31 Days With Elisabeth Elliot: Transformation

Posted on October 17, 2015 by Barbara Harper

This is from Elisabeth Elliot’s book A Lamp For My Feet concerning Romans 12:1-2:

The primary condition for learning what God wants of us is putting ourselves wholly at his disposal. It is just here that we are often blocked. We hold certain reservations about how far we are willing to go, what we will or will not do, how much God can have of us or of what we treasure. Then we pray for guidance. It will not work. We must begin by laying it all down–ourselves, our treasures, our destiny. Then we are in a position to think with renewed minds and act with a transformed nature. The withholding of any part of ourselves is the same as saying, “Thy will be done up to a point, mine from there on.”

If God is almighty, there can be no evil so great as to be beyond his power to transform. That transforming power brings light out of darkness, joy out of sorrow, gain out of loss, life out of death.

Sometimes we boggle at the evil in the world and especially in ourselves, feeling that this sin, this tragedy, this offense cannot possibly fit into a pattern for good. Let us remember Joseph’s imprisonment, David’s sin, Paul’s violent persecution of Christians, Peter’s denial of his Master. None of it was beyond the power of grace to redeem and turn into something productive. The God who establishes the shoreline for the sea also decides the limits of the great mystery which is evil. He is “the Blessed Controller of all things.” God will finally be God, Satan’s best efforts notwithstanding.

We tend to want bad things prevented rather than transformed. That day will come, but it is not now. A friend once said she realized that if God were to wipe out all the evil in the world, He would have to wipe out all of us, for we all sin. I am thankful He transforms us rather than just doing away with us, and and we can trust Him to limit what He allows of evil and trust Him to somehow work it together for good (Romans 8:28) until the day when it is taken out of the way completely. It starts within my by “laying it all down,” rather than saying “Thy will be done up to a point.”

See all the posts in this series here.

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Knowing God, Chapters 17 and 18: God’s Jealousy and Propitiation

Posted on October 15, 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 17 and 18.

The word “jealousy” has a bad connotation: we usually picture a jealous person as one who is short-tempered, unreasonable, unnaturally possessive. But God is sinless and holy, so what does He mean when He proclaims Himself to be a jealous God?

Even among humans there is a right kind of jealousy which is a “zeal to protect a love relationship” and sets safeguards to do so. But “God’s jealousy is not a compound of frustration, envy, and spite, as human jealousy so often is, but appears instead as a (literally) praiseworthy zeal to preserve something supremely precious” (p. 170).

Even humans expect loyalty in certain relationships. God certainly does as well, and as absolutely perfect and holy, He “will vindicate his claim by stern action against them if they betray his love by unfaithfulness” (p. 171).

Christians’ proper response, Packer says, should be zealousness for Him and His name. This doesn’t mean we start wars with people who don’t believe as we do. But it does mean we should have “a burning desire to please God, to do His will, and to advance His glory in the world in every possible way” (p. 173).

Chapter 17 ended a section of chapters called “Behold Your God!” which talked about His attributes; Chapter 18 begins the final section of the book called “If God Be For Us.”

The title of this chapter is “The Heart of the Gospel,” and Packer asserts that heart is propitiation. Like many people, I think the average preacher and writer needs to use words accessible to the common man and not lapse into verbiage only a theology student would grasp, but propitiation is a word that we need to understand. Packer defines it as “averting God’s anger by an offering” (p. 180), yet it is different from offerings for the same purpose in pagan religions due to many factors. One is that God initiated the offering of His Son. There is nothing we could offer that would take away our sin.

Some dislike the word and its concept because they don’t like to think of God as angry over sin. But as we have seen in the chapter on God’s wrath, God has a righteous and just anger over sin.

Propitiation was accomplished by the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, the OT sacrifices being a picture of that which was to come:

Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree (Galatians 3:13).

For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: And that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again… To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God. For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. 2 Corinthians 5:14-15, 19-21).

Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus (Romans 3:24-26).

And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:2).

In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:9-10).

This was a very long chapter and I am only feebly hitting a few of the highlights here, but Packer gives a very thorough looking into from various angles.

31 Days With Elisabeth Elliot: God’s Help For God’s Assignment

Posted on October 15, 2015 by Barbara Harper

This taken from a a chapter called “God’s Help For God’s Assignment” from Elisabeth’s book A Lamp For My Feet:

Sometimes a task we have begun takes on seemingly crushing size, and we wonder what ever gave us the notion that we could accomplish it. There is no way out, no way around it, and yet we cannot contemplate actually carrying it through. The rearing of children or the writing of a book are illustrations that come to mind. Let us recall that the task is a divinely appointed one, and divine aid is therefore to be expected. Expect it! Ask for it, wait for it, believe that God gives it. Offer to Him the job itself, along with your fears and misgivings about it. He will not fail or be discouraged. Let his courage encourage you. The day will come when the task will be finished. Trust Him for it.

“For the Lord God will help me; therefore shall I not be confounded, therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed” (Is 50:7 AV).

This is one I have come back to many times and found true. I tend to resist those tasks that I know are beyond me (and really, everything would be without His aid), but that’s where we really see God’s enabling power at work.

See all the posts in this series here.

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Book Review: I Dared to Call Him Father

Posted on October 14, 2015 by Barbara Harper

I Dared to Call Him Father: The Miraculous Story of a Muslim Woman’s Encounter with God by Bilquis Sheikh is, as the subtitle indicates, the story of how an aristocratic Pakistani woman, a lifelong Muslim, became a Christian in her fifties.

Bilquis’ family was well-known, hosting people from all over the world and often visiting London or Paris. Her husband was the Minister of the Interior, but they had divorced five years before, and feeling “the shame of rejection,” she secluded herself in her family’s ancestral home in the village of Wah. She lived with her servants and four-year-old grandson, and for the most part only visited with other family members.

After her grandson recovered from an illness, she started reading the Quran, not out of duty or obligation this time, but to see if it “would help explain the events and at the same time fill the emptiness within me.” She was “impressed by its many references to Jewish and Christian writings that preceded it” and wondered if it would be helpful to read them. Muslims believed that “the early Christians had falsified…much of” the Bible, but she felt compelled to obtain one and to read it. One of the first verses she came across was Romans 9:25-26: “I will call them my people, which were not my people; and her beloved, which was not beloved. And it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people; there shall they be called the children of the living God.” Somehow that passage gripped her heart and stayed with her for days. As she continued to read more, particularly about Jesus and His claims to be God and the way of salvation through Him, she was confused, because the Muslims believed that Jesus was only a prophet, not God. After more reading and two vivid dreams, Bilquis decided to visit Christian missionaries in the village to get more information. One of her questions was, “What has Jesus done for you?” After sharing and praying, the missionary, Synnove Mitchell, kept in touch with Bilquis.

Bilquis continued reading “the Quran because of the loyalty of a lifetime, delving into the Bible because of a strange inner hunger.” She knew “God couldn’t be in both books…because their messages were so different.” When her grandson experienced pain in his ear to the point that he needed to be hospitalized, someone at the hospital asked Bilquis about the Bible she was carrying. Bilquis answered that she was “earnestly searching for God,” told about her experience so far, and admitted, “I must find God, but I am confused about your faith.” This person suggested, “Why don’t you pray to the God you are searching for? Ask Him to show you His way. Talk to Him as if He were your friend. Talk to Him as if He were your father.”

“The thought shook my soul in the peculiar way truth has of being at once starling and comforting…No Muslim, I felt certain, ever thought of Allah as his father.” But thoughts of her loving earthly father encouraged her to think of God in the same way, so she prayed to Him. In part of her prayer, she confessed her confusion and asked whether the Bible or the Quran was His book. He seemed to answer in her heart, “In which book do you meet Me as your Father?” And “that’s all it took” to convince her. She shut herself in her room with the Bible, read, thought about the consequences to herself and her family if she became a Christian, and finally opened her heart to Him.

The rest of the book details her growth and experiences, including those consequences.

There were several things that impressed me about this book and Bilquis’ story: the power of the gospel to change a heart, the love and courage He gave her to withstand persecution, her reaching out to family members during times of grief, even though they had shunned her.

When I reviewed Nabeel Qureshi’s biography, I mentioned that at first I was troubled by the mention of God speaking to him through dreams, believing that God speaks primarily through His Word. As I said there, I do still believe that, but I have come to understand that many Muslims experience dreams that aid them along the way to the gospel. In an afterward, it is said of Bilquis that when others who had experienced dreams and visions came to her, she “carefully brought attention to Jesus by praying for them and claiming the promises He Himself had made, and applying those promises in simple faith to their specific needs. She was concerned not only to give her visitors truths about God, but to bring them into the presence of Jesus, the Truth.”

One aspect of Bilquis’ testimony that troubled me was her frequent reference to experiencing or losing God’s presence depending on what she did. Sometimes she said “the sense of His presence,” and that I would not have had as much of a problem with. But she goes so far as to say that “the Spirit left” or “His Presence would disappear” if she disobeyed in some way. God is omnipresent and He is with His children always: He doesn’t leave us ever. And He deals with us on the basis of His grace. Yet He does still require obedience, and, just as we experience an uneasiness and lack of peace when there is trouble in any of our relationships until we talk about it, confess whatever we need to confess, and make things right, so we can experience that with God. Yet one can be walking in perfect step with Him and not sense His presence (see Job and many of the Psalms.) In Evidence Not Seen, Darlene Deibler Rose wrote of the comforting sense of God’s presence when she was a POW. But one day that sense was gone, and she searched her heart and couldn’t find any offense she needed to confess, prayed for it to return, but it didn’t for a long time.She finally realized it was something she needed to take by faith even if she didn’t always “feel” it. Bilquis doesn’t sound like she understood this truth. Perhaps what she meant is what we would call today “feeling peace” about a decision or action (although that’s not a foolproof indication of God’s will, either).

Nevertheless, God clearly worked in and through her, and it warmed my heart to see how He did and how she responded. Her obedience to what she determined to be the will of God at any given time was a rebuke to me, and the way He sustained her through many trials encouraged and blessed me. I like what someone shared with her: “God is always stretching us…until we don’t have a safe handhold left except Him.”

This book was originally published in Bilquis’ lifetime in 1978. The version I read was a 2003 reprint, and I am very thankful it contains an epilogue in the back, telling about the end of Bilquis’ life, along with a couple of afterwards by Synnove Mitchell, one of the missionaries Bilquis became friends with. In one, she tells of Bilquis coming to see her from her vantage point, which was neat to read. Then in the final one, titled “Enriched by the East,” she shares some of the differences between Eastern and Western ways of thinking (group culture vs. individuality, hospitality vs. punctuality, indirectness vs. bluntness, etc.) and talks about how we need each other and how we can enrich each other instead of clashing with each other.

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

31 Days With Elisabeth Elliot: On Asking God Why

Posted on October 13, 2015 by Barbara Harper

This is from Elisabeth’s book On Asking God Why:

I seek the lessons God wants to teach me, and that means that I ask why. There are those who insist that it is a very bad thing to question God. To them, “Why?” is a rude question. That depends, I believe, on whether it is an honest search, in faith, for his meaning, or whether it is a challenge of unbelief and rebellion. The psalmist often questioned God and so did Job. God did not answer the questions, but he answered the man–with the mystery of himself.

He has not left us entirely in the dark. We know a great deal more about his purposes than poor old Job did, yet Job trusted him. He is not only the Almighty–Job’s favorite name for him. He is also our Father, and what a father does is not by any means always understood by the child. If he loves the child, however, the child trusts him. It is the child’s ultimate good that the father has in mind. Terribly elementary. Yet I have to be reminded of this when, for example, my friend suffers, when a book I think I can’t possibly do without is lost, when a manuscript is worthless.

Elsewhere (I am not sure of the source) she writes:

Now is it a sin to ask God why? It’s always best to go first for our answers to Jesus Himself. He cried out on the cross, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’ It was a human cry; a cry of desperation springing from His heart’s agony at the prospect of being put into the hands of wicked men and actually becoming sin for you and me. We can never suffer anything like that, yet we do at times feel forsaken, don’t we? It’s quite natural for us to cry, ‘Why, Lord?’

The psalmist asked why. Job, a blameless man suffering horrible torments on an ash heap, asked why. It doesn’t seem to me to be sinful to ask the question. What is sinful is resentment against God and His dealings with us. When we begin to doubt His love and imagine that He is cheating us of something we have a right to, we are guilty as Adam and Eve were guilty. They took the snake at his word rather than God.

The same snake comes to us repeatedly with the same suggestions. ‘Does God love you? Does He really want the best for you? Is His Word trustworthy? Isn’t He cheating you? Forget His promises. You’d be better off if you’d do it your way.’

I’ve often asked why. Many things have happened which I didn’t plan and which human rationality could not explain. In the darkness of my perplexity and sorrow, I have heard God say quietly, ‘Trust Me.’ He knew that my question was not the challenge of unbelief or of resentment.

I don’t understand Him, but then I’m not asked to understand, only to trust. Bitterness dissolves when I remember the kind of love with which He has loved me–He gave Himself for me. He gave Himself for me. He gave Himself for me. Whatever He is doing now, therefore, is not cause for bitterness. It has to be designed for good, because He loved me and gave Himself for me.

I agree. It’s not a sin to ask, at least not unless the attitude is one of defiance or resentment. He may not answer, or may answer in a way we hadn’t at first wanted, but the more we learn to know Him, the more we can trust Him with those questions, no matter the answer or lack thereof.

See all the posts in this series here.

Knowing God, Chapters 15 and 16: God’s Wrath, Goodness, and Severity

Posted on October 8, 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 15 and 16.

Chapter 16 deals with “The Wrath of God,” not the most popular subject today. As mentioned from a previous chapter, people like to think of God as grandfatherly and benign. But the Bible presents wrath as a part of God’s character, so it is wise to see what it has to say about it.

Packer defines terms and then sketches out some of the Biblical references, noting that there are more verses about God’s “anger, fury, and wrath than there are about His love and tenderness” (p. 149). “The Bible labors the point that just as God is good to those who trust Him, so He is terrible to those who do not” (p. 149).

Some object to God as displaying wrath because it seems “unworthy” of Him, or like a loss of control. But His wrath is not like human wrath. “God’s wrath in the Bible is never the capricious, self-indulgent, irritable, morally ignoble thing that human anger so often is. It is, instead, a right and necessary reaction to objective moral evil. God is only angry when anger is called for…Would a God who took as much pleasure in evil as He did in good be a good God? Would a God who did not react adversely to evil in His world be morally perfect?” (p. 151).

“God’s wrath in the Bible is always judicial–that is, it is the wrath of the Judge, administering justice” (p. 151). It isn’t arbitrary or capricious. It’s also “something which people choose for themselves. Before hell is an experience inflicted by God, it is a state for which a person opts by retreating from the light which God shines in his heart to lead him to Himself…(John 3:18-19)” (p. 152).

Packer then traces the wrath of God through the book of Romans, discussing the meaning and revelation of it as well as deliverance from it. Thankfully God has made provision for us to be delivered from His wrath by repenting of our sins and trusting in Christ, who took our sins on Himself at the cross, for salvation. “Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him” (Romans 5:9).

The title of Chapter 16 comes from Romans 11:22a: “Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God.” Packer begins by discussing how some of the “muddle-headedness” about God and what it means to have faith in Him have come about: people follow their own ideas instead of seeking what God reveals in His Word; people think all religions are equal and “draw their ideas about God from pagan as well as Christian sources” (p. 159); personal sinfulness has been downplayed, so people don’t see the need and aren’t open to correction; and, as has been mentioned on the chapters dealing with God’s justice and wrath, people “disassociate the thought of God’s goodness from that of His severity” (p. 159).

Packer then does one of the things I believe he is best at: presenting in distilled form an overview of of both God’s goodness and severity, which I could not begin to reproduce here without quoting half the chapter. But he says God’s severity “denotes God’s decisive withdrawal of His goodness from those who have spurned it (p. 163). “But God is not impatient in His severity; just the reverse. He is ‘slow to anger’… and ‘longsuffering'” patient and forbearing (p. 165). And he has done everything possible to bring people to Himself: “The Bible shows you a Savior who suffered and died in order that we sinners might be reconciled to God; Calvary is the measure of the goodness of God” (p. 165).

31 Days With Elisabeth Elliot: The Rupture of Self

Posted on October 4, 2015 by Barbara Harper

This is a hard one, but the last few lines help put it into perspective:

Sometimes our prayers are for deliverance from conditions which are morally indispensable–that is, conditions which are absolutely necessary to our redemption. God does not grant us those requests. He will not because He loves us with a pure and implacable purpose: that Christ be formed in us. If Christ is to live in my heart, if his life is to be lived in me, I will not be able to contain Him. The self, small and hard and resisting as a nut, will have to be ruptured. My own purposes and desires and hopes will have to at times be exploded. The rupture of the self is death, but out of death comes life. The acorn must rupture if an oak tree is to grow.

It will help us to remember, when we do not receive the answer we hoped for, that it is morally necessary, morally indispensable, that some of our prayers be denied, “that the life of Jesus may be plainly seen in these bodies of ours” (2 Cor 4:11 JBP). Then think of this: the agonized prayer of Jesus in the garden went unanswered, too. Why? In order that life–our life–might spring forth from death–his death.

~ Elisabeth Elliot, A Lamp For My Feet

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.
John 12:24

To see all the posts in this series, see the bottom of this post.

Laudable Linkage

Posted on October 3, 2015 by Barbara Harper

Here are a few noteworthy reads discovered in the last week or so:

God of Judgment, God of Grace. Rebekah does a great job of showing that these are not aspects of God from two different testaments, but rather they are both all throughout the Bible, and in the midst God’s judgment are some of the most marvelous displays of His grace.

6 Things I Wish I Had Never Told My Children. I don’t know that I agree with every little thing here, especially the last point (though I agree with what is said underneath it), but it is thought-provoking and a reminder that while we love, nurture, and build up our children, we do need to prepare them realistically for the real world.

Why You Can’t Push Your Kids Into the Kingdom.

The Value of a Life. Should we laugh when our country’s enemies are killed?

A look at the 23 UI changes in iOS 9 that you might have missed. I am sure with each upgrade to a new iOS system for the iPhone or iPad, there is much that it will do that I never know about, so a quick look at an article like this is helpful.

What Is Periscope, and How Do I Use It? I had vaguely heard of this and knew it involved watching people’s videos of what they were doing, but that’s about it. This article explains it all clearly and simply.

Here’s How to Clean Up Your G-mail Inbox, You Hoarder.

And this is adorable:

Happy Saturday!

31 Days With Elisabeth Elliot: Irritants As God’s Messengers

Posted on October 2, 2015 by Barbara Harper

Today’s quote is short but quite convicting. Yet is is also reassuring as a reminder that God truly does work all things together for our good – little irritations as well as great trials. Elisabeth speaks of other people, but I like to expand this to apply to any kind of irritant or annoyance. As I have written before, I tend to get tripped up by those more often than the big things.

How can this person who so annoys or offends me be God’s messenger? Is God so unkind as to send that sort across my path? Insofar as his treatment of me requires more kindness than I can find in my own heart, demands love of a quality I do not possess, asks of me patience which only the Spirit of God can produce in me, he is God’s messenger. God sends him in order that he may send me running to God for help.

From A Lamp For My Feet

To see all the posts in this series, see the bottom of this post.

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.