One difference I see between the God of modern Christianity and the God that I see revealed in scripture is that the God of the scripture will sometimes (if not often) hide himself. Finding God requires seeking God. The seeking is essential to what it is to being a "follower" of Christ.
Jehovah Tsidkenu, a poem by Robert Murray McCheyne read by Brian Borgman.
Are you laboring after God and not finding him? Could it be that you are not washing yourself? Do you not know that God is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity? Do you not know that no unclean thing can enter into his presence? There is a fountain opened for the cleansing of all sin and filth. Make use of it. (Hab 1:13, Rev 21:27, Zech 13:1) Or perhaps you wash generally but do not know how to...
The following comes from a lecture series that Tim Keller and Edmund Clowney taught together entitled: Preaching Christ in a Postmodern World. Enjoy By Jesus Christ not healing the sick, not raising the dead, not feeding the hungry; but by creating 150 gallons of the most incredible wine to keep a party really really going strong—by him choosing that as his quintessential first miracle what...
Ornan, who not only paid homage to David but was eager to donate his own property, was not an Israelite but a Jebusite: a people devoted unto destruction. Why was he so willing to help the cause of David? Because the fear of the LORD was upon him. He saw God’s sword and this compelled him to hide and to offer up his own property to his rightful enemy all in the name of appeasing such a God as...
How hard it is not to heal the wounds of those you love and are trying to minister to? Yet often those wounds are the first-fruits of grace. To see a soul in the first fears of the Lord and the first desperate pleadings for God’s help is a wonderful thing. Why do we then—after working so hard and lovingly—cut down the fruit when first we see it? Let grace have its work, strive not against it.
I have a theory that God delights to use uneducated men as shepherds in situations where we turn the pursuit of God into the empty traditions of religion. Here are some examples of such men …
In this hour of all-but-universal darkness one cheering gleam appears: within the fold of conservative Christianity there are to be found increasing numbers of persons whose religious lives are marked by a growing hunger after God Himself. They are eager for spiritual realities and will not be put off with words, nor will they be content with correct “interpretations” of truth. They...
Leonard Dober determined that God’s call to him was to reach slaves in the Virgin Islands. He planned to reach these men and women by selling himself as a slave and working alongside others each day while sharing Jesus’ love with them.
It takes a wound. This wounding must be done by God. He has a way of striping our souls bare and exposing the depths of what we are. We all fear—deep down—that we are failures. The wounding comes when we see the truth of these things. The one wounded freely acknowledges that everyone ought hate him. Until now, he has feared that his family, friends, acquaintances, and strangers would discover...