{"id":64975,"date":"2017-11-01T08:30:55","date_gmt":"2017-11-01T12:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=64975"},"modified":"2017-11-01T08:46:10","modified_gmt":"2017-11-01T12:46:10","slug":"food-for-thought-from-ji-packer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=64975","title":{"rendered":"Food for Thought from JI Packer&#8211; The Christian\u2019s motto should not be \u201cLet go and let God\u201d but \u201cTrust God and get going!\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Passivity means conscious inaction\u2014in this case, inner inaction. A call to passivity\u2014conscientious, consecrated passivity\u2014has sometimes been read into certain biblical texts, but it cannot be read out of any of them. Thus, for instance, to \u201cyield\u201d or \u201cpresent\u201d oneself to God (Romans 6:13; 12:1), or as it is sometimes put, to \u201csurrender\u201d or \u201cgive ourselves up\u201d to him, is not passivity. <strong>Paul\u2019s meaning is not that having handed ourselves over to our Master, we should then lapse into inaction, waiting for Christ to move us instead of moving ourselves, but rather that we should report for duty, saying as Paul himself said on the Damascus road, \u201cWhat shall I do, Lord?<\/strong> . . .\u201d (Acts 22:10) and setting no limits to what Christ by his Spirit through his Word may direct us to do. This is activity! Again, being \u201cled by the Spirit of God\u201d (Romans 8:14; Galatians 5:18) is not passivity. Paul\u2019s meaning is not that we should do nothing till celestial promptings pop into our minds, but that we should resolutely labor by prayer and effort to obey the law of Christ and mortify sin (see Galatians 5:13-6:19; and Romans 8:5-13, to which v. 14 looks back). This too is activity!<\/p>\n<p>Surely we need not go further. The point is plain. Passivity, which quietists think liberates the Spirit, actually resists and quenches him. Souls that cultivate passivity do not thrive, but waste away. The Christian\u2019s motto should not be \u201cLet go and let God\u201d but \u201cTrust God and get going!\u201d . . . [P]assivity [is] . . . unbiblical . . . and hostile to Christian maturity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8211;JI Packer, <strong>Keep in Step with the Spirit: Finding Fullness in Our Walk with God<\/strong> (Grand Rapids:Baker, 2005), p.128 (emphasis mine)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Passivity means conscious inaction\u2014in this case, inner inaction. A call to passivity\u2014conscientious, consecrated passivity\u2014has sometimes been read into certain biblical texts, but it cannot be read out of any of them. Thus, for instance, to \u201cyield\u201d or \u201cpresent\u201d oneself to<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=64975\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,175,34,166,169],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglican-episcopal","category-anthropology","category-theology","category-theology-holy-spirit-pneumatology","category-theology-scripture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64975"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64986,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64975\/revisions\/64986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}