Walking with God by W. Phillip Keller   Kingsway 1982.

When complacency or idleness enmeshes me in their seductive snares, there are one or two authors who would help free me from their paralysing bonds. One of them is A.W.Tozer and another is W. Phillip Keller.

Keller’s sees human beings as consisting of three parts, spirit, soul and body. I would have liked to have read about how he arrived at this idea but it proves a useful structure on which to hang some vital Biblical truths. I would also like to have read how these three part act on each other. Man may be tripartite but he is also one.

 I found as the book proceeded the more precise and helpful it became. For me his analysis of the spiritual aspects of humanity was difficult, particularly his treatment of intuition. Perhaps the deficiency is with me. He is clear on the conditioning of the conscience and his helpfulness increases when He deals with that communion with God that should be the feature of the life of every Christian.

From then on it is practical and helpful. The emotions, mind and will are seen as aspects of the soul. No part of what it is to be human escapes Keller’s scrutiny. His treatment of the body is healthy.

The author’s approach to the reader is understandably dated, being more prescriptive than we are used to nowadays. It is good to see that  he has not submitted to the modern commandment  “Thou shalt not offend anybody.”  Despite a few imperfections this is a valuable book for the author deals with topics that are seldom dealt with in such a forthright manner. Perhaps a good follow up read would be Twenty four by Krish Kandiah

Peter M. Grinham  10^th August 2015

Prayer by O. Hallsby

I seldom recommend translations from the Norwegian but will make an enthusiastic exception in this case. Years ago when I was a student I heard a fellow student recommend this book. He said it had revolutionised his prayer life. Perversely I shied away from such keenness but nearly sixty years later I reckoned I was ready to face this soul shaking book. Now I wish I had read it when I was told to!

It is a brief book barely making two hundred pages in a paperback edition. It is an old fashioned book with anecdotes sparse but expositions aplenty. Dr Hallsby was born early in the twentieth century. He wrote long before information technology took its megabyte from our lives yet his book is testimony to the power of the written word. It bears the marks of struggle. The author suffered two years in a Nazi concentration camp and the anger of secularists of his native land when he sought to defend the truths of the Gospel.

The structure of the book is unremarkable

Author's Preface
Chapter One: What Prayer Is
Chapter Two: Difficulties in Prayer
Chapter Three: Prayer As Work
Chapter Four: Wrestling in Prayer, I
Chapter Five: Wrestling in Prayer, II
Chapter Six: The Misuse of Prayer
Chapter Seven: The Meaning of Prayer
Chapter Eight: Forms of Prayer
Chapter Nine: Problems of Prayer
Chapter Ten: The School of Prayer
Chapter Eleven: The Spirit of Prayer

Within this structure great and essential themes emerge. Prayer is the opening of the heart to the Lord Jesus. It is a weapon that exists for the glory of God not the convenience of mankind. It should be deployed whenever work is attempted for Him and for the generations to come, a spiritual legacy for the future. Prayer requires humility, not telling God what to do. Before such a God total honesty is essential. When we wrestle in prayer it is not against God but ourselves and our selfishness. Prayer involves pain. The problems and queries we have about prayer often arise from our misunderstanding of what prayer is. At the centre of the universe as its focus, its reason for being, its pivot of existence is God; not us. Prayer is not the manipulation of a supernatural being to do our will. That is magic. It is of God, for God, His chosen path into the heart of man. It is a means by which He gets glory and that is its purpose.

This is a book to be read, digested and acted upon, but be warned. It could indeed revolutionise your prayer life.

Peter M. Grinham 16th June 2015

Read, Mark and Inwardly Digest            West Mersea 12^th April 2015

This is my first attempt to write a sermon I have preached. This is not easy and I do not expect the final result to resemble the original sermon too closely. Spoken English written down as literature is almost unreadable, all those pauses, asides to the congregation and a thousand discontinuities make it impossible. Preaching is a whole body activity with the voice the major player. Nuances in tone, facial expression and body language are impossible to reproduce in continuous prose. It cannot be done; so here goes.

Is Bible reading a joy or a chore, a grim struggle or a source of solutions, a dry academic exercise or a life changing experience?  It can be a joy as we hear the voice of God as we read it, it can deepen our relationship with our Saviour and it can answer the knottiest ethical problems facing us today

Much of my youth I spent in defending the Bible instead of talking about the Lord Jesus. This was a mistake on two counts. The Bible does not need me to defend it. As C.H.Spurgeon  said “Defend the Bible. I’d sooner defend a lion.” And the scripture exists to reveal the Lord Jesus.   The more liberal of my friends spoke about the problem of this and that in the Bible; but I wanted answers.

Looking at what the Bible says about itself is instructive.

 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 2 Timothy 3:16 (NIVUK)  

 For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Hebrews 4:12(NIVUK)

 Right at the beginning of the Bible we read about God breathing. It was at the creation of humanity. Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. Genesis 2:7  Does this mean that the Bible is a living being like a human? No! There are many forms of life, from the lowliest bacterium to finest man or woman. So both humanity and the Bible are God breathed and alive, but not in the same category. The breath of God is the Spirit and it is the Spirit that gives our race spiritual meaning and the Bible its spiritual dynamic

To read the Bible is not like reading any ordinary book. It is not merely an intellectual exercise or a diversion. It is a spiritual exercise. It concerns our spiritual life.  We must expect correction and development as we read. When you next read a passage from the Bible why not start with a prayer asking God to speak. Expect Him to speak and expect to be changed by the experience

The Word is alive. Read it prayerfully

 

And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself .Luke 24:27

You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, John 5:39

Both these texts reveal the use our Lord Jesus Christ made of Scripture. What He is describing is about Himself. Much of the Old Testament becomes more comprehensible when viewed from a messianic perspective. What we know of the Saviour we know from Scripture.  As we read scripture we must expect and look for a deeper knowledge and therefore a deeper relationship with the Lord Jesus. One of the many comparisons we may make for our relationship with the Saviour is that of pen friend. As we read we look for fresh glimpses of His character, fresh hints of His love for us. As you read expect your relationship with you Saviour to intensify. Read it as you would a letter from a loved one. The Bible is the divine side of the dialogue, the correspondence between God and his child, you.

The Word is personal. Read it lovingly.

 

 “Is not my word like fire,” declares the Lord, “and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces? Jeremiah 23:29 (NIV)

 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. ²³ Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror ²⁴ and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. ²⁵ But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do. James 1:22-25 (NIV)

The warning is clear. If we read the Scriptures our innermost thoughts will be exposed and our morals deeply examined. It will alter our behaviour. Here is a constant point in the shifting sands of public morality for what our forefathers accepted horrifies us now and what we accept now would horrify our forefathers; but Scripture holds our lives against the timeless plumb of God’s eternal law.  The temptation is to gloss over the bits that we do not like, the bits that deal with our pet sins. Face them squarely and we will discover not only our faults but their remedies.

The Word is moral. Read it personally.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Freedom from Sinful Thoughts by J. Heinrich Arnold

The Plough Publishing House      ISBN 0-87486-094-6

Some books are like a marathon race. Their sheer size threatens us and we wonder how we will ever get to the end. The challenge of this book is not in its length but in its content.  It is a book of practical holiness and a statement of the Gospel.

Recently I had been reading the early chapters in Acts. I was impressed by the way the early church gave itself to communal sharing and living. How would that work in the 21^st century?  A casual visit to the Hospice book shop brought this book, “Freedom from Sinful Thoughts” to my notice. The authoris amember of a 20^th century attempt to live by Acts 2 communal principles, the Bruderhof which has communities in Germany as well as the United States and the United Kingdom. It is no monastic movement. Family folk are included.  The author’s  theological position can be deduced from the reviewers who wrote with approval of this book. They include, Henri Nouwen, Richard Foster and Dallas Wiilard.

The book consists of eighteen brief chapters and extends just  over a hundred  short pages. Quotations abound from the 13^th century German mystic, Meister Eckhardt, the Swiss French psychiatrist Charles Baudouin, the founder of Bruderhof, Eberhard Arnold and above all the Bible. I found myself reading a chapter of “Freedom from Sinful Thoughts” a day.

The earlier part of the book dealt with how we are and then moved to a crescendo in the last chapters dealing with the Cross. Practical hints abound but always there is the admission of our total dependence upon God. There is a movement of thought through the psychological, the mystical and the biblical but it is the Calvary of the Scriptures that eclipses all.

This book fed me and I commend it.

Peter M. Grinham 10^th May 2015.

The Loch

 

There is no moment that remains the same,

But from the sky an alteration comes.

The grey and blue on water make their claim.

The power below to the power above succumbs.

Sometimes a mist all sight of hills precludes.

In other times bright sun a view gives sight

Of fields that passing flowers of spring includes.

None stays.  All sweetness passes into night.

Yet stillness in the rocks and hills remains.

No moments here, for ages give but little change.

The rising sun still gives the seed its gains

The laws of nature stay within their range.

The stillness covered by a fickle face

Gives peace, despite life’s rampant pace.

 

Peter M. Grinham © 10.7.’14

A Verse for Palm Sunday 2014

He could have come upon a cloud,

To wreak His wrath upon a wrongful crowd.

But on an ass He made His way

That we may know His peace on this our day

Ageing

My sight declines but still the sky is wide.

As sense decays my joys more keenly grow.

Mundane, unnoticed things are sanctified.

 

I heard the thrush and robin as they cried.

I glory in the flowers that briefly glow.

My sight declines but still the sky is wide

 

Abroad I went and England I decried.

Now it’s a source of subtle, joys I know.

Mundane, unnoticed things are sanctified.

 

The print grows small and letters seem to hide.

The stars grow few like words and facts I know.

My sight declines but still the sky is wide

 

In friends I little knew I now confide

As children of my children I watch grow.

Mundane, unnoticed things are sanctified.

 

As into hateful, age, unstopped I slide

To old familiar, simple things I go

My sight declines, but still the sky is wide

Mundane, unnoticed things are sanctified

 

Peter M. Grinham 23^rd April 2015

The Soil

You are beneath my feet oppressed forgot,

Ugly and dark your face when first laid bare,

No symmetry, no fair relief your lot.

Across the sea they call you “dirt”. That’s fair.

For in your deep untrodden paths and niches

Crawl,  ghastly, loathsome, beasts small and obscene.

Your are the midden of a thousand species,

The grave yard for the countless  hosts unseen

Then came the spring and from your  breast arose

A multitude of promises of food

Of beauty in each bursting seed that grows.

The soil, I find it is no longer rude.

Without the soil I learn we could not feed

We least esteem the source of all we need.

Peter M. Grinham 25th February 2015

 

The Sky

The mistress of a thousand cryptic faces,

I raise my grateful longing eyes to you.

Your depths contain a multitude of graces

Which daily give an ever changing view.

Sometimes grey clouds give battle bold on high

On other days a gloom obscures the blue

That still remains above the clouded sky

Each day reveals some truth that’s ever new.

But when the sun is low and in its fall

The back cloth sky turns blue to green to red

And black barred cloud brings loveliness to all,

I thank my God for what the sky has said

For in the torment of tumultuous days

Sad pain to fairer beauty points my gaze.

Peter M.Grinham 20^th February 2015

A Cloud of Witnesses , Ten Great Christian Thinkers by Alister McGrath IVP 1990.

 

There are at least three ways of approaching a body of knowledge; discover it yourself, read about it or read the biographies of those who did the finding. In Geography you can travel, read a text or the life of Humbodlt. In Chemistry text books abound,  or you may read the life of Sir Humphrey Davy, or ,subject to health and safety, you can experiment in your garden shed. We are all theologians for life is the laboratory of theology.  The book I am recommending represents the biographical approach to knowledge.  As I read this book I began to appreciate some old well known doctrines in a new and vital way. That which we take for granted was hammered out in the lives and thinking of these theologians.

I had read of the battle of Athanasius over the divinity of Christ. It is still being fought today. He summed it up in this reasoning" Only God can save, Jesus saves,  therefore Jesus is God. "  The grace of God has been precious to me for decades, but reading of Augustine's struggle brought it home to me with special vigour.  Reading about the controversial Karl Barth has made me appreciate the spiritual significance of Scripture and the awesome significance of preaching. Who would have guessed that my yearning for the other was given such significance by the eloquence of C.S. Lewis. There are others; Aquinas, Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and Jonathan Edwards. There are so many discoveries to make and old truths to rediscover.