From Knowing God by J I Packer

Lots of things have struck me while reading the first 50 pages of this book. I will share a few now and perhaps more later or perhaps more thoughts from the next 50 pages.

Packer defines godliness as, "responding to God's revelation in trust and obedience, faith and worship, prayer and praise, submission and service and must be seen and lived in the light of God's word. This, and nothing else is true religion."

Take special note of the words responding and revelation. There is an action that takes place in the heart of the godly person when that person is confronted with a revelation of God. Do not let these words pass you by. When something is revealed to you, you see it and experience it. I think of the Wizard of Oz when the crew finally gets to the wizard and his identity is revealed. When you have a revelation of something you see it's essence, the truth of it. You have knowledge if the thing being revealed.

In our quote above it is revelation of God that leads to all these areas of response. So our religious activity is a response to revelation of God and not some contrived way to gain acceptance from God or from men. No one is impressed by that.

There is much to say about the next series of quotes, but instead of giving you my thoughts on them, I will simply list some of them and ask you to let them sit with you like you sit before a good steak and smell the aroma and hear the sizzle and feel the warmth, then cut off a piece and chew it slowly and taste it deeply.

"What makes life worthwhile is having a big enough objective, something which catches our imagination and lays hold of our allegiance; and this the Christian has in a way that no other person has. For what higher, and more exalted, and more compelling goal can there be than to know God?" "...knowing God is a relationship calculated to thrill a person's heart." "You can have all of the right notions in your head without having ever tasting in your heart the realities to which they refer...without this, your relationship can only be superficial and flavorless."

The last thing I want to mention is a beautiful thought about the gospel. Packer writes, "There is, certainly, great cause for humility in the thought that he sees all the twisted things about me than my fellow humans do not see and he sees more corruption in me than that which I can see in myself. There is however, equally great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that, for some unfathomable reason, he wants me as his friend, and desires to be my friend, and has given his son to die for me in order to realize this purpose.

That is one of the greatest proclamations of the Gospel that I have heard. Taste and see that the Lord is good!