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"We pursue God because, and only because, He has first put an urge within us that spurs us to the pursuit. 'No man can come to Me, except the Father.... draw him.' This prevenient grace takes from us every vestige of credit for the act of coming."
"I have looked upon the face of Love Himself, and as a result all my earlier conceptions of the nature and character of God and His purposes for Mankind have been swallowed up. It feels almost as though I have seen a new God altogether, but I know of course, that the real fact is I have seen the True God in a new way—in the face of the Risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. As a result, "old things have passed away and all things have become new.
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How could the Bible possibly speak of the perfect victory of God our Creator who loves righteousness and cannot bear evil, if that victory really means that He cannot bring His own creatures at last to hate evil as He hates it, but must confirm multitudes, indeed the majority of them, in their choice of evil for ever and ever?... What sort of victory is it to be able only to subdue evil and prevent it harming any but those who choose it, and to be unable to bring human souls to abominate it and desire to forsake it, so that the evil itself ceases to exist?
"I have looked upon the face of Love Himself, and as a result all my earlier conceptions of the nature and character of God and His purposes for Mankind have been swallowed up. It feels almost as though I have seen a new God altogether, but I know of course, that the real fact is I have seen the True God in a new way—in the face of the Risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. As a result, "old things have passed away and all things have become new.
Quote:
How could the Bible possibly speak of the perfect victory of God our Creator who loves righteousness and cannot bear evil, if that victory really means that He cannot bring His own creatures at last to hate evil as He hates it, but must confirm multitudes, indeed the majority of them, in their choice of evil for ever and ever?... What sort of victory is it to be able only to subdue evil and prevent it harming any but those who choose it, and to be unable to bring human souls to abominate it and desire to forsake it, so that the evil itself ceases to exist?
Amen.
From Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
W.E. Henley
vs
From My Captain
Out of the light that dazzles me,
Bright as the sun from pole to pole
I thank the God I know to be
For Christ the conqueror of my soul.
"But do you not know that sheep are always weak, and helpless, and silly; and that the very reason they are compelled to have a shepherd to care for them is just because they are so unable to take care of themselves? Their welfare and their safety, therefore, do not in the least depend upon their own strength, nor upon their own wisdom, nor upon anything in themselves, but wholly and entirely upon the care of their shepherd. And, if you are a sheep, your self also must depend altogether upon your Shepherd, and not at all upon yourself."
-Thomas Fuller-
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God's own work must be done by God's own ways. Otherwise, we can take no comfort in obtaining the end, if we cannot justify the means used thereunto.
"God may do what seems to a man not right, but it must so seem to him because God works on higher, on divine, on perfect principles, too right for a selfish, unfair, or unloving man to understand. But least of all must we accept some low notion of justice in a man, and argue that God is just in doing after that notion."
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More is required of the Maker, by his own act of creation, than can be required of men. More and higher justice and righteousness is required by him by himself, the Truth;--greater nobleness, more penetrating sympathy; and nothing but what, if an honest man understood it, he would say was right.
"Punishment is for the sake of amendment and atonement. God is bound by his love to punish sin in order to deliver his creature; he is bound by his justice to destroy sin in his creation. Love is justice--is the fulfilling of the law, for God as well as for his children. This is the reason of punishment; this is why justice requires that the wicked shall not go unpunished--that they, through the eye-opening power of pain, may come to see and do justice, may be brought to desire and make all possible amends, and so become just."
-Hannah W. Smith-
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Many of God's children do not understand that God is actually and truly their Father. They think of Him as a stern Judge, or severe Taskmaster, or at the best as an unapproachable dignitary, seated on a far-off throne, dispensing exacting laws for a frightened and trembling world; and in their terror lest they should fail to meet His requirements they hardly know which way to turn. But of a God who is a Father, tender, and loving, and full of compassion, a God who like a father, will be on their side against the whole universe they have no conception.
Christ, the gift of God's present forgiving love to every man and woman, is the door through which alone we can enter into our provision of hope. Until we know the love of our Father's heart to us, as manifested in Christ, the future must always be to us at best a dark and doubtful wilderness. But when we know that all that we have conceived of our Father's love, is as nothing to the reality--that he is indeed love itself--a love passing knowledge--a shoreless, boundless, bottomless ocean-fountain of love, of holy, sin-hating, sin-destroying love, which longs over us that we should be filled with itself--and be by it delivered from the power of evil--then, indeed, we are saved by hope, for we know that love must triumph and fulfill all its counsel.
John Milton
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It is because we are human that we readily hear the hiss of the forked-tongue, and it is because we are human that heaven's universal hum often falls on deaf ears.
"There is more hid in Christ than we shall ever learn, here or there either; but they that begin first to inquire will soonest be gladdened with revelation; and with them He will be best pleased, for the slowness of His disciples troubled Him of old. To say that we must wait for the other world, to know the mind of Him who came to this world to give Himself to us, seems to me the foolishness of a worldly and lazy spirit. The Son of God is the teacher of men, giving to them of His Spirit -- that Spirit which manifests the deep things of God, being to a man the mind of Christ. The great heresy of the Church of the present day is unbelief in this Spirit".
-Charles S. Price-
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Christian experience is a great adventure. We never arrive at the finality of that walk or experience. No matter what mountain peak we climb today, there is always another one to be climbed a little way ahead. The future is greater than the past, for there are Elysian fields and meadows of glory that have never been explored. It is this great truth which presents such a challenge to the follower of the Lord Jesus. Under His leadership--for He never drives or coerces--we are priviledged to climb in spirit very near to the gates of a world that human eyes can not see; and are kept by the peace of God which passeth all understanding, through Jesus Christ. It is then we begin to comprehend the incomprehensible, and to watch the apocalypse of the mysteries that are hidden to so many.
"Earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God; and only he who sees takes off his shoes." -Eliz. B. Browning-
Institutional Christianity is addicted to the idea that for things to work out right between us and God, "we have to do our part," and if we do, then "God will do His part." That makes God dependent upon us "getting it right" before He can get on with His purpose and will.
At the heart of our flesh's alienation from God, at the heart of our blindness and ignorance, is the desire to get credited for "holding up our part of the deal." We like the idea of grace, as long as the successful operation of grace is attributable to us "letting God" do what He wants to do.
"Earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God; and only he who sees takes off his shoes." -Eliz. B. Browning-
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