God's Way of Peace (an old book by Horatius Bonar) came up in a recent conversation with my brother. He had picked it up at a book sale at his school and begun to read it. Something he had read related well to our conversation, and he decided that, rather than finish reading it himself, it would be more profitable to pass it along to me. Now, I have a whole stack of books that I want to be reading (and indeed, I am reading many of them at the same time....yes, I'm one of THOSE). But because he gave it to me in this way, I promoted it to the top of my list (looking back, I realize that it was probably for his own benefit, to shorten his own stack). Anyway.

I'm really enjoying this book. I had never remembered hearing of him, but I just learned (through google, how else) that he wrote one of my favorite hymns. He speaks very kindly and gently to my soul, a definite pastor with fatherly qualities. But what precious, powerful truth he speaks, and so carefully!! This combination - gentleness + truth - pierces through the heart in a unique way. I can think of several believers in my life who speak in such a way. I come away from conversations with them edified, challenged, convicted, and with a sense of being full...such as that I don't really want to move for fear of spilling over some of what was poured into my soul. I long to emulate this in my own talk. I pray that as time goes on, I would learn to speak more carefully and intentionally, and that great love would encapsulate the words that do come from my mouth.

But that wasn't really the original point of what I was going to write. I was going to share what I've benefited from in chapter three - "God's Character, our Resting Place." This chapter has been very helpful to me right now as it has pointed me toward the source, the ground, the substance, the object of my faith....I'll leave these quotes:

"Let us study the character of God: holy, yet loving; the love not interfering with the holiness, nor the holiness with the love; absolutely sovereign, yet infinitely gracious--the sovereignty not limiting the grace, nor the grace relaxing the sovereignty; drawing the unwilling, yet not hindering the willing, if any such there be; quickening whom He will, yet having no pleasure in the death of the wicked; compelling some to come in, yet freely inviting all! Let us look at Him in the face of Jesus Christ; for He is the express image of His person, and he has seen Him has seen the Father. The knowledge of that gracious character, as interpreted by the cross of Christ, is the true remedy for our disquietudes."

"This God whom Christ reveals, as the God of righteous grace and gracious righteousness, is the God with whom we have to do. To know His character, as thus interpreted to us by Jesus and His cross, is to have peace. It is into this knowledge of the Father that the Holy Spirit leads the soul, whom He is conducting, by His almighty power, from darkness to light. For, everything that we know of God we owe to this divine teacher, this Interpreter. But never let the sinner imagine that he is more willing to learn than the Spirit is to teach. Never let him say to himself, I would know God, but I cannot of myself, and the Spirit will not teach me."

"The object of the Spirit's work is to make us acquainted with the true Jehovah; that in Him we may rest; not to promote in us certain feelings, the consciousness of which will make us think better of ourselves and give us confidence toward God. That which He shews us of ourselves is only evil; that which He shews us of God is only good. He does not enable us to feel or to believe in order that we may be comforted by our feeling or our faith. Even when working in us most powerfully, He turns our eye away from His own work in us, to fix it on God, and His love in Christ Jesus our Lord. The substance of the gospel is the name of the great Jehovah, unfolded in and by Jesus Christ; the character of Him in whom we 'live and move and have our being,' as the 'just God, and the Saviour' (Isa. 45:21), the Justifier of the ungodly."