Hi, here are some happenings and memories of the last few months.
News:
- At our church we recently had a wonderful experience with prayer for seven weeks. Several people had critical needs related to work and visas, and so the Lord led us to fast and pray on seven Sundays for the moving of mountains in our lives. We invited people to fast from lunch, or breakfast and lunch, and then after our Sunday morning worship service we went to one of our homes and prayed for a couple of hours together. Then we ate together. God answered a number of our prayers, and our relationship with him was deepened. It was a powerful and life-changing experience.
- I have several months more writing to do on the theme of God’s love. Thinking long about God’s love has changed my life, and I hope yours as well.
- I’m still writing my book on holiness. This is a labor of love. I revel in the subject of God’s holiness, and I love sharing with others about it, partly because it is so little understood or cherished in our world today. God’s holiness has become lost knowledge.
- The ministry of this blog has grown to 91 readers who have signed up to receive my weekly email, which is free. If you have not signed up, I invite you to join and belong if you enjoy reading my writing, if you think others could benefit from it, if you want to foster the knowledge of God in as many others as possible, if you want to support this writing ministry and message. One benefit of your signing up, for example, is that it may please God to publish the content of this blog not only online but in the traditional world of book publishing, and book publishers are much more willing to publish a writer who has a “built-in” readership (measured by the number of email subscribers). You can sign up in the upper-right column of my site, craigbrianlarson.com. Thanks, and welcome to the Knowing God village!
My favorite three posts since my last letter:
My most important, challenging post since my last letter:
Books I’ve been reading:
- Intercessory Prayer, by Dutch Sheets
- Future Grace, by John Piper
- Hearing God, by Dallas Willard
- The Secret of Guidance, by F. B. Meyer
- Love Beyond Reason, by John Ortberg
Favorite new website and mobile app: I have known about the free BlueLetterBible.org site for years, but recently I started using it as my main Bible-study resource. Surprisingly, I now prefer it in most ways over my PC’s $350 Bible-study application.
The most interesting mobile app I’ve recently come across is “Read Scripture.” I haven’t used it a lot yet, but what I’ve read has impressed me.
Questions: How can I make this site more valuable to you? How can we have more community and interaction among readers? What are your questions about God and his ways? Please send me an email with your feedback:
Prayer request: I am seeking a publisher for a manuscript I’ve written on the subject of divine testing.
Knowing God: What do you most want to know more about? What are you most curious about? Over time, that is what you will gain understanding in. Curiosity leads to knowledge, for it leads to motivated reading, to conversation and connection over our shared interest, to love of what we study, to the ability to see what others overlook, to further meditation.
God wants us to be curious about him. He wants us to think about him, to meditate on him, to talk with others about him, to ask questions and sing songs and report what we have learned about him. He wants us to have a sense of wonder about him similar to the wonder that scientists and explorers have in their field of study. Not so that we can control or master God, but so that we can know and praise him and relate to him as closely and deeply as possible.
God is deeper and more profound than the greatest questions and theories in mathematics or physics, for he created mathematics and the material world and understands every aspect of it completely.
God is more beautiful and pleasing than a collection of the world’s most beautiful music. He created music. He created Mozart, or whoever writes the music you regard as most wonderful. God could write and play a million songs more beautiful and delightful than any you have ever heard, and the next day write a million more, and the next day a million more. Just for starters. But all these beautiful songs are simply an expression of his own beauty, the music of his own heart and mind, of who he is.
God is more loving than the kindest, most sacrificial person you know. He doesn’t just do love; he is love. Love is his nature, his being, his constitution, for love gives. God upholds all things and gives existence to all things as a continuous expression of his will. He is love, for all things are from him, through him, and to him. He gives and gives and gives as who and what he is.
Therefore, for good reason the Lord says, “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD” (Jeremiah 9:23–24 ESV).
For good reason he commands, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). He knows this brings the good life, the very best life, the ultimate and most satisfying life.
There you have it, my reason for being, my reason for writing, and the purpose of this blog. May you grow in the knowledge of God today. And thereby, may you have the good life.
