The Pursuit of Holiness: Getting Started

I moved to a new home in Feb­ru­ary and in my pack­ing, came across The Pur­suit of Holi­ness by Jerry Bridges. I KNEW I had it, but had for­got­ten where I put it. When I got into my new space, I placed the book and the accom­pa­ny­ing study guide in a place where I could NOT mis­place it. Now, I’m dig­ging in.

In the pref­ace, Bridges says:

…the pur­suit of holi­ness is a joint ven­ture between God and the Chris­t­ian. No one can attain any degree of holi­ness with­out God work­ing work­ing in his life, but just as surely no one will attain it with­out effort on his own part. God has made it pos­si­ble for us to walk in holi­ness. But He has given to us the respon­si­bil­ity of doing the walk­ing. He does not do that for us.

We can­not say we’re Chris­tians if we take no actions toward con­form­ing to Christ. There are things that WE must do (or not do) in striv­ing to attain holi­ness. Funny thing is, I rarely (if ever) hear Chris­tians talk about being holy, liv­ing holy lives, or pur­su­ing holi­ness. It’s as if once God saved us, we think we can wear HOLY across our chests like a super­hero. I don’t hear much talk about what being holy looks like in every­day life. More often than not, it’s “God knows my heart!” or, “I’m still grow­ing in that area!” But no talk about how to tackle our sin­ful issues and con­quer them by God’s grace. Bridges says there are two rea­sons for this:

1. We don’t want to face up to our respon­si­bil­ity. We pre­fer to pray to God for vic­tory when we know we should be act­ing in obe­di­ence.
2. We do not under­stand the proper dis­tinc­tion between God’s pro­vi­sion and our own respon­si­bil­ity for holi­ness. We strug­gle with what we’re sup­posed to do and what we’re sup­posed to rely on God to do.

When the word pur­sue is used in ref­er­ence to holi­ness, it sug­gests two things: First, that EFFORT and DILIGENCE are required. A pur­suit is not a pur­suit at all with­out EFFORT and a com­mit­ment to see­ing the pur­suit through. Sec­ond, this pur­suit is a task that will last our whole lives. It does not end. We will never attain per­fec­tion in this life, but we have to keep striv­ing for it until we breathe our last breath. We strive to con­form to the will of God in one area of life…and surely he’ll reveal our need for holi­ness in another area. We will ALWAYS be pur­su­ing holiness…that is, if we’re com­mit­ted to fol­low­ing Christ.

And that’s just a part of the pref­ace, ya’ll. LOL

Going on through­out the book, we’ll dis­cover what holi­ness is, what our respon­si­bil­ity is for liv­ing a holy life, why we strug­gle so hard to defeat sin,and what God has pro­vided to help us over come it.

GOOD STUFF! If you don’t have the book, get it. But even if you don’t, I hope you’ll keep read­ing as I go through it.

I’d love to know your thoughts so far..so reg­is­ter and leave a com­ment. I know reg­is­ter­ing is a pain, but it cuts down on spam…and I HATE SPAM!!

The Pur­suit of Holi­ness: Get­ting Started Filed under The Pursuit of Holiness - Jerry Bridges | Comments Off

Knowing God, Chapter One — The Study of God

Cur­rent Mood: Happy

I’ve had this book for YEARS, and I’ve never made it all the way through. That’s not the fault of the author; I just have ADD when it comes to books, espe­cially the­o­log­i­cal ones. I read some of this, some of that and then back to some of this. As I’ll be going back to school this fall, I’m try­ing to dis­ci­pline myself as far as read­ing and Bible study go. So here I am, start­ing this excel­lent book again.

In Chap­ter one, Packer estab­lishes that the study of God is CRUCIAL for every­one:

Know­ing about God is cru­cially impor­tant for the liv­ing of our lives.….we are cruel to our­selves if we try to live in the world with­out know­ing about the God whose world it is and who runs it. Dis­re­gard the study of God and you sen­tence your­self to stum­ble and blun­der through life blind­folded, as it were, with no sense of direc­tion and no under­stand­ing of what sur­rounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose your soul.

He then pro­vides five basic truths that Chris­tians know about God as a guide on our jour­ney of study­ing God:

1. God has spo­ken to man, and the Bible is his Word, given to us to make us wise unto sal­va­tion.

2. God is Lord and King over his world; he rules all things for his own glory, dis­play­ing his per­fec­tions in all that he does, in order that men and angels may wor­ship and adore him.

3. God is Sav­ior, active in sov­er­eign love through the Lord Jesus Christ to res­cue believ­ers from the guilt and power of sin, to adopt them as his chil­dren and to bless them accord­ingly.

4. God is tri­une; there are within the God­head three per­sons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and the work of sal­va­tion is one in which all three act together, the Father pur­pos­ing redemp­tion, the Son secur­ing it, and the Spirit apply­ing it.

5. God­li­ness means respond­ing to God’s rev­e­la­tion in trust and obe­di­ence, faith and wor­ship, prayer and praise, sub­mis­sion and ser­vice. Life must be seen and lived in light of God’s Word. This, and noth­ing else, is true reli­gion.

He then goes on to inform the reader of the themes that this jour­ney will con­sist of:

The God­head of God: the qual­i­ties of deity which set God apart from humans and mark the dif­fer­ence and dis­tance between the Cre­ator and his crea­tures. Such qual­i­ti­ties as his self-self exis­tence, his infin­ity, his eter­nity, his unchange­able­ness.

The pow­ers of God: His almight­i­ness, his omni­science, his omnipres­ence.

The per­fec­tions of God, the aspects of his moral charc­ter which are man­i­fested in his words and deeds — his holi­ness, his love and mercy, his truth­ful­ness, his faith­ful­ness, his good­ness, his patience, his jus­tice. We shall have to take note of what pleases him, what offends him, what awak­ens his wrath, what affords him sat­is­fac­tion and joy.

He then says that we need to stop and ask our­selves a “very fun­da­men­tal” ques­tion before going fur­ther: What is my ulti­mate aim and object in occu­py­ing my mind with these things? What do I intend to do with my knowl­edge about God, once I have it?

The point of the ques­tion is for us to really exam­ine our­selves and think about WHY we’re embark­ing on this study. Is it because we want to gain knowl­edge and look down on other who don’t have such knowl­edge? Or is it because we truly want to know and enjoy God for our­selves, so that we may respond to it and CONFORM our lives to it?

I sat for a few min­utes and really thought about the ques­tion. Hon­esty, yes, I DO want to study to be smarter than other peo­ple. I like being smart. But being smart about God does noth­ing for me per­son­ally, unless I APPLY it to my life and desire to live accord­ing to His word. That’s my ulti­mate goal: To learn all I can about the God who cre­ated me, and in so doing, become the per­son he cre­ated me to be. Any other rea­son is truly a waste of time.

Lastly, Packer talks about med­i­tat­ing on the truth. I know when I think of med­i­tat­ing, I think of yoga, gurus, so-called spir­i­tual enlight­en­ment, and a whole host of other unbib­li­cal things. But that’s not what he means here. He defines med­i­ta­tion as:

.…the activ­ity of call­ing to mind, and think­ing over, and dwelling on, and apply­ing to one­self, the var­i­ous things that one knows abou the works and ways and pur­poses and promises of God. It is an activ­ity of holy thought, con­sciously per­formed in the pres­ence of God, under the eye of God, as a means of com­mu­nion with God. 

Its pur­pose is to clear one’s men­tal and spir­i­tual vision of God, and to let his truth make its full and proper impact on one’s mind and heart. It is a mat­ter of talk­ing to one­self about God and one­self; it is, indeed, often a mat­ter of argu­ing with one­self, rea­son­ing one­self out of moods of doubt and unbe­lief into a clear appre­hen­sion of God’s power and grace.

Its effect is ever to hum­ble us, as we con­tem­plate God’s great­ness and glory and our own lit­tle­ness and sin­ful­ness, and to encour­age and reas­sure us.…as we con­tem­plate the unsearch­able riches of divine mercy dis­played in the Lord Jesus Christ.

THAT kind of med­i­ta­tion I can DO! 

The last sen­tence of the chap­ter says:

God help us, then, to put our knowl­edge about God to this use, that we all may in truth “know the Lord.”

AMEN!

Know­ing God, Chap­ter One  —  The Study of God Filed under Books, Knowing God - J.I. Packer | Comments Off