“How can we turn our knowledge about God into knowledge of God? …we turn each truth that we learn about God into matter for meditation before God, leading to prayer and praise to God….What is meditation?…meditation it the activity of calling to mind, and thinking over, and dwelling on, and applying to oneself, the various things that one knows about the works and ways and purposes and promises of God. It is an activity of holy thought, consciously preformed in the presence of God, under the eye of God, by the help of God, as a means of communion with God. Its purpose is to clear one’s mental and spiritual vision of God, and to let his truth make its full and proper impact on one’s mind and heart. It is a matter of talking to oneself about God and oneself, reasoning oneself out of moods of doubt and unbelief into a clear apprehension of God’s power and grace.

Its effect is ever to humble us, as we contemplate God’s greatness and glory, and our own littleness and sinfulness, and to encourage and reassure us – as we contemplate the unsearchable riches of divine mercy displayed in the Lord Jesus Christ…And it is as we enter more and more deeply into this experience of being humbled and exalted that our knowledge of God increases, and with it our peace, our strength and our joy. God help us, then, to put our knowledge about God to this use, that we all may in truth ‘know the Lord’.”   J.I. Packer – Knowing God p.22-23

Does God just overlook our wrong doing and ignore the punishment?
How can God show mercy and forgive and still be just?

The forgiveness God gives through Jesus is real and lasting forgiveness. Psalm 103 says God removes our sin as far as the east is from the west. Never to be brought up against you again.

 

 Father Forgive Them [32:52m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (2)
 Father Forgive Them: Download (4)

The Trellis and the Vine is an excellant book on the nature of what we are to be on about as disciples in a local church and so what we should be on about as a church. Go to the link; watch the review; buy the book and read it. You won’t regret it. It will give you a clear Biblical conviction of who disciples are and so what they are to be on about. Here’s the basic definition of ministry in summary form: “The prayerful speaking of one person to another.”

Here’s a link to a read through the Bible in a year plan. It’s not too late to start. After all, you have more than 50 weeks to catch up on what you’ve missed. Or treat your year as January 10, 2010, through January 10, 2011.