This past Sunday, you may have noticed some books on the shelves of the welcome desk in the foyer. These are resources we would like to highlight to the congregation for a period of time.
The theme for these resources is Live in light of Jesus' return – Enlarge your faith, grow your love. They have been selected to fall into five categories. Categories and titles include; Theology: Knowing God by J.I. Packer. Sanctification: The Discipline of Grace by Jerry Bridges. Christian Biography: Jonathan Edwards by Iain Murray. Church History/Cultural Evaluation: Strange New World by Carl Trueman. The Church: The Compelling Community by Mark Dever and Jamie Dunlop.
The purpose of highlighting these resources is simply to put biblically solid, Christ-exalting, affection-fueling resources in the hands of the members at Summit Woods for their personal growth in the Lord, to equip them to do the work of ministry, and for use in discipleship relationships.
Perhaps you’ve been looking for a new book for yourself to read in your devotional time, or perhaps you’ve been wanting to get together with a brother or sister in the Lord and desire to encourage them in their walk with the Lord – these resources are there to be readily available for you in addition to the books provided in the resource room.
Today's highlight is Knowing God by J. I. Packer.
For half a century, J. I. Packer’s classic has helped Christians around the world discover the wonder, the glory, and the joy of knowing God. Stemming from Packer’s profound theological knowledge, Knowing God brings together two key facets of the Christian faith knowing about God and knowing God through a close relationship with Jesus Christ. Written in an engaging and practical tone, this thought-provoking work seeks to renew and enrich our understanding of God.
- Knowing God back cover
In A Preface to Christian Theology, John Mackay illustrated two kinds of interest in Christian things by picturing persons sitting on the high front balcony of a Spanish house watching travelers go by on the road below. The “balconeers” can overhear the travelers talk and chat with them; they may comment critically on the way that the travelers walk; or they may discuss questions about the road, how it can exist at all or lead anywhere, what might be seen from different points along it, and so forth; but they are onlookers, and their problems are theoretical only. The travelers, by contrast, face problems which, though they have their theoretical angle, are essentially practical-problems of the “which-way-to-go” and “how-to-make-it” type, problems which call not merely for comprehension but for decision and action too.
Balconeers and travelers may think over the same area, yet their problems differ. Thus (for instance) in relation to evil, the balconeer’s problem is to find a theoretical explanation of how evil can consist with God’s sovereignty and goodness, but the traveler’s problem is how to master evil and bring good out of it. Or again, in relation to sin, the balconeer asks whether racial sinfulness and personal perversity are really credible, while the traveler, knowing sin from within, asks what hope there is of deliverance. Or take the problem of the Godhead; while the balconeer is asking how one God can conceivably be three, what sort of unity three could have, and how three who make one can be persons, the traveler wants to know how to show proper honor, love and trust toward the three Persons who are now together at work to bring him out of sin to glory. And so we might go on.
Now this is a book for travelers, and it is with travelers’ questions that it deals.
The conviction behind the book is that ignorance of God--ignorance both of his ways and of the practice of communion with him lies at the root of much of the church's weakness today.
- J. I. Packer, in the 1973 preface to Knowing God