Tag Archives: religion
The Power of Books
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Carl Sagan was an atheist who had this to say about the power a book possesses.
“What an astonishing thing a book is,” marveled [Carl] Sagan. “It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you.”
Sagan’s comment certainly explains the desirability of books through the ages. It would also seem to explain the power and effectiveness of the Bible. Its author, God, is not dead and its words are timeless. That being said, one has to wonder why we don’t read the Bible more.
The Knowledge of the Holy: part 2
In the second chapter of his book, Tozer poses the question, “What is God like?”
“When the Scripture states that man was made in the image of God, we dare not add to that statement an idea from our own head and make it mean in the exact image. To do so is to make man a replica of God, and that is to lose the unicity of God and end with no God at all.”
Tozer goes on to say:
“Left to ourselves we tend immediately to reduce God to manageable terms. We want to get Him where we can use Him, or at least know where He is when we need him. We want a God we can in some measure control. We need a feeling of security that comes from knowing what God is like…”
Tozer adds that the answer to the question, what God is like, can be answered in the person of His son, Jesus Christ.
“In Christ and by Christ, God effects complete self-disclosure, although He shows Himself not to reason but to faith and love. Faith is an organ of knowledge, and love an organ of experience. God came to us in the incarnation; in atonement He reconciled us to Himself, and by faith and love we enter and lay hold on Him.”
We can only begin to understand what God is like if we study what Tozer regards as God’s attributes, which he addresses in the rest of the book. A divine attribute he says, “is something true about God.”
“A man is the sum of his parts and his character the sum of the traits that compose it. These traits very from man to man…The doctrine of the divine unity means not only that there is but one God, it means also that God is simple, uncomplex, one with Himself. The harmony of His being is the result not of a perfect balance of parts but the absence of parts. Between His attributes no contradiction can exist.”
When we look at God’s attribute of love, using the above above quotation, it is not something He has, love is who he is. Tozer goes on to discuss many other attributes such as the Trinity, His self existence, eternity, infinitude, omniscience, sovereignty and many more.
It is a great book, which I highly recommend reading. For those of us with a casual view of God it will shake up our perception of Him. As you progress through the book, you will be acquainted with the depths of God’s love and the height of His holiness.
Check out this song by Addison Road, “What do I know of holy”. It certainly captures a desire to know what is God like.
Psalm 119:33-48 Cause Me
(33) “Follow it to the end” – this section of the 119th Psalm speaks about finishing well. God’s help is needed for us to stay the course and finish well. (37) “Turn my eyes” – our eyes have an appetite, we need to guard what they are focusing on. (41) “Thy salvation” – deliverance from the evil that is revealed to us in God’s word. (48) “I will lift up my hands” – how many of us can say that we reach out for God’s word like a child reaches for a gift (Spurgeon).
Matt Chandler in his video series on Psalm 119 titles this section, “Cause Me.” Our prayers should reflect two ideas: (1) to love what is good (give me an appetite for God’s Word) and (2) to hate what is evil (my selfishness can be a source of evil). Studying God’s word positions us to do both.
My prayer: Cause me to be certain of my faith, cause me to be thirsty for Your word and cause me to finish well.
Human Failure
Only human. This quote accurately portrays humans as imperfect beings vulnerable to failure. As we travel through life, it is clear that some of these human failures can be devastating. Thankfully, relationships we have made with others as we journey provide the necessary framework needed to make forgiveness and restoration possible. In matters with eternal consequences, it is a personal relationship with God, not a membership in religious institution that provides authentic hope for forgiveness and restoration of the human soul.
Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see. Hebrews 11:1 NLT
Scraps 