Packer
No, not the Green Bay Packers.
J.I.Packer, theologian and author from decades ago.
It's been a long time since I posted anything, largely because I've been a little "dry" and have not felt I had anything to share. I still don't have anything to share of my own, really! But I picked up Knowing God (by Packer) recently and while I have actually read the first few chapters previously, I started over, and this was right to do.
Knowing God in a personal way has been one of my life struggles. It was never modeled to me in my growing up years (that I can recall) and Satan continues to try to convince me that because God is unseen with my physical eyes, and because I can't physically sit on his lap or hold an audible conversation, that I certainly cannot KNOW Him in a real, personal, would-rather-spend-time-with-Him-than-anyone-else way.
Satan is a good liar.
So Packer is encouraging. And I've gotten through the preface and first two chapters, but there's so much to read again, soak in, and practice, that this book will probably take me a while.
I'll share an excerpt from the end his preface, written in 1973.
"'Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls" (Jer 6:16). Such is the invitation which this book issues. It is not a critique of new paths, except indirectly, but rather a straightforward recall to old ones, on the ground that 'the good way' is still what it used to be. I do not ask my readers to suppose that I know very well what I am talking about. 'Those like myself,' wrote C.S.Lewis, 'whose imagination far exceeds their obedience are subject to a just penalty; we easily imagine conditions far higher than any we have really reached. If we describe what we have imagined we may make others, and make ourselves, believe that we have really been there' - and so fool both them and ourselves (The Four Loves, p.128). All readers and writers of devotional literature do well to weigh Lewis's words. Yet 'it is written: "I believed; therefore I have spoken." With that same spirit of faith we also believe and therefore speak' (2 Cor 4:13) - and if what is written here helps anyone in the way that the meditations behind the writing helped me, the work will have been abundantly worthwhile."
J.I.P.
Trinity College, Bristol
July 1972
J.I.Packer, theologian and author from decades ago.
It's been a long time since I posted anything, largely because I've been a little "dry" and have not felt I had anything to share. I still don't have anything to share of my own, really! But I picked up Knowing God (by Packer) recently and while I have actually read the first few chapters previously, I started over, and this was right to do.
Knowing God in a personal way has been one of my life struggles. It was never modeled to me in my growing up years (that I can recall) and Satan continues to try to convince me that because God is unseen with my physical eyes, and because I can't physically sit on his lap or hold an audible conversation, that I certainly cannot KNOW Him in a real, personal, would-rather-spend-time-with-Him-than-anyone-else way.
Satan is a good liar.
So Packer is encouraging. And I've gotten through the preface and first two chapters, but there's so much to read again, soak in, and practice, that this book will probably take me a while.
I'll share an excerpt from the end his preface, written in 1973.
"'Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls" (Jer 6:16). Such is the invitation which this book issues. It is not a critique of new paths, except indirectly, but rather a straightforward recall to old ones, on the ground that 'the good way' is still what it used to be. I do not ask my readers to suppose that I know very well what I am talking about. 'Those like myself,' wrote C.S.Lewis, 'whose imagination far exceeds their obedience are subject to a just penalty; we easily imagine conditions far higher than any we have really reached. If we describe what we have imagined we may make others, and make ourselves, believe that we have really been there' - and so fool both them and ourselves (The Four Loves, p.128). All readers and writers of devotional literature do well to weigh Lewis's words. Yet 'it is written: "I believed; therefore I have spoken." With that same spirit of faith we also believe and therefore speak' (2 Cor 4:13) - and if what is written here helps anyone in the way that the meditations behind the writing helped me, the work will have been abundantly worthwhile."
J.I.P.
Trinity College, Bristol
July 1972
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