IT is interesting to me how at times the shortest of statements can at once deliver the simplest yet profound meaning. I don’t recall whether I heard it from one of his audio lessons or read it from one of his books, – although I suspect I could find it somewhere within the pages of his classic work, The One and The Many – but burned into my memory is a quote garnered from R.J. Rushdoony that “Culture is what a people believe externalized.” This thought came to mind as I recently read a book by John Stonestreet titled: A Practical Guide to Culture, Helping the Next Generation Navigate Today’s World. After reading several chapters, Rushdoony’s pithy statement in those seven words came to mind that pretty much summed up what was said in the first several chapters of Stonestreet’s book. That doesn’t discount the importance of the book; it just fosters appreciation for concise wisdom of thinkers and authors like RJR.
THIS also came to mind as I turned to take another look into Miles Stanford’s devotional None But The Hungry Heart. Pause and think about that title’s short statement. What does it say, mean, and imply? A verse one might attach to that concise and thought provoking title might be, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled” (Matt 5:6).
WELL, I’ll leave that thought with you as we look at another excerpt from None But The Hungry Heart – 1.2 “Life’s Purpose.”
In the inexorable riches of Christ,
Joe
Neh. 8:10; Isa 30:15; Job 2:10; Jas. 1:2; Prov. 21:30
*********
1-2. Life’s Purpose
“For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Col. 2:9).
Our Lord the Vine provides all that His branches will ever need for fruit- bearing. All provision is according to our Father’s riches in glory by Christ Jesus (Phil. 4:19).
“Christian growth is the becoming real in ourselves, of what is already true of us in the Lord Jesus. ‘I am the vine, ye are the branches, He says. But the vine furnishes the branches, not only with the principle of life, but with the type of life. No pressure or molding from without is needed to shape them to the pattern of the parent stock. Every minutest peculiarity of form, and color, and taste, and fragrance is determined by the root, and developed from it. A true believer, therefore, will ask no better thing of the Lord than that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in his body (2 Cor. 4:11). For such a manifestation will, by a necessary principle, be the unfolding within him of every needed element of joy and sorrow, of suffering and triumph.” – A.J.G.
“Straining, driving effort does not accomplish the work God gives a man to do; we must partake of Christ so fully that He more than fills the life. It will then be no overwork but overflow.”
“And ye are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power” (Col. 2:10)
