J.I. Packer on Spiritual Disciplines

"As the children of this world, fired by personal ambition, set themselves career goals and then work very hard to adchieve them, so God's children, fired by the greatness of divine love, should have before their minds the goal of discipline in daily living, and work equally hard, planning, praying, and trying things out, to make it a reality. The alternative is to live like a pilot flying blind--always being taken by surprise and tyrannised by the immediate, the urgent, and the unexpected--experiencing life as a succession of emergencies that one is never ready to meet." J.I. Packer "A Passion for Holiness" (Leicester: Crossway Books, 1992), 115.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Are we on the verge of a crisis?

Image
It was pointed out to me recently that there are fewer and fewer musicians in The Salvation Army than 15 - 20 years ago. It's a complicated scenario, but I would like to suggest one contributing factor to this. I suggest that this is the collateral damage of the Worship Wars. I don't need to describe to you what happened during the 90s in particular when whatever was "old" was considered "bad" and so abandoned for the "new and relevant" worship and mission tools. Part of what has been lost, or is being lost in the vast majority of corps is brass bands. Now, I don't want to open up old wounds, nor "take sides" in a dead debate from last century. That's not my agenda here. I just want to highlight what we lost when we abandoned banding on a large scale in The Army.
Read more

The story of my honeymoon... 10 years on

Image
It's been 10 years since the disastrous events of my honeymoon and in that time I've told this story plenty of times, but have never actually sat down to write it out. I thought that since it's now 10 years since my diagnosis I would take the time to write out what happened to my wife and I on what was supposed to be a celebration of our new marriage... So here goes... Megan and I were married on the 18th March, 2000 having been together since 1994. Megan was 15 when we started going out at The Salvation Army's Music Camp and I was 17. We've been together ever since. The weather on that mid-March Saturday was a scorching 35 degrees. The men in the bridal party had been out playing golf the day before and we all got sunburnt. So I was feeling a little tired as a result, and so the night before the wedding I had gone to bed early. I remember my sister-in-law, Kate, had made the boys lunch - lasagne... yum! But strangely, I didn't eat it all. Anyone who knows me…
Read more

On same-sex marriage

I’m a married to a loving wife. I’m a white male living in middle class Australia, with two kids, two fish and a cat. I live in an inner city suburb of the largest city in Australia, Sydney. I was born in Australia (Adelaide, no less, but that still counts) and have lived here all of my life. All of those factors combined put me in a position of power. Power I didn’t choose, or fight for, but power I’ve been given nonetheless. Add to that the fact that I am an Officer in The Salvation Army, which as an institution has earned a powerful voice in this country and my position of power is enhanced dramatically.
I don’t have to fight for my voice to be heard. I don’t live on the margins of society, and by and large I’m not prejudiced against, except perhaps that I’m not allowed to become a member at a one of those "women-only" gyms… not that I really want to.
Read more