The life of true holiness is rooted in the soil of awed adoration.
HT: @TGC
Category Archives: J. I. Packer
The Sculpture Which Is Your Life
God uses chronic pain and weakness, along with other afflictions, as his chisel for sculpting our lives.
HT: Challies.com
People Who Live Close to God
People who live close to God are more God-conscious than self conscious, and if you call them godly to their face they are likely to smile, shake their heads, and say how they wish it was true. What they know about themselves has more to do with their weaknesses and sins than with any real or fancied spiritual attainments, and they are reluctant to talk about themselves save as tools in Gods hands, servants whose story only merits notice because it is part of the greater story of how God has exalted himself in this world that denies him honor.
J. I. Packer, A Passion for Faithfulness (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1995), 44.
Imprecatory Prayers
Difficulty is felt today with biblical prayers that God will take vengeance, partly because of their Oriental exuberance of expression, which to us sounds like bloodthirstiness and gloating (imagining detail about anyone’s evil prospects is culturally unacceptable to Westerners), but mainly because the pure zeal for God’s glory that these prayers express is foreign to our spiritually sluggish hearts.
J. I. Packer, A Passion for Faithfulness (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1995), 101.
Laboring To Learn and To Teach
The ministry of the word is a cooperative activity, in which the laity are to labor to learn just as hard as the minister labors to teach.
HT: @MarkDever
Christian Discernment
Though… discernment may have a basis in natural shrewdness, it comes to fruition only through a sustained attunement to God and a habit of asking himself at every point in life what makes for His glory (that is, His own self-expression and His creatures’ appreciation and adoration of Him).
J. I. Packer, A Passion for Faithfulness (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1995), 134.
Stop Arguing and Start Worshipping
When we reach the outer limit of what Scripture says, it is time to stop arguing and start worshipping.
HT: Challies.com
Repentance Is…
Repentance is a change of mind issuing in a change of life. Since practical atheism, which disregards God, is natural to fallen human beings, godliness has to be founded on repentance from the start. Repentance means a right-face turn and a quick-march in the direction opposite to that in which we were going before. The original direction was the path of self-service, in the sense of treating yourself as God, the supreme value, and gratifying yourself accordingly. The new direction is a matter of saying good-bye to all that and embracing the service of God instead.
J. I. Packer, A Passion for Faithfulness (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1995), 58.
Loving Jesus Means Loving His Church Too
All who love Jesus Christ the Lord ought to care deeply about the church, just because the church is the object of Jesus’ own love. Church-centeredness is thus one way in which Christ-centeredness ought to find expression.
J. I. Packer, A Passion for Faithfulness (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1995), xi.
What It Means To Be Humble
Being humble is not a matter of pretending to be worthless, but is a form of realism, not only regarding the real badness of one’s sins and stupidities and the real depth of one’s dependence on God’s grace, but also regarding the real range of one’s abilities. Humble believers know what they can and cannot do. They note both their gifts and their limitations, and so are able to avoid both the unfaithfulness of letting their God-given powers lie fallow and the foolhardiness of biting off more than they can chew.
J. I. Packer, A Passion for Faithfulness (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1995), 48.
Life Is Worship 