I almost called this article, “Getting the Most out of the Gathering,” but I was cautious about accidentally communicating something in the title that I don’t mean. To be clear, I don’t believe the gathering is primarily about us getting something. I trust we all understand that it would be wrong to come to church with the mindset of expecting to have our preferences catered to. That is not the ‘getting’ that I mean.
Perhaps the greatest tragedy in the Christian life is not that God is absent, but that we so often forget he is present.
Everyone desires excellence. We desire goodness itself. And we know it is good to experience excellence in marriage, work, and life. Another way to put it is that our hearts, as Augustine says, remain restless until they find rest in what is good. Christians have defined that “good” as God (Mark 10:18), yet this affirmation does not gainsay the universal recognition that nobody with a healthy mind would desire evil for themselves; everyone believes safety, health, sleep, success, and other like things are good. This basic idea, to my mind, helps to explain the good news of the gospel in...
Your library, however small, reveals what’s shaping your mind, and building it is a simple, profound act of resistance that forms your soul.
Christians who are not rooted in God’s Word will eventually begin to see, feel, and live like the world around them.
