There is, however, equally great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that, for some unfathomable reason, He wants me as His friend, and desires to be my friend, and has given His Son to die for me in order to realize this purpose. not merely that we know God, but that He knows us.
J. I. PackerThe Christian's life in all its aspects-intellectual and ethical, devotional and relational, upsurging in worship and outgoing in witness-is supernatural; only the Spirit can initiate and sustain it. So apart from him, not only will there be no lively believers and no lively congregations, there will be no believers and no congregations at all.
J. I. PackerSimple assent to the gospel, divorced from a transforming commitment to the living Christ, is by Biblical standards less than faith, and less than saving, and to elicit only assent of this kind would be to secure only false conversions.
J. I. PackerMan is a responsible moral agent, though he is also divinely controlled; man is divinely controlled, though he is also a responsible moral agent.
J. I. PackerThink against your feelings; argue yourself out of the gloom they have spread; look up from your problems to the God of the gospel.
J. I. PackerThe Christian's instincts of trust and worship are stimulated very powerfully by knowledge of the greatness of God. But this is knowledge which Christians today largely lack: and that is one reason why our faith is so feeble and our worship so flabby... When a person in the church, let alone the person in the street, uses the word God, the thought is rarely of divine majesty.
J. I. Packer