"The most experienced psychologist or observer of human nature knows infinitely less of the human heart than the simplest Christian who lives beneath the Cross of Jesus. The greatest psychological insight, ability, and experience cannot grasp this one thing: what sin is. Worldly wisdom knows what distress and weakness and failure are, but it does not know the godlessness of man. And so it also does not know that man is destroyed only by his sin and can be healed only by forgiveness. Only the Christian knows this. In the presence of a psychiatrist I can only be a sick man; in the presence of a Christian brother I can dare to be a sinner. The psychiatrist must first search my heart and yet he never plumbs its ultimate depth. The Christian brother knows when I come to him: here is a sinner like myself, a godless man who wants to confess and yearns for God’s forgiveness. The psychiatrist views me as if there were no God. The brother views me as I am before the judging and merciful God in the Cross of Jesus Christ."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
One of the wisest men I have ever read.
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
The wisdom of Jim Elliott
Jim Elliott writes (concerning his own writing)
"Most of it is heart cry from a little child to a Father I have struggled to get know. It is a book of remembrance to enable me to ask definitely by forcing myself to put my yearnings into words. This I have failed miserably to do, but I don't apologize now. All I have asked has not been given; the Fathers withholding has served only to intensify my desires. He knows that the hungrier one is, the more appreciative he becomes of food, and if I have gotten nothing else from this years experience He has given me a hunger for Himself I never experienced before. He only promises water to the thirsty, satiation to the unsatisfied (I do not say dissatisfied) filling to those famished for righteousness. So he has, by His concealing of Himself, given me longings that can only be slaked with Psalm 17:15 is realized. We shall behold him face to face, and He will tell us of His love in those looks as we have never known it here. Thine eyes shall see the king in his beauty a, they shall behold the land that is very far off."
As I ponder his writings, I see that the frustration and the struggle and the unmet desires of the previous year are perhaps His intention to give me greater hunger for Himself and loosen my attachment my life here. To show to me the inevitable "unsatisfaction" in anything other than Himself. My temptation is to slip into dissatisfaction, a very different thing as he mentioned, which leads to indifference and bitterness and busyness. Instead may I let the longings grow, knowing that they will one day be filled. Not the day that I have the right job or the right country or the right ministry or the right husband or sons and daughters, but the day where I see Him face to face. And til that I day, rather than dragging in discontentment and muting it with lots of busyness, may I dare to delight in the joy that dwelling in Christ brings and say with Paul, I have learned to be content.
"Most of it is heart cry from a little child to a Father I have struggled to get know. It is a book of remembrance to enable me to ask definitely by forcing myself to put my yearnings into words. This I have failed miserably to do, but I don't apologize now. All I have asked has not been given; the Fathers withholding has served only to intensify my desires. He knows that the hungrier one is, the more appreciative he becomes of food, and if I have gotten nothing else from this years experience He has given me a hunger for Himself I never experienced before. He only promises water to the thirsty, satiation to the unsatisfied (I do not say dissatisfied) filling to those famished for righteousness. So he has, by His concealing of Himself, given me longings that can only be slaked with Psalm 17:15 is realized. We shall behold him face to face, and He will tell us of His love in those looks as we have never known it here. Thine eyes shall see the king in his beauty a, they shall behold the land that is very far off."
As I ponder his writings, I see that the frustration and the struggle and the unmet desires of the previous year are perhaps His intention to give me greater hunger for Himself and loosen my attachment my life here. To show to me the inevitable "unsatisfaction" in anything other than Himself. My temptation is to slip into dissatisfaction, a very different thing as he mentioned, which leads to indifference and bitterness and busyness. Instead may I let the longings grow, knowing that they will one day be filled. Not the day that I have the right job or the right country or the right ministry or the right husband or sons and daughters, but the day where I see Him face to face. And til that I day, rather than dragging in discontentment and muting it with lots of busyness, may I dare to delight in the joy that dwelling in Christ brings and say with Paul, I have learned to be content.
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