I've been told by my agent that I need to do more short posts in order to mix things up and keep my readers guessing, so that's what I've decided to do. (Read here for an embarrassingly similar statement from one of the many unintelligent (English) footballers plying their trade today.)
Anyway, in reading 'The Divine Conspiracy' by Dallas Willard (every time I hear that name I imagine someone not unlike this man), I came across this quote he used from Adam Clarke. Clarke wrote many years ago that God is
the eternal, independent, and self-existent Being; the Being whose purposes and actions spring from Himself, without foreign motive or influence; He who is absolute in dominion; the most pure, the most simple, the most spiritual of all essences; infinitely perfect; and eternally self-sufficient, needing nothing that He has made; illimitable in His immensity, inconceivable in His mode of existence, and indescribable in His essence; known fully only by Himself, because an infinite mind can only be fully comprehended by itself. In a word, a Being who, from His infinite wisdom, cannot err or be deceived, and from His infinite goodness, can do nothing but what is eternally just and right and kind.
This got me thinking about how small and unpowerful the God I've created for myself really is in comparison to the God of the Bible;* the God Clarke attempts to describe here. Do I truly believe that God can part seas, calm storms, command things to be just my His word, heal the sick, and do all manner of supernatural things here on the earth, His footstool? Do you?
We would do well to meditate more on who God is and what He is about, as told to us in His Word. Because when the storms of life come, we would be much quicker to put our faith and trust in the God the Bible (and Clarke) describes, than we would if we only have faith in a God who forgives us our sins or removes our guilt, but does little else here and now**.
Anyway, in reading 'The Divine Conspiracy' by Dallas Willard (every time I hear that name I imagine someone not unlike this man), I came across this quote he used from Adam Clarke. Clarke wrote many years ago that God is
the eternal, independent, and self-existent Being; the Being whose purposes and actions spring from Himself, without foreign motive or influence; He who is absolute in dominion; the most pure, the most simple, the most spiritual of all essences; infinitely perfect; and eternally self-sufficient, needing nothing that He has made; illimitable in His immensity, inconceivable in His mode of existence, and indescribable in His essence; known fully only by Himself, because an infinite mind can only be fully comprehended by itself. In a word, a Being who, from His infinite wisdom, cannot err or be deceived, and from His infinite goodness, can do nothing but what is eternally just and right and kind.
This got me thinking about how small and unpowerful the God I've created for myself really is in comparison to the God of the Bible;* the God Clarke attempts to describe here. Do I truly believe that God can part seas, calm storms, command things to be just my His word, heal the sick, and do all manner of supernatural things here on the earth, His footstool? Do you?
We would do well to meditate more on who God is and what He is about, as told to us in His Word. Because when the storms of life come, we would be much quicker to put our faith and trust in the God the Bible (and Clarke) describes, than we would if we only have faith in a God who forgives us our sins or removes our guilt, but does little else here and now**.
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* those semi-colons really are quite infectious, even if they aren't punctuationally correct (by the way, is 'punctuationally' a word, or am I spellingly challenged?)
** this is not me belittling forgiveness, just for the record.
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