Most of us find it difficult to grasp the concept of a loving fatherly God because of the failings of our earthly fathers and mothers (they don't know how to love or they're just not there) and the emotional hurts and wounds that result from that.
Some examples from the book: A guy called Steve opens up on the happiest day of his life - the day his parents died in a car accident when he was 11, because every day before that, his parents had told him that they hated him and didn't want him. Another John Smith evangelised to a hardened, streetwise teenager who gave him one chance to talk about God. "Okay, mate," he said, "what is God like?" John blurted out, "He is like a father." The young man said, " If he's anything like my old man, you can have Him!" Later John found out that the youth's father had raped his sister repeatedly and beaten his mother regularly.
Only 100 pages long, the book packs a solid punch when it comes to dealing with how God heals our emotional wounds. It also talks about what it takes to be a father and mother in the Lord for others, and how to do our part in restoring broken relationships, through the Holy Spirit. There are also many testimonies of the healing power of God that comes from His love and grace, and the humility in confessing that we need His healing touch.
I benefited a lot from the book because it details a 7-step process on how God heals our emotional wounds. I realise I always stumble at the first step because the first step requires acknowledging my need for healing, and most of the times, my pride gets in the way. Also this book made me cry sometimes and weep other times. I'm reading through the book again slowly because I want God to reveal to me the areas of my life in which I still need healing, and for Him to begin His restoration work in me.
McClung is the senior pastor of Metro Christian Fellowship in Kansas City, and has served the Lord on three continents.
Book: Desiring God - Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (John Piper)
Piper brings across the message that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him, and he presents a very strong case (substantiated heavily by biblical references) that we should all be Christian hedonists. His views are strongly modelled on those of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), who wrote The Freedom of the Will and who was a staunch defender of Calvinist theology. Piper is the pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, and a graduate of Wheaton College and Fuller Theological Seminary.
Among the points he brings up:
- The happiness of God in God is the foundation of our happiness in God.
- Repentance and faith are our work. But we will not repent and believe unless God does His work to overcome our hard and rebellious hearts. This divine work is called regeneration, and our work is called conversion.
- The fuel of worship is a true vision of the greatness of God; the fire that makes the fuel burn white hot is the quickening of the Holy Spirit; the furnace made warm and alive by the flame of truth is our renewed spirit; and the resulting heat of our affections is powerful worship, pushing its way out in confessions, longings, acclamations, tears, songs, shouts, bowed heads, lifted hands and obedient lives.
- Love is the overflow of joy in God! It is not duty for duty's sake, or right for right's sake. It is not a resolute abandoning of one's own good with a view solely to the good of the other person. It is firstly a deeply satisfying experience of the fullness of God's grace, and then a doubly satisfying experience of sharing that grace with another person.
- Let us labour to memorise the Word of God - for worship and for warfare. If we do not carry it in our heads, we cannot savour it in our hearts or wield it in the Spirit. If we go out without the kindling of Christian hedonism, the fire of Christian happiness will be quenched before mid-morning.
- If the pump of love runs dry, it is because the pipe of prayer isn't deep enough.
- There are three levels on how to live with things: One can steal to get; or one can work to get; or one can work in order to give. Too many professing Christians live on level two. But the Bible pushes us relentlessly towards level three. Why does God bless us with abundance? So we can have enough to live on and then use the rest for all manner of good works that alleviate spiritual and physical misery. Enough for us; abundance for others.
- The reason there is so much misery in marriage is not that husbands and wives seek their own pleasure, but that they do not seek it in the pleasure of their spouses. The biblical mandate to husbands and wives is to seek your own joy in the joy of your spouse.
- Missions is the automatic outflow and overflow of love for Christ. We delight to enlarge our joy in Him by extending it to others.
- All suffering, of every kind, that we endure in the path of our Christian calling is a suffering "with Christ" and "for Christ". With Him in the sense that the suffering comes to us as we are walking with Him by faith, and in the sense that it is endured in the strength that he supplies through his sympathising high-priestly ministry. For Him in the sense that the suffering tests and proves our allegiance to His goodness and power, and in the sense that it reveals His worth as an all-sufficient compensation and grace.
The blue-coloured words incidentally form the chapters of his book. Piper offers a lot of biblical references which, in turn, make for a superb resource on the above themes. I usually don't like to underline sentences in books, but I did for this book. It has very rich content. *smile*
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