10 January 2007

The Exhaustively Comprehensive Activity and Resplendence of God

That, I think, is the main thing I long to communicate to my generation. May it be.

2 comments:

Dane Ortlund said...

Activity - all that God does

Resplendence - all that God intrinsically is, his beauty

Comprehensive - God's activity and being are shamed when we yield nothing more than an hour of half-hearted singing Sunday mornings, 10 % of our income, a bit of daily Bible reading, and no fornication.

Exhaustively - rather his activity and beauty penetrate into every corner of existence, not so that we're nicer more of the time or use God's name more, but so that in all we do we trust him and seek our happiness by keeping an eye on how what we do might make Jesus look really good.

I was reflecting last week on what it was that I felt thought and felt in college when I was feeling a call into pastoring. Though there were other things at the time, and though other things have been added along the way (like the centrality of the Gospel message itself vs. moralism), the big-ness, weightiness of God and how it seems like in America God is a component of life instead of the all-influencing One. So I was trying to boil down to one short phrase what that initial thing I longed to communicate was, and this was what it came down to.

Gavin Ortlund said...

This message will be life to some, death to others. And the more clearly you communicate it, in God's power, the more that will be so.

". . . appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel" (Luke 2:34).