Knowing God: God’s Wisdom and Ours

What?  Did you think we forgot about this series? J I Packer carries the theme of wisdom from Chapter 9 into Chapter 10 of his classic book, Knowing God.  Whereas Chapter 9 dealt more with God’s wisdom, Chapter 10 dives into how God grants wisdom to His people and what that wisdom looks like.  In [...]

Read Full Post »

Knowing God: God Only Wise

Wisdom can be a slippery word to define these days.  I suspect that most Americans would equate wisdom with intelligence or sagacity.  More practically, wisdom might be defined as the ability to make “good” choices.  Most of the time when I say that I made a “wise” choice, this is all I really mean:  It [...]

Read Full Post »

Knowing God: The Majesty of God

“Today, vast stress is laid on the thought that God is personal, but this truth is so stated as to leave the impression that God is a person of the same sort as we are- weak, inadequate, ineffective, a little pathetic.” In chapter 8 of Knowing God, J I Packer discusses the often overlooked subject [...]

Read Full Post »

Knowing God: God Incarnate

One of the things I marvelled at when reading The Da Vinci Code was author Dan Brown’s claim that the early church, (in a power grab, of course), shrouded Christ’s humanity in a veil of divinity, thus obscuring His humanity.  This created the need for the church as a mediator of Christ’s revelation, otherwise Jesus would be incomprehensible.  Brown’s [...]

Read Full Post »

Knowing God: The Only True God

Chapter 4 of Knowing God is always one of the most interesting to discuss.  It is here that Packer deals with the second commandment and proper worship of God.  His basic premise is that the 2nd commandment, which is a prohibition of idols, is talking about making an idol or representation of God Himself.  Many [...]

Read Full Post »

Knowing God: Knowing and Being Known

In Packer’s third chapter, he begins to take on the nuts and bolts of knowing God. Although he’s been using this titular phrase for some time, he devotes this chapter to fleshing out what it means to know God. He opens by way of an excellent thought experiment, wherein the reader is asked to consider [...]

Read Full Post »

Knowing God: The People Who Know Their God

How have you responded to past failures?  Heartbreaks?  Missed opportunities?  Perhaps, like me, you typically sigh, shurg your shoulders and dole out a theological crumb or two: ”Well, I guess God doesn’t have that for me”, ”I guess it wasn’t His will”,  “I don’t understand this, but God is good, right?”  While the theology of these statements may [...]

Read Full Post »

Knowing God: The Study of God

Why study theology?  Why spend hours praying over biblical texts?  What are we hoping will happen to us when we study who God is and learn His character? Chapter 1 of J I Packer’s Knowing God helps direct us in our pursuit of knowing God.  He starts the chapter with a quote from Spurgeon.  Spurgeon [...]

Read Full Post »

Blogging Through Knowing God by J. I. Packer

One of the highlights of the fall for me is rereading J I Packer’s classic book, Knowing God.  We read it every year in our discipleship and missions training school, and for good reason.  If you’re impressed with quantity, the book has sold over 1 million copies.  At the very least this attests to the [...]

Read Full Post »