Emulating leaders

I well remember a Christian leader who a number of years ago used to give this advice to younger Christians: 'One of the most important things in Christian leadership,' he would solemnly intone, 'is never to admit any weaknesses. If you admit weaknesses, others will exploit them to your detriment.' Astonishing! Surely there are many areas in which Christians must acknowledge their weaknesses. Isn't that Paul's policy, when in 2 Corinthians 12 he insists he has learned to 'boast' of his weaknesses so that Christ's strength might be made perfect in him? 

Indeed, in the same passage, Paul circumscribes what he says about his own spiritual experiences, precisely because he is fearful that people will think too much of him. If he must be assessed, he wants to be judged by what he says and does in the public arena, not by laying claim to spiritual experiences no one else can test. What is remarkable is the way Paul's' stance differs from our own. Many Christians today, even Christian leaders, go through life fearful that people will think too little of them. They quickly become irritable if someone, especially a junior, is praised more than they. But Paul goes through life fearful that people will think too much. Follow a leader like that! He has been tested by hardship, and he is not an untested upstart of a self-promoting peacock. Emulate such leaders. 

From D A Carson's Basics for Believers, page 80. 

Quicken me

Charles Spurgeon, writing in his The Treasury of David, comments on the second half of Psalm 119, verse 154: quicken me according to your word.

Quicken me. We had this prayer in the last section, and we shall have it again and again in this. It is a desire which cannot be too often felt and expressed. As the soul is the centre of everything, so to be quickened is the central blessing. It means more love, more grace, more faith, more courage, more strength, and if we get these we can hold up our heads before our adversaries. God alone can give this quickening; but to the Lord and giver of life the work is easy enough, and he delights to perform it.

According to thy word. David had found such a blessing among the promised things, or at least he perceived that it was according to the general tenor of God's word that tried believers should be quickened and brought up again from the dust of the earth; therefore he pleads the word, and desires the Lord to act to him according to the usual run of that word. What a mighty plea is this— "according to thy word." No gun in all our arsenals can match it.

 

The nature of God

...if Christianity has any distinctive meaning at all, it is that we can affirm or deny certain things about God, that we are not in a state of utter ignorance about His heart and nature, that we find in the character and work of Jesus Christ a reflection of the character and work and large purpose of God. We get at the fundamental qualities of His moral nature. We get no satisfaction about the metaphysics of the divine, but we do get satisfaction about the morality, the character, of the divine. 

Let me premise also that when we speak about God's fundamental qualities we must be careful. All the qualities that go to make up His nature are, in a sense, fundamental qualities. They are all necessary. They are not there in such a way that they might as easily, or as well, be anywhere else. He does not live and move under our intellectual limitations. He is the foundation of all things, and His every aspect is an essential part of Him. There is in Him nothing transitory, careless, ornamental merely. "He is all centre, and no circumference."* Wherever He is, and He is everywhere, He is essential; nor can you say of Him that this quality or that is more of His essence than another. You cannot say His strength is a more fundamental quality of Him than His wisdom. His strength is wisdom. His wisdom is strength, both to Him and to us. Whatever He is, is eternal - is fundamental.

From P T Forsyth's sermon, Mercy the True and Only Justice, 1877, republished in Jason Goroncy's Descending on Humanity and Intervening in History, page 76

*Goroncy suggests that this is a reference to James Martineau's description of the universe in his book, Endeavours after the Christian Life.

Strong v weak

Too often the price exacted by society for security and respectability is that the Christian movement in its formal expression must be on the side of the strong against the weak. This is a matter of tremendous significance, for it reveals to what extent a religion that was born of a people acquainted with persecution and suffering has become the cornerstone of a civilization and of nations whose very position in modern life too often has been secured by a ruthless use of power applied to defenseless peoples.

Howard Thurman
Jesus and the Disinherited