Sunday, August 23, 2015

Knowing God - Ch 2

Knowing God
J.I. Packer
IVP 1993 Americanized Version

Ch 2 – The People Who Know Their God

Pg. 28 “People who know their God are before anything else people who pray, and the first point where their zeal and energy for God’s glory come[s] to expression is in their prayers. In Daniel 9 we read how, when the prophet “understood from the scriptures” (v. 2) that the foretold time of Israel’s captivity was drawing to an end, and when at the same time he realized that the nation’s sin was still such as to provoke God to judgement rather than mercy, he set himself to seek God “in prayer and petition, in fasting, and in sackcloth and ashes” (v. 3) and prayed for the restoring of Jerusalem with a vehemence and passion and agony of spirit to which most of us are complete strangers.

Yet the invariable fruit of true knowledge of God is energy to pray for God’s cause – energy, indeed, which can only find an outlet and a relief of inner tension when channeled into such prayer – and the more knowledge, the more energy! By this we may test ourselves. Perhaps we are not in a position to make public gestures against ungodliness and apostasy. Perhaps we are old, or ill, or otherwise limited by our physical situation. But we can all pray about the ungodliness and apostasy which we see in everyday life all around us. If, however, there is in us little energy for such prayer, and little consequent practice of it, this is a sure sign that as yet we scarcely know our God.”