Knowing God by Suria Scholtz
This year, we have said our goodbyes to some of the greatest minds of the 20th century: Ravi Zacharias, David Pawson and now J.I. Packer. What a legacy these men have not left behind. What a joy to still have access to their teachings and books. Faithful to the end, we greet these saints as true disciples of Jesus Christ, for they have been good shepherds ever leading their flocks to green pastures and still waters.
J.I. Packer died in Vancourver, Canada last week on 17 July. Not only was he named one of the 25 most influential evangelicals by Time Magazine in 2005, he is also the author of one of the best-selling Christian books of all time, Knowing God.[1] A book I absolutely love and that has dramatically impacted my life.
When I climbed Kilimanjaro in 2011 with 48 other women, raising awareness and finances for women trapped in modern-day slavery, I felt the Holy Spirit lead me to Psalm 46:10. Familiar with ‘be still and know that I am God’ (NIV and NKJV), I was deeply impacted by the NASB translation – ‘cease striving and know that I am God,’ for if striving was a sport, I was an Olympic gold medalist!
Spare no effort, exert oneself, do one’s best, do all one can, do one’s utmost, give one’s all, labour, work, toil, strain, struggle…
lean over backwards, go all out, pull out all the stops…
Fight, battle, combat, contend, grapple, campaign, war, crusade…[2]
On the highest free-standing mountain in the world, on that epic trek along the rim of Africa, God undramatically met me on the last day. As I dragged my oxygen-deprived body from Gilman’s Peak to Stella, the medical doctor simply turned me around. A short and unspectacular battle ensued between me and God, for I have never ever conceded defeat, but here I stood, my spirit quiet and still before His gentle blowing.
With the first part of Psalm 46:10 fulfilled, a new peace and clarity descended upon me, ready for the second half. Even since before the climb, I knew that it had something to do with J.I. Packer’s Knowing God. For years I evaded the book, for the small print and yellow pages of the old paperback edition in my bookshelf looked like a hard, long and dry read, but not any longer. Once home, I jumped right into it. To say I was spell-bound by a book on theology, is an understatement. I could not put it down, neither could I move on, for here was a topic unlike any other.
Chapter one opens with a few extracts from a sermon by Charles Spurgeon, incredibly, only twenty years old at the time:
‘No subject of contemplation will tend more to humble the mind, than thoughts of God… But while the subject humbles the mind, it also expands it. He who often thinks of God, will have a larger mind than the man who simply plods around this narrow globe…
And, whilst humbling and expanding, this subject is eminently consolatory. Oh, there is, in contemplating Christ, a balm for every wound; in musing on the Father, there is quietus for every grief; and in the influence of the Holy Ghost, there is a balsam for every sore. Would you lose your sorrows? Would you drown your cares? Then go, plunge yourself in the Godhead’s deepest sea; be lost in his immensity; and you shall come forth as nothing which can so comfort the soul; so calm the swelling billows of sorrow and grief; so speak peace to the winds of trial, as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead.’
The conviction behind Packer’s classic is that ignorance of God lies at the root of much of the church’s weakness today. In Knowing God, he calls his reader back to the old paths and the good ways[3] – for only then, he rightly mused, shall we cease our striving and find rest for our souls. Suddenly I cannot wait to pick it up again. I pray many of you will join me! I promise – you will not be disappointed.
[1]www.regent-college.edu › about-us › news › remember
[2] Apple dictionary
[3] Jeremiah 6:16
