J.i Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to J.i. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Your faith will not fail while God sustains it; you are not strong enough to fall away while God is resolved to hold you.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
Wait on the Lord" is a constant refrain in the Psalms, and it is a necessary word, for God often keeps us waiting. He is not in such a hurry as we are, and it is not his way to give more light on the future than we need for action in the present, or to guide us more than one step at a time. When in doubt, do nothing, but continue to wait on God. When action is needed, light will come.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
Once you become aware that the main business that you are here for is to know God, most of life's problems fall into place of their own accord.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
The Puritan ethic of marriage was first to look not for a partner whom you do love passionately at this moment but rather for one whom you can love steadily as your best friend for life, then to proceed with God’s help to do just that.
J.I. Packer (Worldly Saints: The Puritans As They Really Were)
There is nothing more irreligious than self-absorbed religion.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
[T.J.] I kissed her as soon as we were inside her apartment, and I wasn’t gentle about it, holding her face firmly in my hands and pressing my lips hard against hers. She wasn’t anyone’s to own – I knew that – but right then she was mine.
Tracey Garvis Graves (On the Island (On the Island, #1))
[T.J.] I pulled my arms out from underneath her body and tucked her hair behind her ears. “I love you, Anna.” The surprised look on her face told me she hadn’t seen that coming. “You weren’t supposed to fall in love,” she whispered. “Well, I did,” I said, looking into her eyes. “I’ve been in love with you for months. I’m telling you now because I think you love me too, Anna. You just don’t think you’re supposed to. You’ll tell me when you’re ready. I can wait.” I pulled her mouth down to mine and kissed her and when it ended, I smiled and said, “Happy birthday.
Tracey Garvis Graves (On the Island (On the Island, #1))
I don’t need a happily ever after, J, I just need the ever after part. The adjective can be whatever. Up and down ever after, sometimes rocky ever after, crazy ever after—I don’t give a shit. As long as you stick around, we’ll just do the best we can, day after day.
Mary Calmes (A Matter of Time, Vol. 2 (A Matter of Time, #3-4))
I never wanted anyone else, T.J. I just wanted what was best for you." "You are what's best for me," he said, cradling my head in his arms, his legs intertwined with mine. "I'm not going anywhere, Anna. This is right where I want to be.
Tracey Garvis Graves (On the Island (On the Island, #1))
I need not torment myself with the fear that my faith may fail; as grace led me to faith in the first place, so grace will keep me believing to the end. Faith, both in its origin and continuance, is a gift of grace (Phil 1:29).
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
God uses chronic pain and weakness, along with other afflictions, as his chisel for sculpting our lives. Felt weakness deepens dependence on Christ for strength each day. The weaker we feel, the harder we lean. And the harder we lean, the stronger we grow spiritually, even while our bodies waste away. To live with your ‘thorn’ uncomplainingly — that is, sweet, patient, and free in heart to love and help others, even though every day you feel weak — is true sanctification. It is true healing for the spirit. It is a supreme victory of grace.
J.I. Packer (God's Plans for You)
The healthy Christian is not necessarily the extrovert, ebullient Christian, but the Christian who has a sense of God's presence stamped deep on his soul, who trembles at God's word, who lets it dwell in him richly by constant meditation upon it, and who tests and reforms his life daily in response to it.
J.I. Packer
Trying to describe what I do in prayer would be like telling the world how I make love to my wife.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
Whatever else in the Bible catches your eye, do not let it distract you from Him.
J.I. Packer (18 Words: The Most Important Words You Will Ever Know)
How can we turn our knowledge about God into knowledge of God? The rule for doing this is simple but demanding. It is that we turn each Truth that we learn about God into matter for meditation before God, leading to prayer and praise to God.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
In the New Testament, grace means God's love in action toward people who merited the opposite of love. Grace means God moving heaven and earth to save sinners who could not lift a finger to save themselves. Grace means God sending his only Son to the cross to descend into hell so that we guilty ones might be reconciled to God and received into heaven.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
Confidence that one's impressions are God-given is no guarantee that this is really so, even when they persist and grow stronger through long seasons of prayer. Bible-based wisdom must judge them.
J.I. Packer
Read two old books for every new one.
J.I. Packer
Thank you, Mr.Lewis, for being you. I wouldn't have missed you for the world.
J.I. Packer
There is no peace like the peace of those whose minds are possessed with full assurance that they have known God, and God has known them, and that this relationship guarantees God’s favor to them in life, through death and on for ever.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
Live each day as if thy last” is a wise word from a hymn written in 1674 by Thomas Ken. The older we get, the more needful its wisdom becomes, and if we have not already taken it to heart, we should do so now.
J.I. Packer (Finishing Our Course with Joy: Guidance from God for Engaging with Our Aging)
All my knowledge of him depends on his sustained initiative in knowing me.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
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, more exalted, and more compelling goal can there be than to know God?
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
He that has learned to feel his sins, and to trust Christ as a Saviour, has learned the two hardest and greatest lessons in Christianity.
J.I. Packer (Faithfulness and Holiness: The Witness of J.C. Ryle)
The Life of true holiness is rooted in the soil of awed adoration
J.I. Packer
The purpose of the church is to make the invisible kingdom visible through faithful Christian living and witness-bearing – J.I. Packer
J.I. Packer
Guidance, like all God's acts of blessing under the covenant of grace, is a sovereign act. Not merely does God will to guide us in the sense of showing us his way, that we may tread it; he wills also to guide us in the more fundamental sense of ensuring that, whatever happens, whatever mistakes we may make, we shall come safely home. Slippings and strayings there will be, no doubt, but the everlasting arms are beneath us; we shall be caught, rescued, restored. This is God's promise; this is how good he is.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
Repentance means turning from as much as you know of your sin to give as much as you know of yourself to as much as you know of your God, and as our knowledge grows at these three points so our practice of repentance has to be enlarged.
J.I. Packer (Keep in Step with the Spirit: Finding Fullness in Our Walk with God)
Optimism hopes for the best without any guarantee of its arriving and is often no more than whistling in the dark. Christian hope, by contrast, is faith looking ahead to the fulfillment of the promises of God, as when the Anglican burial service inters the corpse 'in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ.' Optimism is a wish without warrant; Christian hope is a certainty, guaranteed by God himself. Optimism reflects ignorance as to whether good things will ever actually come. Christian hope expresses knowledge that every day of his life, and every moment beyond it, the believer can say with truth, on the basis of God's own commitment, that the best is yet to come.
J.I. Packer
To be right with God the judge is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the Father is a greater.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
Wisdom is the power to see, and the inclination to choose, the best and highest goal, together with the surest means of attaining it.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
There is tremendous relief in knowing His love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me , so that no discovery can disillusion him about me , in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench his determination to bless me.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
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.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
Historical exegesis is only the preliminary part of interpretation; application is its essence. Exegesis without application should not be called interpretation at all.
J.I. Packer
so we are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
A God whom we could understand exhaustively, and whose revelation of Himself confronted us with no mysteries whatsoever, would be a God in man's image, and therefore an imaginary God, not the God of the Bible at all.
J.I. Packer (Evangelism & the Sovereignty of God)
Real spiritual growth is always growth downward, so to speak, into profounder humility, which in healthy souls will become more and more apparent as they age.
J.I. Packer (Finishing Our Course with Joy: Guidance from God for Engaging with Our Aging)
We must seek, in studying God, to be led to God.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
Creatures are not entitled to register complaints about their Creator.
J.I. Packer (Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God)
Nor is it the spirit of those Christians - alas, they are many - whose ambition in life seems limited to building a nice middle-class Christian home, and making nice middle-class Christian friends, and bringing up their children in nice middle-class Christian ways, and who leave the sub-middle-class sections of the community, Christian and non-Christian, to get on by themselves. The Christmas spirit does not shine out in the Christian snob. For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor - spending and being spent - to enrich their fellowmen, giving time, trouble, care and concern to do good to others - and not just their own friends - in whatever way there seems need.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
This is what the LORD says: ‘Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me”’ (Jer 9:23-24).
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
The Church no more gave us the New Testament canon than Isaac Newton gave us the force of gravity.
J.I. Packer
A little knowledge of God is worth more than a great deal of knowledge about him.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
What we do every time we pray is to confess our impotence and God's sovereignty.
J.I. Packer (Evangelism & the Sovereignty of God)
Only when it is seen that what decides each individual's destiny is whether or not God decides to save him from his sins, and that this is a decision that God need not make in any individual case, can one begin to grasp the biblical view of grace.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
You sum up the whole of New Testament religion if you describe it as the knowledge of God as one’s holy Father. If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all. For everything that Christ taught, everything that makes the New Testament new, and better than the Old, everything that is distinctively Christian as opposed to merely Jewish, is summed up in the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God. ‘Father’ is the Christian name for God. Our understanding of Christianity cannot be better than our grasp of adoption.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
Christian minds have been conformed to the modern spirit: the spirit, that is, that spawns great thoughts of man and leaves room for only small thoughts of God.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
What is less often noticed is that it is precisely the kind of moral instruction that parents are constantly trying to give their children — concrete, imaginative, teaching general principles from particular instances, and seeking all the time to bring the children to appreciate and share the parent's own attitudes and view of life… The all-embracing principles of conduct
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
God was happy without humans before they were made; he would have continued happy had he simply destroyed them after they had sinned; but as it is he has set his love upon particular sinners, and this means that, by his own free voluntary choice, he will not know perfect and unmixed happiness again till he has brought every one of them to heaven. He has in effect resolved that henceforth for all eternity his happiness shall be conditional upon ours.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
Meditation is the activity of calling to mind, and thinking over, and dwelling on, and applying to oneself, the various things that one knows about 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, by the help of God, as a means of communion with God.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
dear J: I feel lucky that I didn’t fuck you the first time we met in Houston, but luckier that I didn’t fuck you the last time we met in San Francisco. this is the answer to your letter even though I don’t know if you’ll ever read it. the words are yours but I’ll get credit for the poem. you see, it could never have worked, the way I am. B.
Charles Bukowski
There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the Divinity. It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
What is the “eternal life” that Jesus gives? Knowledge of God. “This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (Jn 17:3).
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
Aunt J, I've begged for love for seventeen years. Without you, I would never have found it.
Ellen Hopkins (Burned (Burned, #1))
Knowing about God is crucially important for the living of our lives. As it would be cruel to an Amazonian tribesmen to fly him to London, put him down without explanation in Trafalgar Square and leave him, as one who knew nothing of English or England, to fend for himself, so we are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it .The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place, and life in it a disappointing and unpleasant business, for those who do not know about God. Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfold, 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.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
Our aim in studying the Godhead must be to know God himself better. Our concern must be to enlarge our acquaintance, not simply with the doctrine of God’s attributes, but with the living God whose attributes they are.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
This is what all the work of grace aims at—an ever deeper knowledge of God, and an ever closer fellowship with him. Grace is God drawing us sinners closer and closer to himself.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
Wisdom will not go with comforting illusions, false sentiment, or the use of rose-colored glasses.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
I must labor to keep my heart actively responsive to God.
J.I. Packer (Rediscovering Holiness: Know the Fullness of Life with God)
Our proud humanism, so-called, has made the world more like hell than heaven.
J.I. Packer (Rediscovering Holiness: Know the Fullness of Life with God)
When you are not conscious of temptation, pray “lead us not into temptation”; and when you are conscious of it, pray “deliver us from evil”; and you will live.
J.I. Packer (Growing in Christ)
We should not...think of our fellowship with other Christians as a spiritual luxury, an optional addition to the exercises of private devotion. We should recognise rather that such fellowship is a spiritual necessity, for God has made us in such a way that our fellowship with himself is fed by our fellowship with fellow Christians, and requires to be so fed constantly for its own deepening and enrichment.
J.I. Packer
Thus the effect of his gift of wisdom is to make us more humble, more joyful, more godly, more quick-sighted as to his will, more resolute in the doing of it and less troubled (not less sensitive, but less bewildered) than we were at the dark and painful things of which our life in this fallen world is full.... Thus, the kind of wisdom that God waits to give to those who ask him is a wisdom that will bind us to himself, a wisdom that will find expression in a spirit of faith and a life of faithfulness.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
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.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
Do we desire such knowledge of God? Then two things follow. First, we must recognize how much we lack knowledge of God. We must learn to measure ourselves, not by our knowledge about God, not by our gifts and responsibilities in the church, but by how we pray and what goes on in our hearts.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
C. H. Spurgeon was once asked if he could reconcile these two truths to each other. “I wouldn’t try,” he replied; “I never reconcile friends.” Friends?—yes, friends. This is the point that we have to grasp. In the Bible, divine sovereignty and human responsibility are not enemies. They are not uneasy neighbors; they are not in an endless state of cold war with each other. They are friends, and they work together.
J.I. Packer (Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God)
the most pregnant sentence I have ever heard....."God is sovereign in all things, and all problems find their solution at Calvary.
J.I. Packer
Redeeming love and retributive justice joined hands, so to speak, at Calvary, for there God showed himself to be “just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
New Testament writers do not tell me why God chose to save me. They only tell me to be thankful that He did.
J.I. Packer (Rediscovering Holiness: Know the Fullness of Life with God)
anyone who is actually following a recognized road will not be too worried if he hears nontravelers telling each other that no such road exists.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
When in doubt, do nothing, but continue to wait on God. When action is needed, light will come.” —J. I. Packer
Pete Wilson (What Keeps You Up at Night?: How to Find Peace While Chasing Your Dreams)
Oh God T.J., I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking" Nothing like going on about having kids in front of someone whose fertility had been exchanged for survival.
Tracey Garvis Graves
There is no holiness without a Christ-centered, Christ-seeking, Christ-serving, Christ-adoring heart.
J.I. Packer (Rediscovering Holiness)
It has been said that in the New Testament doctrine is grace; and ethics is gratitude; and something is wrong with any form of Christianity in which, experimentally and practically, this saying is not being verified. Those who suppose that the doctrine of God's grace tends to encourage moral laxity are simply showing that, in the most literal sense, they do not know what they are talking about. For love awakens love in return; and love, once awakened, desires to give pleasure.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
I do, however, want you . You’re not the one I’m stuck with because I didn’t get my first choice. If you think you’re in love with two people, you pick the second one, right? Because if I really loved T.J., I couldn’t have fallen in love with you.
Jamie McGuire (Beautiful Oblivion (The Maddox Brothers, #1))
It doesn’t matter,” she explains to Miss J. “I want to be where you are. And I don’t know the way back to wherever I was before, anyway. I don’t even remember it. All I remember is the block, and you. You’re…” Now it’s Melanie’s turn to hesitate. She doesn’t know the words for this. “You’re my bread,” she says at last. “When I’m hungry. I don’t mean that I want to eat you, Miss Justineau! I really don’t! I’d rather die than do that. I just mean… you fill me up the way the bread does to the man in the song. You make me feel like I don’t need anything else.
M.R. Carey (The Girl with All the Gifts (The Girl With All the Gifts, #1))
We may be frankly bewildered at things that happen to us, but God knows exactly what he is doing, and what he is after, in his handling of our affairs. Always, and in everything, he is wise: we shall see that hereafter, even where we never saw it here.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
Today, vast stress is laid on the thought that God is personal, but this truth is so stated as to leave the impression that God is a person of the same sort as we are—weak, inadequate, ineffective, a little pathetic. But this is not the God of the Bible!
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
But the way to tell whether in fact you are evangelizing is not to ask whether conversions are known to have resulted from your witness. It is to ask whether you are faithfully making known the gospel message.
J.I. Packer (Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God)
In the Bible, divine sovereignty and human responsibility are not enemies. They are not uneasy neighbors; they are not in an endless state of cold war with each other. They are friends, and they work together.
J.I. Packer (Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God)
What Is the Motive for Evangelizing? There are, in fact, two motives that should spur us constantly to evangelize. The first is love of God and concern for his glory; the second is love of man and concern for his welfare.
J.I. Packer (Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God)
When we looked at God’s wisdom, we saw something of his mind; when we thought of his power, we saw something of his hand and his arm; when we considered his word, we learned about his mouth; but now, contemplating his love, we are to look into his heart.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
...you can have all the right notions in your head without ever tasting in your heart the realities to which they refer; and a simple Bible reader and sermon hearer who is full of the Holy Spirit will develop a far deeper acquaintance with his God and Saviour than a more learned scholar who is content with being theologically correct. The reason is that the former will deal with God regarding the practical application of truth to his life, whereas the latter will not.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
The Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity—hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory—because at the Father’s will Jesus Christ became poor, and was born in a stable so that thirty years later He might hang on a cross. It is the most wonderful message the world has ever heard, or will hear. …the ‘Christmas spirit’…ought to mean the reproducing in human lives of the temper of Him who for our sakes became poor at the first Christmas. And the Christmas spirit itself ought to be the mark of every Christian all year round. (~Knowing God, pps 55-56)
J.I. Packer
John Wesley at eighty-five wrote in his journal that the only sign of deterioration that he could see in himself was that he could not run as fast as he used to. With all due deference to that wonderful, seemingly tireless little man, we may reasonably suspect that he was overlooking some things at this point, just as some do when they assure us that they never had a day’s illness in their life. We cannot stop our bodies aging, any more than King Canute’s say-so could stop the tide coming in.
J.I. Packer (Finishing Our Course with Joy: Guidance from God for Engaging with Our Aging)
We feel that, for the honour of God (and also, though we do not say this, for the sake of our own reputation as spiritual Christians), it is necessary for us to claim that we are, so to speak, already in the signal-box, here and now enjoying the inside information as to the why and wherefore of God’s doings. This comforting pretence becomes part of us: we feel sure that God has enabled us to understand all His ways with us and our circle thus far, and we take if for granted that we shall be able to see at once the reason for anything that may happen to us in the future. And then something very painful and quite inexplicable comes along, and our cheerful illusion of being in God’s secret councils is shattered. Our pride is wounded; we feel that God has slighted us; and unless at this point we repent, and humble ourselves very thoroughly for our former presumption, our whole subsequent spriritual life may be blighted.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
The preacher should work to convert his congregation; the wife should work to save her unbelieving husband. Christians are sent to convert, and they should not allow themselves, as Christ's representatives in the world, to aim at anything less. Evangelizing, therefore, is not simply a matter of teaching, and instructing, and imparting information to the mind. There is more to it than that. Evangelizing includes the endeavor to elicit a response to the truth taught.
J.I. Packer (Evangelism & the Sovereignty of God)
Those who know that glossolalia is not God’s path for them and those for whom it is a proven enrichment should neither try to impose their own way on others, nor judge others inferior for being different, nor stagger if someone in their camp transfers to the other, believing that God has led him or her to do so. Those who pray with tongues and those who pray without tongues do it to the Lord; they stand or fall to their own master, not their fellow-servants; and in the same sense that there is in Christ neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female, so in Christ there is neither glossolalist nor non-glossolalist.
J.I. Packer (Keep in Step with the Spirit: Finding Fullness in Our Walk with God)
Many have found it hard to see what claim the law can have on the Christian. We are free from the law, they say; our salvation does not depend on law-keeping; we are justified through the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ. How, then, can it matter, or make any difference to anything, whether we keep the law henceforth or not? ....While it is certainly true that justification frees one forever from the need to keep the law, or try to, as the means of earning life, it is equally true that adoption lays on one the abiding obligation to keep the law, as the means of pleasing one's newfound Father....The sins of God's children do not destroy their justification or nullify their adoption, but they mar the children's fellowship with their Father.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
But I’m trying. I’m trying so hard, J. I’m sorry if I mess up sometimes, but—” His body smacked into mine so hard, my spine hit the wall again. Josh hugged me like his life depended on it. He hugged me like he hadn’t since his dad died. The side of his cheek went right along my chest as he held me tight. “You’re better than my real mom, better than Mandy—” “Jesus, Josh. Don’t say stuff like that.” “Why? You always tell me not to lie,” he said into my chest as he hugged me. “I don’t like you crying. Don’t do it anymore.
Mariana Zapata (Wait for It)
Humility is the product of ongoing repentance as one decides against, turns from, and by watching and praying seeks to steer clear of pride in all its forms. And as the battle against pride in the heart is lifelong, so humility should become an ever more deeply seated attitude of living at the disposal of God and others—an attitude that veteran Christians should increasingly display. Real spiritual growth is always growth downward, so to speak, into profounder humility, which in healthy souls will become more and more apparent as they age.
J.I. Packer (Finishing Our Course with Joy: Guidance from God for Engaging with Our Aging)
I can hide my heart, and my past, and my future plans, from those around me, but I cannot hide anything from God. I can talk in a way that deceives my fellow creatures as to what I really am, but nothing I say or do can deceive God. He sees through all my reserve and pretense; he knows me as I really am, better indeed than I know myself. A God whose presence and scrutiny I could evade would be a small and trivial deity. But the true God is great and terrible, just because he is always with me and his eye is always upon me. Living becomes an awesome business when you realize that you spend every moment of your life in the sight and company of an omniscient, omnipresent Creator.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
The results of preaching depend, not on the wishes and intentions of men, but on the will of God Almighty. This consideration does not mean that we should be indifferent as to whether we see fruit from our witness to Christ or not; if fruit is not appearing, we should seek God's face about it to find out why. But this consideration does mean that we ought not to define evangelism in terms of achieved results.
J.I. Packer (Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God)
we must say that knowing God involves, first, listening to God’s Word and receiving it as the Holy Spirit interprets it, in application to oneself; second, noting God’s nature and character, as his Word and works reveal it; third, accepting his invitations and doing what he commands; fourth, recognizing and rejoicing in the love that he has shown in thus approaching you and drawing you into this divine fellowship.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
and ongoing embrace of his incarnate Son as perfectly righteous, to be honored accordingly, embraces us with him, for his sake, by virtue of what he has done for us. This, then, is the divinely devised method of our reconciliation, as Paul sets it forth.     THE MESSENGERS OF RECONCILIATION Paul speaks repeatedly of the messengers of this reconciliation. Observe the following statements: God . . . gave us the ministry of reconciliation . . . entrusting
J.I. Packer (Weakness Is the Way: Life with Christ Our Strength)
People have gotten into the practice of following private religious hunches rather than learning of God from His Word; we have to try to help them unlearn the pride and, in some cases, the misconceptions about Scripture which gave rise to this attitude and to base there convictions henceforth not on what they feel but on what the Bible says…modern people think of all religions as equal and equivalent – they draw their ideas about God from pagan as well as Christian sources; we have to try to show people the uniqueness and finality of the Lord Jesus Christ, God’s last word to man…people have ceased to recognize the reality of their own sinfulness, which imparts a degree of perversity and enmity against God to all that they think and do; it is our task to try to introduce people to this fact about themselves and so make them self-distrustful and open to correction by the Word of Christ…people today are in the habit of disassociating the thought of God’s goodness from that of His severity; we must seek to wean them from this habit, since nothing but misbelief is possible as long as that persists.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
The Christian up to his eyes in trouble can take comfort from the knowledge that in God’s kindly plan it all has a positive purpose, to further his sanctification. In this world, royal children have to undergo extra training and discipline which other children escape, in order to fit them for their high destiny. It is the same with the children of the King of kings. The clue to understanding all his dealings with them is to remember that throughout their lives he is training them for what awaits them, and chiseling them into the image of Christ. Sometimes the chiseling process is painful and the discipline irksome, but then the Scripture reminds us: “The Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son. Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons . . . No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it” (Heb 12:6-7,11). Only the person who has grasped this can make sense of Romans 8:28, “All things work together for good to them that love God” (KJV); equally, only he can maintain his assurance of sonship against satanic assault as things go wrong. But he who has mastered the truth of adoption both retains assurance and receives blessing in the day of trouble: this is one aspect of faith’s victory over the world. Meanwhile, however, the point stands that the Christian’s primary motive for holy living is not negative, the hope (vain!) that hereby he may avoid chastening, but positive, the impulse to show his love and gratitude to his adopting God by identifying himself with the Father’s will for him.
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
To summarize, then, it appears that Christian holiness is a number of things together. It has both outward and inward aspects. Holiness is a matter of both action and motivation, conduct and character, divine grace and human effort, obedience and creativity, submission and initiative, consecration to God and commitment to people, self-discipline and self-giving, righteousness and love. It is a matter of Spirit-led law-keeping, a walk, or course of life, in the Spirit that displays the fruit of the Spirit (Christlikeness of attitude and disposition). It is a matter of seeking to imitate Jesus' way of behaving, through depending on Jesus for deliverance from carnal self-absorption and for discernment of spiritual needs and possibilities.
J.I. Packer (Rediscovering Holiness)
Dear J., I want to explain something. After my dad set me on fire...Well...He died in jail while I was in the hospital getting skin grafts. And I never got to tell him how much he hurt me. Not just physically, but inside, you know? So I took it out on other things for a while. I'm better now. I get counseling for it, and I'm really better. But I'm not perfect. And I'm still fighting it. See... You're like the only person I have in my life that I really care about. I'm selfish about that. I don't want anybody to touch you. I want to keep you safe. That's why I hate this assignment so much. Now that I have you, I'm afraid to see you get hurt or messed up, like I was. I'm afraid I'll lose you, I guess. I wish you could always be safe. I worry a lot. If you weren't so damned independent...Ah, well. *smile* As much as we have been through in the past few months, we still don't know each other very well, do we? I want to change that about us. Do you? I want to know you better. Know what makes you happy and what scares you. And I want you to know that about me, too. I love you. I will try to never hurt you again. I know I'll screw up. But I'll keep trying, as long as you let me. Love, Cabe
Lisa McMann (Fade (Wake, #2))
It is our shame and disgrace today that so many Christians—I will be more specific: so many of the soundest and most orthodox Christians—go through this world in the spirit of the priest and the Levite in our Lord’s parable, seeing human needs all around them, but (after a pious wish, and perhaps a prayer, that God might meet those needs) averting their eyes and passing by on the other side. That is not the Christmas spirit. Nor is it the spirit of those Christians—alas, they are many—whose ambition in life seems limited to building a nice middle-class Christian home, and making nice middle-class Christian friends, and bringing up their children in nice middle-class Christian ways, and who leave the submiddle-class sections of the community, Christian and non-Christian, to get on by themselves. The Christmas spirit does not shine out in the Christian snob, For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor-spending and being spent—to enrich their fellow humans, giving time, trouble, care and concern, to do good to others—and not just their own friends—in whatever way there seems need. There are not as many who show this spirit as there should be. If God in mercy revives us, one of the things he will do will be to work more of this spirit in our hearts and lives. If we desire spiritual quickening for ourselves individually, one step we should take is to seek to cultivate this spirit. “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (2 Cor 8:9). “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus” (Phil 2:5). “I will run the way of thy commandments, when thou shalt enlarge my heart” (Ps 119:32 KJV).
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)