Dear friends,
I hope those who were at the Men’s Breakfast and PCC meetings last week will forgive me for repeating these thoughts. They aren’t mine anyway! They come from JI Packer’s brilliant book Knowing God and its truly marvellous final chapter, The Adequacy of God.
It seems odd to talk of God being enough. Isn’t he more than enough to meet all our needs? Yes, he is. But do we always believe that? When we doubt or distrust him, fail to love or obey him, isn’t that because we wonder if he really is enough? Packer shows how a few verses in Romans 8 address our fears with a series of unanswerable questions:
There is our fear of opposition, that something might overwhelm us. But, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (verse 31). There is our fear of privation, that we might somehow miss out. But, “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all – how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” (verse 32). There is our fear of rejection, that we may after all be rejected by God. But, “Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns?” (verses 33-34). And there is our fear of separation, that something may come between us and God’s love for us in Christ. But, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” (verse 35). In Packer’s carefully chosen phrases, God is our sovereign protector, benefactor, champion and keeper. In simpler terms, God is more than enough.
Chris Hobbs,
Senior Minister (Vicar).