We Need God to Know God

Author - Os Guinness, A Long Journey Home

We cannot find God without God.

We cannot reach God without God.

We cannot satisfy God without God--which is

another way of saying

that all our seeking will fall short unless

God starts and finishes the search.

The decisive part of our seeking is not our

human ascent to God, but his descent to us.

Without God's descent there is not human ascent.

The secret of the quest lies not in our brilliance

but in his grace.

The Temptation of Power

Excerpt from "In the Name of Jesus", author - Henri J.W. Nouwen


What makes the temptation of power so irresistible?  Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love.  It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life.  Jesus asks, "Do you love me?"  We ask, "Can we sit at your right and your left hand in your kingdom?"  (Matthew 20:11).  Ever since the snake said, "The day you eat of this tree your eyes will be open and you will be like gods, knowing good from evil" (Genesis 3:15), we have been tempted to replace love with power.  Jesus lived that temptation in the most agonizing way from the desert to the cross.  The long painful history of the church is the history of people ever and again tempted to choose power over love, control over the cross, being a leader over being led.  Those who resisted this temptation to the end and thereby give us hope are the true saints.


One thing is clear to me:  The temptation of power is greatest  when intimacy us a threat.  Much Christian leadership is exercised by people who do not know  to develop healthy, intimate relationships and have opted for power and control instead.  Many Christian empire-builders have been people unable to give and receive love.

(pages 77-78)

We Are Far Too Easily Pleased

Excerpt from- The Weight of Glory, author - CS Lewis


If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith.  Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak.  We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.  We are far too easily pleased.


(page 3-4)

Overcoming Temptation: Knowing Your Identity

Excerpt from Tempted and Tried, author - Russel D. Moore


The first step in the cycle of temptation is the question of your identity.  James told the poor and beaten down to "boast in his exaltation"  and told the prosperous and the up-and-coming to glory "in his humiliation" (James1:9-10).  Why?  James understood that temptation begins with an illusion about the self -a skewed vision of who you are.  The satanic powers don't care if your illusion is one of personal grandiosity or self-loathing, as long as you see your current circumstance, rather than the gospel, as the eternal statement of who you are.  if the poor sees his poverty as making it impossible for him to have dignity, he is fallen.  If the rich sees his wealth  as a denial that "like a flower of the grass he will pass away," even "in the midst of his pursuits (James 1:20-11), then he is undone.


Temptation has always started here, from the very beginning of the cosmic story.   When the Bible reveals the ancestral fall of the human race, it opens with a question of identity.  The woman in the Genesis narrative was approached by a mysterious serpent, a "beast of the field" that was "more crafty" than any of the others (Gen. 3:1).  and that's just the point.  The woman, Eve, and her husband were created in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-27).  They were living signs of God's dominion over everything except God and one another.  This dominion was exhaustive, right down to "every creeping thing that creeps on the earth"  (Gen. 1:26).


But here she was being interrogated by a "beast of the field" that questioned God's commands and prerogatives.   Without even a word, the serpent led the woman to act as though he had dominion over her instead of the other around. He persuaded her to see herself as an animal instead of as what she had been told she was--the image-bearing queen of the universe, a principality and power over the beasts.


As the same time the serpent was treating his queen as a fellow animal, he also subtly led her to see herself as more than an empress--as a goddess.  He auditioned her for her role as deity by leading her to act like a god, distinguishing autonomously between good and evil, deciding when she and her fellow were ready for maturity, evaluating the claims of God himself.  The snake prompted her to eat the fruit of the tree God had forbidden to her.  The tree somehow carried within it the power to awaken the conscience to "the knowledge of good and evil" (Gen. 2:17).  The serpent walked the woman along to where she could see herself as if she were the ultimate cosmic judge, free from scrutiny of her Creator's holiness.  At the very beginning of the human story was a question: Who are you?


(pages: 28-29)

Do All Religions Lead to God?

Excerpt from: The Reason For God, author - Timothy Keller


Sometimes this point is illustrated with the story of the blind men and the elephant. Several blind men were walking along and came upon an elephant that allowed them to touch and feel it. "This creature is long and flexible like a snake" said the first blind man, holding the elepant's trunk. "Not at all- it is thick and round like a tree trunk," said the second blind man, feeling the elephant's leg. "No, it is large and flat," said the third blind man, touching the elephant's side. Each blind man could feel only part of the elephant- none could envision the entire elephant. In the same way, it is argued, the religions of the world each have a grasp on part of the truth about spiritual reality, but none can see the whole elephant or claim to have a comprehensive vision of the truth.


This illustration backfires on its users. The story is told from the point of view of someone who is not blind. How could you know that each blind man only sees part of the elepant unless you claim to be able to see the whole elephant?


There is an appearance of humility in the protestation that the truth is much greater than any one of us can grasp, but if this is used to invalidate all claims to discern the truth it is in fact an arrogant claim to a kind of knowledge which is superior to [all others]...We have to ask: "What is the [absolute] vantage ground from which you claim to be able to relativize all the absolute claims these different scriptures make?"


How could you possibly know that no religion can see the whole truth unless you yourself have the superior, comprehensive knowledge of spiritual reality you just claimed that none of the religions have?


(pages 8 -9)