East Side Grace Brethren Church

Reading Scripture is not the same as listening to God. To do one is not necessarily to do the other....Listening is an interpersonal act; it involves two or more people in fairly close proximity. Reading involves one person with a book written by someone who can be miles away or centuries dead, or both....When I read a book the book does not know if I am paying attention or not; when I listen to a person the person knows very well whether I am paying attention or not. I can read by myself; I cannot listen by myself....Listening to Scripture, of course, presupposes reading Scripture. We have to read before we can listen. But we can read without going on to listen. Eugene Peterson, from Working the Angles

"Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path" (Psalm 119:105). See the psalmist's picture. He has to travel. (Scripture regularly pictures life as a journey.) He was in the dark, unable to see the way to go and bound to get lost and hurt if he advanced blindly. (This pictures our natural ignorance of God's will for our lives, our inability to guess it and the certainty in practice of our missing it.) But a lamp (think of a flashlight) has been handed to him. Now he can pick out the path before him, step by step, and stick to it, though darkness still surrounds him. (This pictures what God's word does for us, showing us how to live.) The psalmist's cry is one of praise, thanks, admonition, testimony and confidence—praise that God glorifies his grace by giving men so precious a gift as his word; thanks because he knows how much he himself needed it, and how lost he was without it; admonition to himself and any who might read his psalm always to value God's word at its true worth and to make full use of it for the purpose for which it was given; testimony to the fact that already in his experience it had proved its power; and confidence that this would continue. J I Packer, from "Our Need of Scripture"

The fourth rule of prayer is…we should be animated to pray with the sure hope of succeeding… But the best stimulus which the saints have to prayer is when, in consequence of their own necessities, they feel the greatest disquietude, and are all but driven to despair, until faith seasonably comes to their aid; because in such straits the goodness of God so shines upon them… [and] they yet trust to this goodness, and in this way both lighten the difficulty of endurance, and take comfort in the hope of final deliverance. John Calvin, from The Institutes of the Christian Religion

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East Side Grace Brethren Church 7510 East Broad Street Blacklick, OH 43004 map & directions (614) 861-5810 esgbc.office@gmail.com Service Times Sunday mornings 9:30 & 11am Programs for all ages	Reading Scripture is not the same as listening to God. To do one is not necessarily to do the other....Listening is an interpersonal act; it involves two or more people in fairly close proximity. Reading involves one person with a book written by someone who can be miles away or centuries dead, or both....When I read a book the book does not know if I am paying attention or not; when I listen to a person the person knows very well whether I am paying attention or not. I can read by myself; I cannot listen by myself....Listening to Scripture, of course, presupposes reading Scripture. We have to read before we can listen. But we can read without going on to listen. Eugene Peterson, from Working the Angles "Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path" (Psalm 119:105). See the psalmist's picture. He has to travel. (Scripture regularly pictures life as a journey.) He was in the dark, unable to see the way to go and bound to get lost and hurt if he advanced blindly. (This pictures our natural ignorance of God's will for our lives, our inability to guess it and the certainty in practice of our missing it.) But a lamp (think of a flashlight) has been handed to him. Now he can pick out the path before him, step by step, and stick to it, though darkness still surrounds him. (This pictures what God's word does for us, showing us how to live.) The psalmist's cry is one of praise, thanks, admonition, testimony and confidence—praise that God glorifies his grace by giving men so precious a gift as his word; thanks because he knows how much he himself needed it, and how lost he was without it; admonition to himself and any who might read his psalm always to value God's word at its true worth and to make full use of it for the purpose for which it was given; testimony to the fact that already in his experience it had proved its power; and confidence that this would continue. J I Packer, from "Our Need of Scripture" The fourth rule of prayer is…we should be animated to pray with the sure hope of succeeding… But the best stimulus which the saints have to prayer is when, in consequence of their own necessities, they feel the greatest disquietude, and are all but driven to despair, until faith seasonably comes to their aid; because in such straits the goodness of God so shines upon them… [and] they yet trust to this goodness, and in this way both lighten the difficulty of endurance, and take comfort in the hope of final deliverance. John Calvin, from The Institutes of the Christian Religion Back to Part One