This Sunday’s readings: Psalm 63

Reflections

Loving a holy God is beyond our moral power. The only kind of God we can love by our sinful nature is an unholy god, an idol made by our own hands. Unless we are born of the Spirit of God, unless God sheds His holy love in our hearts, unless He stoops in His grace to change our hearts, we will not love Him… To love a holy God requires grace, grace strong enough to pierce our hardened hearts and awaken our moribund souls.
~ R. C. Sproul, 1939-2017, Theologian & Educator

If God has at last died in our culture, he has not been buried. For the casually religious, he lingers on like a fond old relative who has been so expertly embalmed that we may prop him up in the far corner of the living room and pretend the old fellow is still with us.
~ Theodore Roszak, 1933-2011, Academic & Novelist

I am a mystery—more so than a tree or a sunset or even a flash of lightning. But, sadly, I am taken for granted by those who use me, as if I were a mere incident and without background. This supercilious attitude relegates me to the level of the commonplace. This is a species of the grievous error in which mankind cannot too long persist without peril. For as, GK Chesterton, observed. “We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders.”
~ Leonard Read, 1898-1983, Author, ‘I, Pencil’

I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed…. The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.
~ C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms

If two girls walk up to me and one says ‘you’re cute’, I’ll say thank you, but I appreciate it much more when the other one says ‘you make me laugh so much’.
~ Michael J. Fox, Actor

God is a covenant-making, covenant-remembering, covenant-keeping God!
~ Sinclair Ferguson (1948-present), Scottish author, pastor and professor

This Sunday’s readings: Psalm 42/43

Reflections

What do people mean when they say, ‘I am not afraid of God because I know He is good’? Have they never even been to a dentist?
~ C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about him. The conclusion I dread is not ‘So there’s no God after all,’ but ‘So this is what God’s really like. Deceive yourself no longer.’
~ C. S. Lewis, 1898-1963

What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.
~ A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy

Our self help culture is preoccupied with ‘self-talk’, with your inner-monologue. Does what you say cheer you up or tear you down? Are you consciously self-affirming or obsessively self-critical?…[God’s Word] gets you out of the monologue business entirely. It gets you about the business of a living dialogue with the person whose opinion finally matters.
~ David Powlison, Pastoral theologian and author with CCEF

I find a lot of dishonesty in Christian art. And I think it’s a shame because [the psalmists] are people who are vulnerable to God in a good way…porous, open. I would love if… people writing these [Christian] songs would write a song about their bad marriage… Why I’m suspicious of Christians is because of this lack of realism.
~Bono (1960-present), lead singer of U2

I have never experienced stomach doubt, but I think Jesus did. When he cried out, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!’ I don’t think he was raising a theological issue… I think he had looked into the abyss itself and found there a darkness that spiritually, viscerally, totally engulfed him. I think God allows that kind of darkness to happen only to God’s saints.
~ Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking