C.S. Lewis on becoming a Christian:
"At the moment what I heard was God saying, 'Put down your gun and we'll talk.'"
Three hours. Of history class on women and oppression and confusion. Strange laziness from no food and stress. Hmp. Well. Hopefully this blog won't come out jumbled---
Someone had noted a superiority that comes from religion. From his view, it is someone looking on another and judging, of saying that THIS religion is the only one, that it is right and therefore everything is wrong. To quote from an essay (on footbinding, kind of a different subject) by Patricia Ebrey, "With the child abuse construct [of footbinding] we are moving more toward pity, which of course also assumes a position of superiority as it empathizes with those viewed as victims." To say something is wrong means to claim to be 'enlightened' relatively.
What about the other side? What is it about us humans that does not want to be proved wrong, perhaps 'unenlightened'? To me that seems a big issue.
Also, I do not see Christianity as such. As religion, or even, really, as a 'moral' guide. It does not tells us what we can do, but what God can do. What he will change. Christianity (actually, Christ), in one sense, tears down those rules. God knows---he really knows we can't do anything good on our own. We can't.
Isaiah 64:6 (New International Version)
6 All of us have become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
and like the wind our sins sweep us away.
We are deprived. We are depraved. We are oppressed. That is real oppression, that war that wages in our hearts and vies for our attentions, our selfishness and our ingratitude. (much like my thoughts and actions this hectic morning, I'm afraid. 'Nother story.) Our very self is in opposition against God and makes us miserable. Christ will make us understand ourselves, our nature.
"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."
C.S. Lewis
I think what people are truly missing, what they don't know about Christianity, is that God really loves us. He really does. He REALLY loves us. He loves us! He's jealous for us! That's what this is really about! You can't down play it. I once heard a pastor say, "I think that we concentrate too much on the loving side of God, we need to mention more God's wrath." But aren't they related? God's incredible wrath on sin, his repulse and (frankly) hatred of sin is demonstrated in that he would send his Son--himself---to kill it, because he does not want any of us to live with sin! He created us to live with him, to feed of him, to be satisfied in him. His love is our motivation for living in a certain way, of not wanting any part of our lives to be wrapped around ourselves, but to embrace him fully.
"All my self-imposed wants and rights melt before the flame of a loving God."
"Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness leads you toward repentance?" Romans 2:4
"And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." Ephesians 3:17b-19
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWgeUrD4MHI
When I think about just how beautiful you are and how great your affections are for me...
Showing posts with label john piper. Show all posts
Showing posts with label john piper. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 2
Friday, January 29
quotes from piper
"May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucifies to me, and I to the world." Galatians 6:14
I'm rereading a book called "Don't Waste Your Life." Written by John Piper. I won't get into details too much on how awesome this book is, and how much I love Piper's writing. I won't tell you how gusto it is and how desperate and serious the message he is trying to convey is. You will have to experience it yourself.
On the bus ride home yesterday I read the chapter entitled "Boasting Only in the Cross."
"The opposite of wasting your life is living life by a single God-exalting and soul-satisfying passion." (43)
"How serious is this word 'single'? Can life really have that much 'singleness' of purpose? Can work an leisure and relationships and eating and lovemaking and ministry all really flow from a single passion? Is there something deep enough and big enough and strong enough to hold all that together? Can sex and cars and work and war and changing diapers and doing taxes really have a God-exalting, soul-satisfying unity?" (43-44)
"Oh, that God would help me waken in you a single passion for a single great reality that would unleash you, and set you free from small dreams, and send you, for the glory of Christ, into all the spheres of secular life and to all the peoples of the earth." (48)
I could end there. There is so much to speak about those three quotes!
I have found the phrases, "unleash you," and "set you free from small dream" to be one of the most true things I've realized this year. All of the dreams I could have for myself, for advancing myself, for 'a good cause,' for entering schools or performing or writing or personality or anything else is, in actuality, a no-dream, a phony. They only drain my energy and delusionate my mind and starve my longings.
Ah, what could my purpose be?
Philippians 3:4b-14
If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; 6as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.
7But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. 10I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
12Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Matthew 16:25
For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.
Oh Lord, I want to find my life in your cross, I want to value your grace above anything. do not be my number one, but my only one.
I'm rereading a book called "Don't Waste Your Life." Written by John Piper. I won't get into details too much on how awesome this book is, and how much I love Piper's writing. I won't tell you how gusto it is and how desperate and serious the message he is trying to convey is. You will have to experience it yourself.
On the bus ride home yesterday I read the chapter entitled "Boasting Only in the Cross."
"The opposite of wasting your life is living life by a single God-exalting and soul-satisfying passion." (43)
"How serious is this word 'single'? Can life really have that much 'singleness' of purpose? Can work an leisure and relationships and eating and lovemaking and ministry all really flow from a single passion? Is there something deep enough and big enough and strong enough to hold all that together? Can sex and cars and work and war and changing diapers and doing taxes really have a God-exalting, soul-satisfying unity?" (43-44)
"Oh, that God would help me waken in you a single passion for a single great reality that would unleash you, and set you free from small dreams, and send you, for the glory of Christ, into all the spheres of secular life and to all the peoples of the earth." (48)
I could end there. There is so much to speak about those three quotes!
I have found the phrases, "unleash you," and "set you free from small dream" to be one of the most true things I've realized this year. All of the dreams I could have for myself, for advancing myself, for 'a good cause,' for entering schools or performing or writing or personality or anything else is, in actuality, a no-dream, a phony. They only drain my energy and delusionate my mind and starve my longings.
Ah, what could my purpose be?
Philippians 3:4b-14
If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; 6as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.
7But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. 10I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
12Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Matthew 16:25
For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.
Oh Lord, I want to find my life in your cross, I want to value your grace above anything. do not be my number one, but my only one.
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