Quotes to Ponder

[Uncle Buck]

"I am more afraid of the profanity of the sanctuary than I am of the profanity of the street."

     –Dr. G. Campbell Morgan 

[Uncle Buck]

What is the filling of the Holy Spirit?

In order for the Holy Spirit to teach us, guide us, and give assurance, we must walk by means of the Spirit; that is, be
filled with the Spirit (Galatians 5:16).

Walking by the Spirit means to be in fellowship with God. In other words, our relationship with God is not to be hindered by sin.

a.  We are not to grieve the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 4:30) by having sin in our lives.
b.  We need to have all sins confessed (1 John 1:9).
c.  We are not to quench the Holy Spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:19). Literally, this means that we are not to resist His leading.

When we are thus in fellowship, God can then accomplish His purpose in our lives.

We are baptized into Christ once (1 Corinthians 12:13) but may be filled many, many times.

Dr. McGee stated that to be filled with the Spirit  "is not an excessvie emotionalism, but that which furnishes the dynamic for living and for accomplishing something for God. When we are filled by the Holy Spirit, it means that we are controlled by the Holy Spirit." Ephesians 5:18 tells us to be filled with the Spirit; Romans 8:14 and Galatians 5:18 talk about being led of
the Spirit; Galatians 5:16 and 25 talk about walking in the Spirit. These are different ways of saying the same thing: a
Christian needs to live in close fellowship with God through His Word and prayer so that He can direct our thoughts, words, and actions.

For more information on this subject, see Dr. McGee's book Through His Spirit: The Person and Unique Work of the Holy Spirit.

[Uncle Buck]

"An Atheist Looking for God is like a thief looking for a policeman"

Wyatt Allen

[Uncle Buck]

“When a man prays for a corn crop, God expects him to say Amen with a hoe.”
     Bishop Mooson

[Uncle Buck]

“The science to which I pinned my faith has failed, and you are beholding an atheist who has lost his faith.”
     –George Bernard Shaw

[Oscar]

“The science to which I pinned my faith has failed, and you are beholding an atheist who has lost his faith.”
     –George Bernard Shaw

Interesting note: After debating the great apologist, G. K. Chesterton, for several decades....Shaw called for a priest and requested baptism into the Catholic church at the end of his life.

Thomas Maddux

[Margaret]

I had no idea!! (shows my abysmal ignorance of history, I guess). Can you recommend a book or article that references the debate? (I'm hoping to begin a new section of ga.com that is dedicated to apologetics to help former Assembly people who are struggling with faith.)

[Oscar]

I had no idea!! (shows my abysmal ignorance of history, I guess). Can you recommend a book or article that references the debate? (I'm hoping to begin a new section of ga.com that is dedicated to apologetics to help former Assembly people who are struggling with faith.)

Margaret, I learned about it from a bunch of atheists at work back in the 70's.  They were complaining about Shaw "losing his nerve".  Later, I read about it in a biography of
G. K. Chesterton.  He was a truly great apologist in the intellectual climate of 1920's and 1930's England.  I don't know that he had formal, moderated debates with Shaw.  Seems to me that they were friends and ran in the same circles, wrote articles for the same magazines, etc..

Blessings,

Thomas Maddux

[Uncle Buck]

Years ago a lady who prided herself on belonging to the intelligentsia said to me, "I have no use for the Bible, for Christian superstition, and religious dogma. It is enough for me to know that God is love."

"Well," I said, "do you know it?"

"Why of course I do," she said. "We all know that, and that is religion enough for me. I do not need the dogmas of the Bible."

"How did you find out that God is love?" I asked.

"Why," she said, "everybody knows that."

"Do they know it yonder in India?" I asked. "That poor mother in her distress throwing her little babe into the holy Ganges to be eaten by filthy and repulsive crocodiles for her sins–does she know that God is love?"

"Oh well, she is ignorant and superstitious," she replied.

"Those poor wretched negroes in the jungles of Africa, bowing down to gods of wood and stone, and in constant fear of their fetishes, the poor heathen in other countries, do they know that God is love?"

"Perhaps not," she said, "but in a civilized land we all know it."

"But how is it that we know it? Who told us so? Where did we find it out?"

"I do not understand what you mean," she said, "for I’ve always known it."

"Let me tell you this," I answered, "no one in the world ever knew it until it was revealed from heaven and recorded in the Word of God. It is here and nowhere else. It is not found in all the literature of the ancients."

     –From The Epistles of John by Dr. H. A. Ironside

[Uncle Buck]

“I wanted to be that man, but it is still true that the world has yet to see what God can do with the man who is fully yielded to Him.”
     –D.L. Moody

[Uncle Buck]

I am still determined to be cheerful and happy, in whatever situation I may be; for I have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances.

Martha Washington

[outdeep]

From http://www.theologica.blogspot.com/


Commenting on the phrase "What more can you say than to you he has said" in the hymn "How Firm A Foundation".  The quotes if from an upcoming book Suffering and the Sovereignty of God that John Piper and others are editing.  This is from the chapter by David Powlison.

-Dave


“What more can he say than to you he has said?" Let that rattle around a minute. I don’t know how you read Scripture. But there is a way to read Scripture that leaves you wishing God had said a whole lot more. How did Satan become evil? Why does Chronicles add zeros to the numbers in Samuel and Kings? How did Jonah avoid asphyxiation? Who wrote the book of Hebrews? And those aren’t even the questions that most often divide and perplex the church. Wouldn’t it have been great if the Lord had slipped in one killer verse that pinned down the eschatological timetable? That resolved once and for all every question about baptism? That specifically told us how to organize church leadership and government? That told us exactly what sort of music to use in worship? That explained how God’s absolute sovereignty neatly dovetails with full human responsibility? Only one more verse! And think what he could have told us with an extra paragraph or chapter! If only the Lord had shortened the genealogies, omitted mention of a few villages in the land distribution, and condensed the spec sheet for the temple’s dimensions, dishware, décor, and duties. Our Bible would be exactly the same length—even shorter—but a hundred of our questions could have been anticipated and definitively answered. Somehow, God in his providence didn’t choose to do that.

It comes down to what you are looking for as you read and listen. When you get to what most matters, to life-and-death issues, what more can he say than to you he has said? Betrayal by someone you trusted? Aggressive, incurable cancer? Your most persistent sin? A disfiguring disability? The meaning and purpose of your life? Good and evil? Love and hate? Truth and lie? Hope in the face of death? Mercy in the face of sin? Justice in the face of unfairness? The character of God? The dynamics of the human heart? What more can he say than to you he has said? Listen well. There is nothing more that he needed to say.

[Uncle Buck]

"Your first 40 years you have the face God gave you...the next 40 years you wear the face you gave yourself"

Author Unknown

[Uncle Buck]

THE HOUND OF HEAVEN

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
   Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
            Up vistaed hopes I sped;
            And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
           But with unhurrying chase,
           And unperturbéd pace,
       Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
           They beat–and a Voice beat
           More instant than the Feet–
       "All things betray thee, who betrayest Me."

   I pleaded, outlaw-wise,
By many a hearted casement, curtained red,
    Trellised with intertwining charities;
(For, though I knew His love Who followèd,
            Yet was I sore adread
Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside.)
But, if one little casement parted wide,
    The gust of His approach would clash it to:
    Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue.
Across the margent of the world I fled,
    And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,
    Smiting for shelter on their clangèd bars:
            Fretted to dulcet jars
And silvern chatter the pale ports o' the moon.
I said to Dawn: Be sudden–to Eve: Be soon;
    With thy young skiey blossoms heap me over
            From this tremendous Lover–
Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see!
   I tempted all His servitors, but to find
My own betrayal in their constancy,
In faith to Him their fickleness to me,
    Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit.
To all swift things for swiftness did I sue;
    Clung to the whistling mane of every wind.
          But whether they swept, smoothly fleet,
        The long savannahs of the blue;
            Or whether, Thunder-driven,
          They clanged his chariot 'thwart a heaven,
Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o' their feet:–
    Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.
            Still with unhurrying chase,
            And unperturbéd pace,
        Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
            Came on the following Feet,
            And a Voice above their beat–
        "Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me."

CONTINUED

[Uncle Buck]

CONTINUED

I sought no more that after which I strayed
            In face of man or maid;
But still within the little children's eyes
            Seems something, something that replies,
They at least are for me, surely for me!
I turned me to them very wistfully;
But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair
            With dawning answers there,
Their angel plucked them from me by the hair.
"Come then, ye other children, Nature's–share
With me" (said I) "your delicate fellowship;
            Let me greet you lip to lip,
            Let me twine you with caresses,
                Wantoning
            With our Lady-Mother's vagrant tresses,
                Banqueting
            With her in her wind-walled palace,
            Underneath her azured dais,
            Quaffing, as your taintless way is,
                From a chalice
Lucent-weeping out of the dayspring."
                So it was done:
I in their delicate fellowship was one–
Drew the bolt of Nature's secrecies.
            I knew all the swift importings
            On the wilful face of skies;
            I knew how the clouds arise
            Spuméd of the wild sea-snortings;
                All that's born or dies
            Rose and drooped with; made them shapers
Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine;
            With them joyed and was bereaven.
            I was heavy with the even,
            When she lit her glimmering tapers
            Round the day's dead sanctities.
            I laughed in the morning's eyes.
I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,
            Heaven and I wept together,
And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine;
Against the red throb of its sunset-heart
            I laid my own to beat,
            And share commingling heat;
But not by that, by that, was eased my human smart.
In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek.
For ah! we know not what each other says,
            These things and I; in sound I speak–
Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.
Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth;
            Let her, if she would owe me,
Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me
            The breasts o' her tenderness:
Never did any milk of hers once bless
                My thirsting mouth.
                Nigh and nigh draws the chase,
                With unperturbèd pace,
            Deliberate speed, majestic instancy;
                And past those noised Feet
                A voice comes yet more fleet–
            "Lo! naught contents thee, who content'st not Me."

CONTINUED