If you don’t feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Your soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great.
The really wonderful moments of joy in this world are not the moments of self-satisfaction, but self-forgetfulness. Standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon and contemplating your own greatness is pathological. At such moments we are made for a magnificent joy that comes from outside ourselves.
God is not an employer looking for employees. He is an Eagle looking for people who will take refuge under his wings. He is looking for people who will leave father and mother and homeland or anything else that may hold them back from a life of love under the wings of Jesus.
The key to Christian living is a thirst and hunger for God. And one of the main reasons people do not understand or experience the sovereignty of grace and the way it works through the awakening of sovereign joy is that their hunger and thirst for God is so small.
Do you love the cross because it makes much of you? Or do you love it because it enables you to enjoy and eternity of making much of God?
Taken as a whole, the story of Ruth is one of those signs. It was written to give us encouragement and hope that all the perplexing turns in our lives are going somewhere good. They do not lead off a cliff. In all the setbacks of our lives as believers, God is plotting for our joy.
O that we would so love the gospel and have so much compassion for lost people that tribulation and distress and persecution and famine and nakedness and danger and sword and gun and terrorist would turn us not into fearful complainers, but bold heralds of good news.
The Lord is kind. He is good to all who take refuge under his wings.
Racial and ethnic segragtion is a gospel issue! Cephas’ fear and wihdrawal from fellowship across ethnic lines was “not in step with the truth of the gospel.” Christ had died to tear down this wall.
Once upon a time, there was a safe, private place to take your controversial stand for Jesus. No more. If you are going to stand, you will be shot at – either figuratively or literally.
Are you able – theologically, personally, and resource-wise – to be harmoniously, sweetly, and deeply in love with Jesus together in marriage?
A prayerless Christian is like a bus driver trying alone to push his bus out of a rut because he doesn’t know Clark Kent is on board.
Without a spiritual wakefulness to divine purposes and connections in all things, we will not know things for what they truly are.
But we also need stories. Great stories.
The end of the creation is that God may communicate happiness to the creature.