Elevating Our Concept of God

The heaviest obligation lying upon the Christian church today is to purify and elevate her concept of God until it is once more worthy of him and of her. In all her prayers and labor this should have first place. We do the greatest service to the next generation of Christians by passing on to them undimmed and undiminished that noble concept of God which we received from our Hebrew and Christian fathers of generations past. This will prove of greater value to them than anything that art or science can devise. (A.W. Tozer, Knowledge of the Holy)

How to Develop A God-Centered Church

If you are interested in God-centered preaching, you may be interested in this article at 9 Marks:

A common question that church planters face is "How can you develop a God-centered church when most of the people attending aren't mature believers?" Assuming that you're not trying to fill your seats only with believers who are already mature, you're going to face this question. How do you create a God-centered culture?

The post expands on five suggestions:

1. Prayer
2. Set an example of God-centeredness
3. Preach the Word of God
4. Patience
5. Confidence

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Much of the trouble in the Church today

From God's Ultimate Purpose by Martyn-Lloyd Jones:

The Bible is God's book, it is a revelation of God, and our thinking must always start with God. Much of the trouble in the Church today is due to the fact that we are so subjective, so interested in ourselves, so egocentric. That is the peculiar error of this present century. Having forgotten God, and having become so interested in ourselves, we become miserable and wretched, and spend our time in 'shallows and in miseries.'

The message of the Bible from beginning to end is designed to bring us back to God, to humble us before God, and to enable us to see our true relationship to Him. And that is the great theme of this Epistle [Ephesians]...We must not start by examining ourselves and our needs microscopically; we must start with God, and forget ourselves. In this Epistle we are taken as it were by the hand by the Apostle and are told that we are going to be given a view of the glory and the majesty of God.

Our greatest object

From D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The Fight of Faith 1939-1981:

The more I study this New Testament, and live this Christian life, the more convinced I am, indeed the more certain I am, that our fundamental difficulty, our fundamental lack, is a lack of love of God; it is not our knowledge so much that is defective, it is our love of God and our greatest object and endeavor should be to know Him better and to love Him more truly.

Packer on what young leaders should study

Mark Driscoll writes:

In the lengthy time that Dr. J. I. Packer afforded me to speak with him while we were recently together in Orlando, I asked him which theological issues he would commend young Christian leaders to study in order to be prepared for the next fifty years. His list was quite insightful...

The second item:

God-Centered Theology — He said that theology today is rife with man-centered thinking so that the glory of God in all things is not the essence of what is taught to be faithfully Christian. The result, he explained, is that even Christians often live their lives for the supreme purpose of their perceived happiness, feelings, and satisfaction. Yet, biblical Christianity differs from the other religions of the world in that the desires and purposes of God override ours; we are not the number one priority, but rather God is.