"Here I Stand" (a biography of Martin Luther)

I highly recommend the movie “Luther” which clarified some of the confusion I had while I was reading Luther’s biography. Probably his most famous words are those that give this biography its title. Here are some excerpts from the book, during his first hearing at Worms when he was asked whether he defended all of his writings which were displayed on the table in front of him. They are exemplary words for us to embrace and imitate as we begin this New Year.

“The door was closed, but Eck opened it again. ‘Do you defend them all, or do you care to reject a part?’ Luther reflected aloud, ‘This touches God and his Word. This affects the salvation of souls. Of this Christ said, ‘He who denies me before men, him will I deny before my father.’ … ‘If I am shown my error, I will be the first to throw my books into the fire. … I must walk in the fear of the Lord. … I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other-my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise.’”

"I Thirst, Thou Wounded Lamb of God" by John Wesley

Take my poor heart, and let it be
Forever closed to all but Thee:
Seal Thou my breast, and let me wear
That pledge of love forever there.
How can it be, Thou heavenly King,
That Thou shouldst us to glory bring;
Make slaves the partners of thy throne,
Deck'd with a never-fading crown?
Hence our hearts melt, our eyes o'erflow,
Our words are lost, nor will we know,
Nor will we think of aught beside,-
My Lord, my Love is crucified.

Let the Nations Be Glad! by John Piper

Ch 1 The Supremacy of God in Missions through Worship: Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. … The goal of missions is the gladness of the peoples in the greatness of God. … Missions begins and ends in worship. … For those who are stunned by the indescribable magnitude of what God has made, not to mention the infinite greatness of the One who made it, the steady diet on Sunday morning of practical how-to’s and psychological soothing and relational therapy and tactical planning seem dramatically out of touch with Reality-the God of overwhelming greatness. It is possible to be distracted from God in trying to serve God.
Probably no text in the Bible reveals the passion of God for His own glory more clearly and bluntly than Isaiah 48:9-100, where God says:
For my name's sake I defer my anger, for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you, that I may not cut you off. Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction. For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.
What this text hammers home to us is the centrality of God in his own affections. The most passionate heart for the glorification of God is God’s heart. God’s ultimate goal is to uphold and display the glory of his name.
This was Andrew Murray’s judgment a hundred years ago:
“As we seek to find out why, with such millions of Christians, the real army of God that is fighting the hosts of darkness is so small, the only answer is-lack of heart. The enthusiasm of the kingdom is missing. And that is because there is so little enthusiasm for the King.”
God is calling us above all else to be the kind of people whose theme and passion is the supremacy of God in all of life. Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. … The Great Commission is first to “delight yourself in the Lord” (Ps 37:4) and then to declare, “Let the nations be glad and sing for you” (Ps 67:4)

Piper, John. Let the Nations Be Glad!. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003.

Experiencing God by Henry Blackaby & Claude King

Ch 1 Knowing God by Experience: The names of God in Scripture reveal something of His nature, activity, or character. You come to know God by experience at His initiative as He reveals Himself to you.
· My witness (Job 16:19)
· Bread of life (John 6:35)
· Comforter in sorrow (Jer. 8:18)
· My hope (Ps. 71:5)
· Wonderful Counselor (Isa. 9:6)
· Defender of widows (Ps. 68.:5)
· The strength of my salvation (Ps. 140:7)
· Faithful and True (Rev. 19:11)
· Our Father (Isa. 64:8)
· A sure foundation (Isa. 28:16)
· My friend (Job 16:20)
· Almighty God (Gen. 17:1)
· God of all comfort (2 Cor. 1:3)
· God who avenges me (Ps. 18:47)
· God who saves me (Ps. 51:14)
· Our guide (Ps. 48:14)
· Our head (2 Chron. 13:12)
· Head of the church (Eph. 5:23)
· Our help (Ps. 33:20)
· My hiding place (Ps. 32:7)
· A great High Priest (Heb. 4:14)
· Holy One in your midst (Hos. 11:9)
· Righteous Judge (2 Tim. 4:8)
· King of kings (1 Tim. 6:15)
· Our life (Col. 3:4)
· Light of life (John 8:12)
· Lord of lords (I Tim 6:15)
· Lord of the harvest (Matt. 9:38)
· Mediator (I Tim. 2:5)
· Our peace (Eph. 2:14)
· Prince of Peace (Isa. 9:6)
· My Redeemer (Ps. 19:14)
· Refuge and strength (Ps. 46:1)
· My salvation (Exod. 15:2)
· My help (Ps. 42:5)
· The Good Shepherd (John 10:11)
· Lord (Luke 2:29)
· My stronghold (Ps. 18:2)
· My support (2 Sam. 22:19)
· Good Teacher (Mark 10:17)

Ch 2 “Knowing God’s Nature: God’s Nature and His Will. God is love: His will is always best.
1. Never in your life will God ever express His will toward you except that it is an expression of perfect love.
2. My love relationship with God determines everything I do.
3. Your relationship with God right now reveals what you believe about Him.
“What does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways and to love Him to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the LORD and His statues which I command you today for your good?” (Deut. 10:12-13)
· God is all-knowing: His directions are always right.
· God is all-powerful: He can enable you to accomplish His will.

Ch 3 Doing God’s Will: Don’t just do something. Stand there! Enter into a love relationship with Him. … God is far more interested in a love relationship with you than He is in what you can do for Him. … God will never give you an assignment that He will not, at the same time, enable you to complete. “It is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Phil 2:13).

Ch 5 Seven Realities of Experiencing God:
1. God is always at work around you.
2. God pursues a continuing love relationship with you that is real and personal.
3. God invites you to become involved with Him in His work. (His desire is to get us from where we are to where He is working. When God reveals to you where He is working, that becomes His invitation to join Him. When God reveals His work to you, that is His timing for you to begin to respond to Him.)
4. God speaks by the Holy Spirit through the Bible, prayer, circumstances, and the church (other believers) to reveal Himself, His purposes, and His ways.
5. God’s invitation for you to work with Him always leads you to a crisis of belief that requires faith and action. (What you do in response to His invitation reveals what you believe about God regardless of what you say. To follow God, you will have to walk by faith, and faith always requires action.)
6. You must make major adjustments in your life to join God in what He is doing. (You cannot stay where you are and go with God at the same time.)
7. You come to know God by experience as you obey Him and as He accomplishes His work through you.

Ch 7 God Pursues a Love Relationship with You: A love relationship with God requires that you demonstrate your love by obedience. If you have an obedience problem, you have a love problem. “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). Everything depends on this! … Your relationship to God is the single most important aspect of your life. If it is not right, nothing else is important. … God always takes the initiative in this love relationship. … “Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you. (Jer 31:3).

Ch 10 God Speaks to His People: If you are God-centered, you will adjust your circumstances to what God wants to do. God has a right to interrupt your life. He is Lord.

Ch 14 God Speaks Through Circumstances: Two words in the Christian’s language cannot go together: No, Lord. If you say, “No,” He is not Lord. If He really is your Lord, your answer must always be “Yes.”

Ch 17 Joining God Requires Major Adjustments: Adjustments prepare you for obedience. You cannot continue life as usual or stay where you are, and go with God at the same time. … Following your Master requires adjustments in you life. Until you are ready to make any adjustment necessary to follow and obey what God has said, you will be of little use to God. … He is interested in absolute surrender. … Because God loves you, His will is always best! Any adjustment God expects you to make is for your good. … “I am God, and there is no other. … My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure. … I have spoken it; I will also bring it to pass. I have purposed it; I will also do it.” (Isa 46:9-11). … Sometimes as you begin making adjustments, God will require that you wait on Him. … Your waiting on Him assures that you will act on His timing and not your own. … You may think of waiting as a passive, inactive time. Waiting on the Lord is anything but inactive. As you wait on the Lord, you will be very active in asking, seeking and knocking: (Matt 7:7-8). In waiting, you are shifting the responsibility of the outcome to God—where it belongs.

Ch 18 Joining God Requires Obedience: You cannot stay where you are and go with God. You cannot continue doing things your way and accomplish God’s purposes in His ways. Once you have adjusted your life to God, His purposes, and His ways you are prepared to obey Him. … Jesus said, “If you love Me, keep My commandments. He who does not love Me does not keep My words” (John 14:15, 24).
Obedience is the outward expression of your love of God.
The reward for obedience and live is that He will reveal Himself to you.
If you have a n obedience problem, you have a love problem.
If you love Him, you will obey Him!
James, in his letter to the believers, went to great lengths to indicate that faith that does not obey in actions is dead, or has no life. … God’s commands are not given so you can pick and choose the ones you want to obey and forget the rest. He expects you to obey all His commands out of your love relationship with Him. … If you know that God loves you, you should never question a directive from Him. It will always be right and best. … Most of our churches have not learned how to pray together. The greatest untapped resource that I know of is the united prayer of God’s people. Jesus, quoting from Isaiah 56:7, said, “My house is a house of prayer” (Luke 19:46). Both major adjustments and costly obedience come before the experience of God’s presence and power working through you. Many Christians and churches come to this moment of truth and decide the cost is too great. What they often do not do is consider what it may cost them not to obey.

Blackaby, Henry T & King, Claude V.. Experiencing God. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994.

That Incredible Christian by AW Tozer

Ch 14 How to Avoid Serious Error: It is critically important that the Christian take full advantage of every provision God has made to save him from delusion. These are prayer, faith, constant meditation on Scripture, obedience, humility, hard, serious thought and the illumination of the Holy Spirit.
1. Prayer … “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and unbraideth not; and it shall be given him” (James 1:5); “Men ought always to pray, and not to faint” (Luke 18:1).
2. The apostle Paul calls faith a shield. The man of faith can walk at ease, protected by his simple confidence in God. God loves to be trusted, and He puts all heaven at the disposal of the trusting soul. Faith is confidence in God’s self-revelation as found in the Holy Scriptures.
3. “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17). The Scriptures purify, instruct, strengthen, enlighten and inform. The blessed man will meditate in them day and night.
4. To be entirely safe from the devil’s snares the man of God must be completely obedient to the Word of the Lord.
5. There is a close relation between humility and the perception of truth. “The meek will he guide in judgment: and the meek will he teach his way” (Psalm 25:9).
6. Then we must think. Human thought has its limitations, but where there is no thinking there is not likely to be any large deposit of truth in the mind.
7. But thinking apart from the inward illumination of the Holy Spirit is not only futile, it is likely to be dangerous as well. God has given us the Holy Spirit to illuminate our minds. He is eyes and understanding to us. We dare not try to get on without Him.

Ch 24 There Is No Substitute for Theology: Whatever keeps me from the Bible is my enemy, however harmless it may appear to be. Whatever engages my attention when I should be meditating on God and things eternal does injury to my soul. Let the cares of life crowd out the Scriptures from my mind and I have suffered loss where I can least afford it.

Ch 28 To Be Understood, Truth Must Be Lived: Bible doctrine is wholly ineffective until it has been digested and assimilated by the total life. … At what point, then, does a theological fact become for the one who holds it a life-giving truth? At the point where obedience begins. When faith gains the consent of the will to make an irrevocable committal to Christ as Lord, truth begins its saving, illuminating work; and not one moment before. … Truth can be understood only by the mind that has surrendered to it. … When the heart makes the ultimate surrender, the fire falls and true facts are transmuted into spiritual truth that transforms, enlightens, sanctifies. The church or the individual that is Bible taught without being Spirit taught has simply failed to see that truth lies deeper than the theological statement of it.

Ch 31 The Importance of Self-Judgment: While our self-discovery is not likely to be complete and our self-judgment is almost certain to be biased and imperfect, there is yet every good reason for us to work along with the Holy Spirit in His benign effort to locate us spiritually in order that we may make such amendments as the circumstances demand. For this reason I offer some rules for self-discovery: and if the results are not all we could desire they may be at least better than none at all. We may be known by the following:
1. What we want most. We have but to get quiet, recollect our thoughts, wait for the mild excitement within us to subside and then listen closely for the faint cry of desire. Ask your heart, What would you rather have than anything else in the world? When you have heard it you will know the kind of person you are.
2. What we think about most. The necessities of life compel us to think about many things, but the true test is what we think about voluntarily. “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:21).
3. How we use our money. Again we must ignore those matters about which we are not altogether free. We must pay taxes and provide the necessities of life… but whatever money is left to do with as we please—that will tell us a great deal indeed.
4. What we do with our leisure time. A large share of our time is already spoken for by the exigencies of civilized living, but we do have some free time. What I do with mine reveals the kind of man I am.
5. The company we enjoy. There is a law of moral attraction that draws every man to the society most like himself. “Being let go, they went to their own company” (Acts 4:23). Where we go when we are free to go where we will is a near-infallible index of character.
6. Whom and what we admire. We can learn the true state of our minds by examining our unexpressed admirations. Israel often admired, even envied, the pagan nations around them, and so forgot the adoption and the glory and the covenants and the law and the promises and the fathers.
7. What we laugh at. No one with a due regard for the wisdom of God would argue that there is anything wrong with laughter, since humor is a legitimate component of our complex nature. But the test we are running here is not whether we laugh or not, but what we laugh at.

Tozer, A.W.. That Incredible Christian. Camp Hill: Christian Publications, Inc., 1964.