Tuesday cat

The rainy weather makes it so hard to get out of bed.

Did a little bit of writing today - it's been a long time since I've written anything. There are times I wonder if it dries up (like a raisin in the sun?).

Good extracts from J I Packer (Knowing God and A Quest for Godliness):

"Christians are independent folks for they use the word of God as a touchstone by which to test the various views that are put to them and they will not touch anything which they are not sure that Scripture sanctions"

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"Whereas to the Puritans communion with God was a great thing, to evangelicals today it is a comparatively small thing.

The Puritans were concerned about communion with God in a way that we are not.

The measure of our unconcern is the little that we say about it.

When Christians meet, they talk to each other about their Christian work and Christian interests, their Christian acquaintances, the state of the churches, and the problems of theology—but rarely of their daily experience of God.

Modern Christian books and magazines contain much about Christian doctrine, Christian standards, problems of Christian conduct, techniques of Christian service—but little about the inner realities of fellowship with God. Our sermons contain much sound doctrine—but little relating to the converse between the soul and the Saviour.

We do not spend much time, alone or together, in dwelling on the wonder of the fact that God and sinners have communion at all; no, we just take that for granted, and give our minds to other matters.

Thus we make it plain that communion with God is a small thing to us.

But how different were the Puritans! The whole aim of their ‘practical and experimental’ preaching and writing was to explore the reaches of the doctrine and practice of man’s communion with God."