I penned this short note in June 1, 2011. It still feels like I wrote this today.
Standing on the edge of a cliff, I see the open wide world ahead of me. So many possibilities, hundreds of opportunities, plenty of room to dream on. My resolve is to spend the whole candle of my life in pursuit of the things of God. No looking back, no regrets.
Knowing history and biography will protect us from trendiness in the ministry and will reveal the blind spots of our own age and enrich us with the insights that other generations have received.
— John Piper
Our world is dripping with God’s presence and calling us to worship Him alone. But our eyes are dim and our understanding is darkened. Eternity is lost in the immediacy of our world.
—Kyle Strobel
Kyle Strobel on spiritual formation:
Many [people] are not concerned to actually understand the depths of spiritual formation, nor are they all that interested in really developing a way of life. Rather, they just want some simple answers to fix their broken lives. When push comes to shove, much that goes by the term “spirituality” is really just an extension of our own desire to have a “better,” more fulfilling life. Just as we approach health issues, our posture is about getting it fixed as easily and quickly as possible: Isn’t there just a pill I can take?
Some might call us spoiled. We live in an era of significant and substantial resources for Christians on living the Christian life. We have ready access to books, DVD series, online material, seminars– all in the interest of encouraging us in our daily walk with Christ. The laity, the people in the pew, have access to more information than scholars dreamed of having in previous centuries.
Yet for all our abundance of resources, we also lack something. We tend to lack the perspective from the past, perspectives from a different time and place than our own. To put the matter differently, we have so many riches in our current horizon that we tend not to look to the horizons of the past.
Wholesale rejection of past theological viewpoints simply because they are old is just as narrow-minded a perspective as the refusal to consider anything that is new.
— Michael A. G. Haykin
Jojo Agot 