This poem was recently given me

by an African pastor. I thought it was rather striking ...

'When God Wants a Man'

When God wants to drill a man,

and thrill a man, and skill a man;

When God wants to mould a man

to play the noblest part;    

When He yearns with all His heart

to create so great and bold a man

That all the world might be amazed;

Watch His methods, Watch His ways.

How He ruthlessly perfects whom He royally elects

how He hammers and hurts him,

and with mighty blows converts him,

into trial shapes of clay which only God understands,

How He bends but never breaks,

when his good He undertakes.

How He uses whom He chooses

and with every purpose fuses him,

With mighty acts induces him

to try his splendour out.

God knows what He's about.

- C. Pierce

A reviewer in the London Guardian newspaper, commenting on the atheistic writings of Professors Dawkins and Atkins wrote

'Indeed, atheism  - when you boil it down - is little more than a denial, a refusal to take seriously the proposition that there could be more to the universe than meets the eye. To use science to justify such dogma, as these professors do, is a gross misuse of their trade.'

- for more on this theme see John Lennox' new book 'God's Undertaker - has science buried God?' Lennox is Reader in Mathematics at Oxford. [pub. by Lion Hudson ISBN 978-0-7459-5303-8 ]

“Among the Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if he is God. He claims to forgive sins. He says he has always existed. He says he is coming to judge the world at the end of time. ….In the mouth of any speaker who is not God, these words would imply what I can only regard as a silliness and conceit unrivalled by any other character in history. Yet (and this is the strange, significant thing) even His enemies, when they read the Gospels, do not usually get the impression of silliness and conceit... I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the foolish thing that people often say about him ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God’.

That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic…or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up as a fool ..or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. ..We are faced then with a frightening alternative. This man we are talking about either was (and is) just what he said or else a lunatic, or something worse. Now it seems to me obvious that he was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however, strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that he was and is God. God has landed on this enemy-occupied world in human form.”

Gold there is, and rubies in abundance, but lips that speak knowledge [of God] are a rare jewel. Proverbs 20:15

'If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the Word of God except that little point which the world and the devil are at the moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing him.

Where the battle rages there the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battle front besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at the point.' Luther's Works Weimar Edition Briefwechsel (Correspondence) , vol. 3 p.81f

William Tyndale: 'Lord, open the King of England's eyes.'

Hudson Taylor: 'I am so weak that I can hardly write, I cannot read my Bible, I cannot even pray, I can only lie still in God's arms like a little child, and trust.'

G.K.Chesterton: 'The issue is now clear. It is between light and darkness and everyone must choose his side.'

John Wesley: 'The best of all is, God is with us. Farewell!'

Ludwig von Beethoven: 'I shall hear in heaven.'

General Oglethorpe once said to John Wesley 'I never forgive and I never forget'. To which Wesley replied; 'Then, sir, I hope you never sin.'

Not long before she died in 1988, in a moment of surprising candour on television, Marghanita Laski, one of the best-known secular humanists  and novelists, said 'What I envy most about you Christians is your forgiveness; I have nobody to forgive me.' (John Stott in the Contemporary Christian)

THE BIBLE:

'The Bible has survived the ignorance of its friends and the hatred of its enemies.' - unknown

'The Scriptures were not given for our information, but for our transformation.' - D.L.Moody

'The Bible is like a lion, it needs no defence; let it out of its cage, and it will defend itself.' - Charles Hadden Spurgeon.

Bill Hybels tells the story about a day he spent with Billy Graham. In the evening, Hybels prepared to leave and head back to his hotel. To his surprise, though, the evangelist stopped him, handed him a Bible, and said 'Bill, before you go, feed me from God's word.' The aged evangelist, who had communicated the Gospel message to many thousands of people, had shown that he had never outgrown the need to be fed from the Bible!

'Insofar as the Bible is the word of men, we read it as we read any other book - with our minds. But insofar as it is the Word of God, we read it as no other book - on our knees' John Stott

We bow in humility before you, Almighty and everlasting God: our prayer is that your written Word may now and always be our rule, your Holy Spirit our teacher, and your greater glory our chief concern. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. John Stott 1994

I have no time to read His book

I have no time to pray

I have no time to serve the Lord

I have no time - or so I say.

Before the television set

The minutes pass

The hours flit by

But when my Lord would meet with us

I have no time - that is my cry.

Thank God He did not say 'I have no time'

He found the time for you and me

He found the time for Calvary.

Dear Lord, forgive 'I have no time'

Before thy cross, I do confess

With tears of shame my laziness

You died for me, I did not care.

But now I know 'I have no time'

For it is Thine!

And thou must use my life, my time

As thou must choose.

Source unknown; quoted in the monthly newsletter of Emmanuel Church Wimbledon, UK