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“Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshippers meeting together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be were they to become ‘unity’ conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship. Social religion is perfected when private religion is purified. The body becomes stronger as its members become healthier. The whole church of God gains when the members that compose it begin to seek a better and a higher life.”
… A. W. Tozer (1897-1963), The Pursuit of God [1948], Christian Publications, 1982, p. 90

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May this be so for us at Blackhawk Ministries, dear Father.

“Earnestness is good and impressive: genius is gifted and great. Thought kindles and inspires, but it takes a diviner endowment, and more powerful energy than earnestness or genius or thought to break the chains of sin, to win estranged and depraved hearts to God, to repair the breaches and restore the Church to her old ways of purity and power. Nothing but this holy unction [the anointing of the Holy Spirit] can do this.”
… E. M. Bounds (1835-1913), Preacher and Prayer, Publishing House of the M. E. Church, South, Dallas, Tex., 1907, p. 93-94

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“If you wanted a label for us, would you find a better than a Sadducean Age? We also are not worrying about immortality, hardly believe in it, or at least are not sure; we, too, have limited ourselves to this dust-speck of time, leaving unclaimed the vast inheritance beyond of which Christ told us; we, too, are putting all our zeal and passion and enthusiasm into things of this earth here, quite sure that that is the only road to progress, and that this everlasting chatter about the soul is quite beside the point. And they are all so earnest and so certain, work so hard, are animated often by such lofty motives, are so sure that there is really no manner of need for Christ; that given this, and this, and this, each of them pushing forward his particular panacea—the world will manage very well; that to talk about Christ, and changing people’s hearts, and making us new creatures, is merely to lose precious time and wander from the practical into vague day-dreaming of which nothing comes. And year by year their voices grow a little harder, and they eye Christ more and more askance, feel sourly that He is a bit of a nuisance and a stumbling-block to progress, keeping people quiet who should not be quiet, lulling them with these dim, immaterial, fantastic, spiritual hopes of His which they think have no body, and can not have. Once more the whisper grows, “Were He not far better away?” Meantime we can ignore Him, they say; and they do.”
… A. J. Gossip (1873-1954), The Galilean Accent, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1926, p. 129

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Helpful thoughts on the Book of Job from one of my Wheaton professors.

For Amanda, Mitchell, Jana, Kaitlyn, Joe, Dan, Dave, and Matt:

“Suffering is sometimes a mystery. We must affirm both the mystery and God. The paradox remained, but now at least, Job knew that it belonged there—that it is built into the moral and physical orders, and into the very nature of God as He has permitted us humans to perceive Him. In a world where the universal principle is cause-effect, the book of Job reminds us that the principle is a reflection of the mysterious, self-revealing God. It is subsumed under Him, however, and He cannot be subsumed under it. The God-speeches remind us that a Person, not a principle, is Lord.”

… C. Hassell Bullock (b. 1939), Introduction to the Old Testament Poetic Books, Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1979, p. 108-109

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In the middle of our home renovation…

This quote seems exquisitely appropriate:

“We should be very sure that the ruined soul is not one who has missed a few more or less important theological points and will flunk a theological examination at the end of life. Hell is not an “oops!” or a slip. One does not miss heaven by a hair, but by constant effort to avoid and escape God. “Outer darkness” is for one who, everything said, wants it, whose entire orientation has slowly and firmly set itself against God and therefore against how the universe actually is. It is for those who are disastrously in error about their own life and their place before God and man. The ruined soul must be willing to hear of and recognize its own ruin before it can find how to enter a different path, the path of eternal life that naturally leads into spiritual formation in Christlikeness.”
… Dallas Willard (b. 1935), The Renovation of the Heart, Colorado Springs, Colo.: Navpress, 2002, p. 59

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John Piper on C.S. Lewis this afternoon:

“the most fundamental reason why he has been so influential in my life, and so awakening to my own soul, is that he remained anchored as a Christian in the unfathomable rock-solid objectivity of God and his Truth and his gospel as infinitely Beautiful and infinitely Desirable and, therefore, as the unshakeable ground of unutterable and exalted Joy.”

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From the opening session last night at the 2010 Desiring God Conference for Pastors by Dr. Sam Storms:

“the ultimate purpose of pastoral ministry is identical with the purpose for which God created the universe.” – Sam Storms

to clarify via Jonathan Edwards:

Jonathan Edwards: “Glorifying God is nothing else than rejoicing in God in his glory. But if God made man to rejoice in this, then he made man to be happy.”

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“Men today do not, perhaps, burn the Bible. But men destroy it in the form of exegesis: they destroy it in the way they deal with it. They destroy it by not reading it as written in normal literary form, by ignoring historical-grammatical exegesis, by changing the Bible’s own perspective of itself as propositional revelation in space and time, in history, by saying that only the “spiritual” portions of the Bible have authority for us.”

… Francis A. Schaeffer (1912-1984), Death in the City, London: Inter-Varsity Press, 1969, Good News Publishers, 2002, p. 77-78

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For Austin, Anna, Amy, Jon, and Trent…

“When our lives are focused on God, awe and wonder lead us to worship Him, filling our inner being with a fullness we would never have thought possible…
Awe prepares the way in us for the power of God… to transform us and this transformation of our inner attitudes can only take place when awe leads us in turn to wonder, admiration, reverence, surrender, and obedience toward God.”
… James Houston (b. 1922), The Transforming Power of Prayer, Colorado Springs, Colo.: NavPress, 1996, p. 221-222

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With profound thanks to my dear friends from the Class of 2008. You have indeed rekindled His light within us….

“Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by
another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks
to those who have rekindled this light.”

~ Albert Schweitzer

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