Once you become aware that the main business that you are here for is to know God, most of life's problems fall into place of their own accord.
J. I. PackerRead
To know that nothing happens in God's world apart from God's will may frighten the godless, but it stabilizes the saints.
Interpretation
Understanding divine will can bring comfort to believers while unsettling non-believers.
This quote reflects the idea that the belief in God's sovereignty offers stability and assurance to those who have faith, while it may provoke fear and anxiety in those who do not share that belief. The contrast between the 'godless' and the 'saints' highlights how different worldviews interpret the same reality in fundamentally different ways.
In practice
In a sermon discussing the nature of divine control, this quote can emphasize faith in challenging times.
Once you become aware that the main business that you are here for is to know God, most of life's problems fall into place of their own accord.
He that has learned to feel his sins, and to trust Christ as a Saviour, has learned the two hardest and greatest lessons in Christianity.
We need to discover all over again that worship is natural to the Christian, as it was to the godly Israelites who wrote the psalms, and that the habit of celebrating the greatness and graciousness of God yields an endless flow of thankfulness, joy, and zeal.
The fruit of wisdom is Christlikeness, peace, humility and love. And, the root of it is faith in Christ as the manifested wisdom of God
Were I asked to focus the New Testament message in three words, my proposal would be ADOPTION THROUGH PROPITIATION, and I do not expect ever to meet a richer or more pregnant summary of the gospel than that.
Only when it is seen that what decides each individual's destiny is whether or not God decides to save him from his sins, and that this is a decision that God need not make in any individual case, can one begin to grasp the biblical view of grace.
Why would the disciples invent a God whose holiness was more terrifying than the forces of nature that provoked them to invent a god in the first place?
Victory and defeat are each of the same price.
Our stories may be singular, but our destination is shared.
The written word is weak. Many people prefer life to it. Life gets your blood going, & it smells good. Writing is mere writing, literature is mere. It appeals only to the subtlest senses—the imagination’s vision, & the imagination’s hearing—& the moral sense, & the intellect. This writing that you do, that so thrills you, that so rocks & exhilarates you, as if you were dancing next to the band, is barely audible to anyone else.
Mankind's real moral test, a test so radical and so deep that it escapes our gaze, is probably the one of its relations with those that are the most at its mercy; the Animals.
God is concerned about everything that concerns us - without exception.
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