn. What we must learn is meekness. It doesn’t come naturally to any of us.

Meekness is teachability. “The meek will he teach his way” (Psalm 25:9, KJV). It is the readiness to be shown, which includes the readiness to lay down my fixed notions, my objections and “what ifs” or “but what abouts,” my certainties about the rightness of what I have always done or thought or said. It is the child’s glad “Show me! Is this the way? Please help me.” We won’t make it into the kingdom without that childlikeness, that simple willingness to be taught and corrected and helped. “Receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls” (James 1:21, KJV). Meekness is an explicitly spiritual quality, a fruit of the Spirit, learned, not inherited. It shows in the kind of attention we pay to one another, the tone of voice we use, the facial expression.

One weekend I spoke in Atlanta on this subject, and the following weekend I was to speak on it again in Philadelphia. As very often happens, I was sorely tested on that very point in the few days in between. That sore test was my chance to be taught and changed and helped. At the same time I was strongly tempted to indulge in the very opposite of meekness: sulking. Someone had hurt me. He/she was the one who needed to be changed! I felt I was misunderstood, unfairly treated, and unduly berated. Although I managed to keep my mouth shut, both the Lord and I knew that my thoughts did not spring from a depth of loving-kindness and holy charity. I wanted to vindicate myself to the offender. That was a revelation of how little I knew of meekness.

The Spirit of God reminded me that it was He who had provided this very thing to bring that lesson of meekness which I could learn nowhere else. He was literally putting me on the spot: would I choose, here and now, to learn of Him, learn His meekness? He was despised, rejected, reviled, pierced, crushed, oppressed, afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth. What was this little incident of mine by comparison with my Lord’s suffering? He brought to mind Jesus’ willingness not only to eat with Judas who would soon betray Him, but also to kneel before him and wash his dirty feet. He showed me the look the Lord gave Peter when he had three times denied Him–a look of unutterable love and forgiveness, a look of meekness which overpowered Peter’s cowardice and selfishness, and brought him to repentance. I thought of His meekness as He hung pinioned on the cross, praying even in His agony for His Father’s forgiveness for His killers. There was no venom or bitterness there, only the final proof of a sublime and invincible love.

But how shall I, not born with the smallest shred of that quality, I who love victory by argument and put-down, ever learn that holy meekness? The prophet Zephaniah tells us to seek it (Zephaniah 2:3). We must walk (live) in the Spirit, not gratifying the desires of the sinful nature (for example, my desire to answer back, to offer excuses and accusations, my desire to show up the other’s fault instead of to be shown my own). We must “clothe” ourselves (Colossians 3:12) with meekness–put it on, like a garment. This entails an explicit choice: I will be meek. I will not sulk, will not retaliate, will not carry a chip.

A steadfast look at Jesus instead of at the injury makes a very great difference. Seeking to see things in His light changes the aspect altogether.

In PILGRIM’S PROGRESS, Prudence asks Christian in the House Beautiful, “Can you remember by what means you find your annoyances at times, as if they were vanquished?”

“Yes,” says Christian, “when I think what I saw at the Cross, that will do it.”

The message of the cross is foolishness to the world and to all whose thinking is still worldly. But “the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength” (1 Corinthians 1:25, NIV). The meekness of Jesus was a force more irresistible than any force on earth. “By the meekness and gentleness of Christ,” wrote the great apostle, “I appeal to you…. Though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds” (2 Corinthians 10:1, 3-4, NIV). The weapon of meekness counters all enmity, says author Dietrich Von Hildebrand, with the offer of an unshielded heart.

Isn’t this the simple explanation for our being so heavy-laden, so tired, so overburdened and confused and bitter? We drag around such prodigious loads of resentment and self-assertion. Shall we not rather accept at once the loving invitation: “Come to Me. Take My yoke. Learn of Me–I am gentle, meek, humble, lowly. I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28-29 paraphrased).

See all the posts in this series here.

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DaySpring.com is celebrating all of the amazing Write 31 Days readers who are supporting nearly 2,000 writers this October! To enter to win a $500 DaySpring shopping spree, just click on this link & follow the giveaway widget instructions by October 30. Best wishes, and thanks for reading!

31 Days With Elisabeth Elliot: The Hand That Hurts and the Hand That Heals

Posted on October 28, 2015 by Barbara Harper

This is titled “A Dog’s Thanksgiving” and appears in the November/December 1988 Elisabeth Elliot Newsletter:

“I remember fixing the wounded leg of my dog. There was some struggle and a hurt crying but he kept licking my hand. The hand of the one who was hurting him and the hand of the one who was healing him were the same, and his endurance of the one rested in his trust in the other. Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord.” From This Cup, by Addison Leitch (my second husband, who died in 1973).

There are many lessons for us in the mysterious animal world. Have we ears to hear, eyes to see, hearts to learn those sweet lessons?

Our Heavenly Healer often has to hurt us in order to heal us. We sometimes fail to recognize His mighty love in this, yet we are firmly held always in the Everlasting Arms. The dog’s leg was hurting. Add’s ministrations were as delicate as possible, yet they hurt too, and the loyal dog accepted them and thanked him with his eyes. Have we the humility to thank our Father for the gift of pain?

“No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:11). Let us give thanks!

See all the posts in this series here.

31 Days With Elisabeth Elliot: The Face of Jesus

Posted on October 25, 2015 by Barbara Harper

This is from Elisabeth’s book, A Lamp For My Feet:

The face of Jesus:

marred more than any man–
spit upon,
slapped,
thorn-pierced,
bloodied,
sweating,
the beard plucked,
twisted in pain–

For my salvation.

A glorious face, now.

Let its light shine on me, O Light of Life.

Let Your radiance fall on me, Sun and Savior,

Lighten my darkness.

Then grant me this by Your grace:

That I, in turn, may give

“The light of the knowledge of the glory of God” (2 Cor 4:6 AV)

As I see it in the face of Jesus Christ.

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See all the posts in this series here.

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Knowing God, Chapters 19 and 20: Adoption and Guidance

Posted on October 22, 2015 by Barbara Harper

We’re nearing the end of reading Knowing God by J. I. Packer along with Tim Challies’ Reading Classics Together Series. This week we are in chapters 19 and 20, and there is only one more week to go in this particular reading group.

The chapters in this last section have been very long, so in a sense there is proportionally less that I can say about them. One thing that has helped me this week is to remember to tie the individual chapters back to the main point of the book: knowing God. It’s easy to get occupied with the individual topics or chapters and forget that they are there in connection with how we know God. Thus studying the attributes that we’ve discussed (God’s love, grace, wrath, goodness, jealousy, unchangeableness and majesty) are a part of getting to know Him better, His Word is the main means by which we learn about Him, His propitiation of our sins is what makes it possible for us to know Him, and once we do know Him by faith, we become His children, the topic of chapter 19, and then we can trust Him to guide us, the topic of chapter 20.

Chapter 19 is “Sons of God,” and Packers 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.

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
John 14:6

But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. John 1:12.

This chapter traces through Scripture what it means when it says we are “adopted” by God. Adoption in Rome in Biblical times wasn’t so much the modern conception of taking in of a child not born into a family and making them, by legality and love, a child of that family. It was more the idea of taking in a male heir, usually at adulthood (interestingly, this same concept was being taught on the BBN radio station by Dr. Donald R. Hubbard as I was cleaning up the kitchen after dinner last night. I am not usually still in the kitchen when this program comes on.) “God has so loved those whom he redeemed on the cross that he has adopted them all as his heirs, to see and share the glory into which his only begotten Son has already come” (p. 201). What an inheritance!

Our sonship changes everything. The emphasis in the Old Testament is on God’s holiness and our unfitness to be in His presence because we are so far from holy. Now we can run into His arms as trusting children. God’s fatherhood implies authority, affection, fellowship, and honor (p. 205). It affects our conduct, prayer, and how we live our lives: by faith, trusting in His care and provision. It shows us His love, provides a basis for hope, helps us understand the Holy Spirit’s ministry to us (making “Christians realize with increasing clarity the meaning of their filial relationship with God in Christ, and to lead them into an ever deeper response to God in this relationship,” Romans 8:15, Galatians 4:6 (p. 220), provides a different motivation for holiness (pleasing our Father), and is the basis for our assurance.

Chapter 20 is “Thou Our Guide.” Packer starts out by showing many instances in both Old and New Testaments that God had a specific plan for specific people at specific times. This is one of the main reasons I can’t subscribe to the idea that it doesn’t matter what we do (whom we marry, where we go to school, what our life’s work should be, even what our plans for the day should be). And the Bible in many places promises God’s guidance. But the main question then is how does God communicate that plan to us?

The first avenue is His Word. No, we won’t find the names of a future spouse or college or employer there. But we will get to know our Father and His character and preferences there and learn the many principles by which He wants us to live. Any seeming “leading” which contradicts a clear principle in His Word is not from Him.

When it comes to what Packer calls “vocational” decisions – the specifics about what God wants us to do, like marriage, etc. – he says, “The work of God in these cases is to incline first our judgment and then our whole being to the course which, of all the competing alternatives, he has marked our as best suited for us, and for His glory and the good of others through us” (p. 237).

As a personal illustration, I had a hard time coming to a decision about whether my husband was the man God wanted me to marry. My own parents had divorced, so I knew that just getting married didn’t insure a “happily ever after,” and I had been engaged before, in a relationship that had numerous red flags that I didn’t see until after it was broken off, so I knew it was possible to be deceived in matters of the heart. How to know if I was really on the right track? It was something I agonized over. Finally I reminded myself that I had asked God to guide me in this area, and when I told Him I didn’t want to play “dating games” any more and only wanted to date the guys He wanted me to date, Jim was the very next person to ask me out. There was no reason to doubt that he was God’s will for me. In making decisions about job changes and moves over the years, two verses that I especially relied on were Psalm 37:23 (The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord: and he delighted in his way – prayed this esocially for my husband as the main family decision-maker), and Jeremiah 10:23 (I know, O LORD, that a man’s way is not in himself, Nor is it in a man who walks to direct his steps.)

Packer does point out, however, that we can be deceived. It’s sadly possible to quench or grieve God’s Holy Spirit. If we are out of fellowship with God, we can’t trust our sense of His leading: we need to confess any known sin, be willing to submit to His leadership, and renew spending time in His Word. Packer then gives six pitfalls that hinder our discernment of God’s will, but I am going to try to recast them into positives:

Be willing to think. “God made us thinking beings, and he guides our minds as in his presence we think things out–not otherwise” (p. 237).
Be willing to think ahead and weigh the long-term consequences of alternative courses of actions. “O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end!” (Deuteronomy 32:9).
Be willing to take advice. “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice.” (Proverbs 12:15).
Be willing to suspect oneself. Sometimes we don’t realize we are being unrealistic or rationalizing. We have a tendency to be self-serving. We need to ask God to “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23-24).
Be willing to discount personal magnetism. Sometimes someone else’s personality or attraction (whether a personal friend or a teacher or leader) can pull us in certain directions. Some people use this magnetism on purpose to mislead: some do not but people idolize them. “Test everything; hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21).
Be willing to wait. God does not often give guidance ahead of the time it is needed.

Even when we’ve prayerfully and carefully sought God’s guidance, “it does not follow that right guidance will be vindicated by a trouble-free course thereafter” (p. 239). Numerous examples in the Bible show people falling into trouble who were directly where God led them: the Israelites between Pharaoh and the Red Sea; the disciples in a boat in a storm, a boat that Jesus sent them off in; Paul in prison, Jesus Himself on the cross, just to name a few. An easy path doesn’t always mean we’re on the right road: a troubled path doesn’t necessarily mean we are on the wrong one.

Finally, Packer acknowledges that it is possible to miss the path sometimes, but we can trust our Father to let us know and to set us right again. “The Jesus who restored Peter after his denial and corrected his course more than once after that (see Acts 10; Gal. 2:11-14), is our Savior today and he has not changed” (p. 241).

31 Days With Elisabeth Elliot: What Fits Us For Service

Posted on October 21, 2015 by Barbara Harper

This is from Elisabeth Elliot’s book A Lamp For My Feet:

What Fits Us For Service?

Is there any Christian who does not long for some special experience, vision, or feeling of the presence of God? This morning it seemed to me that unless I could claim such I was merely going through motions of prayer, meditation, reading; that the book I am writing on discipline will prove to be nothing but vanity and a striving after wind. The Lord brought yesterday’s word to mind again with this emphasis: it is not any experience, no matter how exciting, not any vision, however vivid and dazzling, not any feeling, be it ever so deep that fits me for service. It is the power of the blood of Christ. I am “made holy by the single unique offering of the body of Jesus Christ” (Heb 10:10), and by his blood “fit for the service of the living God.” My spiritual numbness cannot cancel that–the blood will never lose its power.

See all the posts in this series here.

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31 Days With Elisabeth Elliot: No Further Than Natural Things

Posted on October 20, 2015 by Barbara Harper

This is from Elisabeth’s book A Light For My Path:

“Well, it’s perfectly natural for you to feel that way,” I was telling myself when I was upset with the way someone had treated me. “It’s a normal reaction.”

It was a normal reaction for a carnal mind. It was not normal for a spiritual one. The carnal attitude deals with things on one level only–this world’s. It “sees no further than natural things” (Rom 8:5 JBP).

Is there a telescope that will bring into focus things I would not see with merely “natural” vision? There is. “The spiritual attitude reaches out after the things of the spirit.” It is a different means of perceiving. It will enable me to see what I could not have seen with the naked–that is, the carnal–eye.

It works. When I looked at that person who had offended me through the “spiritual eye,” I saw in him one of God’s instruments to teach me, instead of one of the devil’s to torment me. I saw something more. I saw a person God loves, and whom He wants to love through me.

We’re called to have a supernatural reaction, not a natural one, and we can only do that by the Holy Spirit’s indwelling and power. My problem is that sometimes I want to give myself the excuse to “wallow” in what seems a justifiable natural reaction. But we can’t do that if we want to answer God’s call to live and walk as Christ did. May He fill me with His love every day, every moment of my life.

And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. Ephesians 5:2