Skip to main content

Enjoying God

I have enjoyed reading Tim Chester's Enjoying God.  It is helpful because it encourages to go beyond intellectual knowledge of God and love and enjoy Him. Tim wants us to like God. All true followers of Jesus would say they love God, but are we fond of God? Is your spiritual instinct to think well of God and His intentions for your life? Tim believes the key to enjoying God is give ourselves to dance to Him n a trinitarian fashion, Father, Son and Holy Spirit

I have read a number of Tim Chester books, so I must confess that I think what  he says in this book in individual chapters is better stated elsewhere in his other works. Also there is a part of me that feels that though most of our gifted modern writers like Tim are saying wonderful things, they are merely paraphrasing what old writers have said. It would be nice if many of us can read Owen and Bonhoeffer for ourselves. I believe that is much more beneficial in the long term than getting a few helpful quotes from Tim. Of course we often discover the existence of such older writers by reading about them in such books like Enjoying God. So I do appreciate Tim's effort in this regard. A good book, do read it if you can!

Here are some one liners that stood out for me:

"We are not only saved from sin, we are saved for God" 

"Faith looks beyond our circumstances to our relationship with God" 

"We pursue joy in God for God's sake, because He is the source of joy" 

"God is the loving Father you've always wished you had" 

"If you are in Christ, you always bring pleasure to the Father. He sees you and smiles with delight" 

"We don't need to worry because the world is full of signs of our Father's intimate involvement. We live in a fathered world" 

"Jesus asks everything of us, but he asks nothing of us that he himself has not first endured"

"The Spirit gives spiritual life in the present and physical life in the future"

"All the good we do is done in the power of the Spirit"

"If you want to to see the Spirit at work in your life, then attempt things that you feel you can't do without His help"

"For most people groaning is a backwards look....but for the Christians groaning is a forwards look"

"We go to the Bible to hear our Saviour speak to us"

"You can't enjoy God's love on your own"

"Brotherly love isn't a poor substitute for the real thing. For brotherly love is divine love. God loves us through the love of other Christians".

"You will never be happy while you are pursuing your own happiness"

"Our cities and towns are places in spiritual darkness. But every time a new church is started, it's as if God switches on a light. Light shines through Christian love".

Copyright © Chola Mukanga 2020

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

I am what I am by Gloria Gaynor

Beverly Knight closed the opening ceremony of the Paralympics with what has been dubbed the signature tune of the Paralympics. I had no idea Ms Knight is still in the singing business. And clearly going by the raving reviews she will continue to be around. One media source says her performance was so electric that "there wasn’t a dry eye to be seen as she sang the lyrics to the song and people even watching at home felt the passion in her words" . The song was Gloria Gaynor's I am what I am . Clearly not written by Gloria Gaynor but certainly musically owned and popularized by her. It opens triumphantly: I am what I am / I am my own special creation / So come take a look / Give me the hook or the ovation / It's my world that I want to have a little pride in / My world and it's not a place I have to hide in / Life's not worth a damn till you can say I am what I am The words “I am what I am” echo over ten times in the song. A bold declaration that she ...

Trusting God, By Jerry Bridges (A Review)

Trust is the bedrock of human relations. It is a necessity in a world of finite creatures. We do not know everything and we are powerless over many of the events that occur in our lives. We depend on others to make life work. We cannot afford not to trust. Trust deepens us as individuals by bringing us into mutually satisfying relationships. It enables us to know, love and learn from each other. The tragedy of life is that the one person who we can truly depend on and deserves all our trust, is also the person we struggle to put our trust in. When it comes to trusting God, we are all bankrupt. This poverty is most acute when we go through pain and adversity. Jerry Bridges’ Trusting God aims to help us take a fresh look at God. To help restore our confidence in the goodness and sovereignty of God. This issue is important because though many of us claim to trust God, our thoughts and actions speak otherwise. In our private moments we often ask: how can we trust a God who is supposedly ...

Living in contradiction

As I was growing up in India, I read a story about a man who had two idols in his home. One was large and rather fierce looking. The other was small, with a cheery face. Every day, morning and night, the man would carry out his worship rituals — placing fruit offerings before the idols and chanting hymns, while his son watched with great curiosity. Finally his son said, “Why are you talking to stones? These are lifeless things. They can’t speak or move or do anything, yet you spend all this time every day doing what you do.” The father grew very angry and reprimanded his son. “Don’t you dare speak that way! These are not just stones! These are our gods! We worship them, and they protect us.” The son realized he had touched a raw nerve and wisely decided to push the issue no further. But one day, in the father’s absence, the son took a big stick and smashed the little idol to pieces. Then he took the stick and placed it in the hands of the big idol. When evening came, his father walke...