So today I went to Starbucks and read Evangelism & The Sovereignty Of God by J.I. Packer. I must say that this is a very helpful book for all Christians, Reformed or not. Packer outlines what evangelism is Biblically and how human responsibility and God’s sovereignty coincide in evangelism. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who actually cares about being a Christian.
Here are some of my favorite quotes:
“It is God who brings men and women under the sound of the Gospel, and it is God who brings them to faith in Christ. Our evangelistic work is the instrument that He uses for this purpose, but the power that saves is not in the instrument; it is in the hand of the One who uses the instrument.”
“For where we are not consciously relying on God, there we shall inevitably be found relying on ourselves.”
“The right to intimately talk to another person about the Lord Jesus Christ has to be earned, and you earn it by being his friend and really caring about him”
“The desire to justify the meetings by reaping a crop of converts may prompt the preacher and the councilors to try and force people through the motions of decision prematurely, before they have grasped what it is really all about, and converts produced in this way tend to prove at best stunted and at worst spurious and, in the event, gospel-hardend.”
“Some fear that a doctrine of eternal election and reprobaion involves the possibility that Christ will not receive some of those who desire to receive Him, because they are not elect. The ‘comfortable words’ of the gospel promises, however, absolutely exclude this possibility. As our Lord elsewhere affirmed, in the emphatic and categorical terms: ‘whoever comes to me I will never cast out.’”
its such a good book. Packer is one of the best authors I have read from
October 21st, 2008 at 1:09 pm