John White, People in Prayer: Portraits from the Bible, 하나님을 이해하기 위해 매달렸던 아브라함

 

John White, People in Prayer: Portraits from the Bible, Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 1977  

 

Abraham: The Day God Grew Larger

What about out “if-it-be-your-will” prayers? Are they biblical? … It means I don’t have to come to grips with God. I need not bother to find out what God’s will is. … “If it be thy will” is lazy pseudoreverence, … (16-17)

He(Abraham) is desperate to understand… God has become alien to him. The change in their relationship threatens to destroy it altogether. (17)

I loved God and wanted him to go on being the God I had always known… We pray to a god we have ourselves fashioned for our comfort and not to God as he is. True prayer is to respond to the true God as he reveals more of himself by his Spirit in his Word. (18-19)

A familiar God whom yet he scarcely knew.

1.  '하나님의 뜻이면' 이라고 쉽게 말하는 것은 게으른 거짓 경건일 수 있다. 아브라함은 하나님을 이해하려고 애썼다. 소돔을 심판하러 가시는 하나님을 막아선다. 그는 하나님에 대해 무엇을 배웠을까. 하나님은 그의 기도에 자신의 뜻을 움직이신다. / 하나님이 전혀 다르게 느껴졌기 때문일까. 자신이 알던 하나님이 아니어서일까. 소돔을 철저히 심판하신 하나님, 흔적 없이 사라진 사람들, 폐허 속에서 하나님이 두렵게 느껴졌을지 모른다. 실제 오랜 침묵이 그의 인생 가운데 계속 되었다. 우리가 익숙하고 손쉬운 하나님 상을 만들어서는 안 된다. 기도는 참된 하나님께서 자신을 그 말씀 가운데 성령으로 드러내어 주시기를 구하고 그것에 반응하는 것이다. 

Jacob: A Crippling in the Chasm

Why is Jacob not immediately overwhelmed? Does God need to cripple Jacob? … Jacob is not the aggressor… If on the other hand a man wrestles with you, you have no such choice… you are obliged to wrestle too…. Jacob had been struggling against God all his life. The conflict by the Jabbok symbolizes his lifelong struggle. (23-24)

Both of them (Rebecca and Jacob) lacked trust that God would give what he had promised… he again won by human effort what God had all along intended to give him. (25, 27)

You will cling. You will hang onto your opponent with desperation…. “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” They are words God has waited over forty years to hear. He would have preferred that Jacob recognize his helplessness and cast himself on the mercy of his God long before. (33)

You are helpless and you have no hope except in him. The “man” had disappeared, and Jacob stood uncertainly, panting, gently testing his painful leg to see if he could walk. “I have seen God face to face.”… Peniel(“God’s face”) he called the place. (34)

 2. 누군가 씨름을 걸어온다면 다른 선택이 없다. 단지 맞설 뿐이다. 하나님께서 그에게 씨름을 걸어오셨다. 그의 인생을 통틀어 하나님과 씨름해 온 야곱을 보여준다. 리브가도 야곱도 하나님께서 약속하신 것을 주시기까지 하나님을 신뢰하지 못했다. 자신들의 방법으로 얻으려 했고, 그 성취는 상처를 낳았다. / 주님께서 축복하시지 않으면 놓지 않겠습니다. 하나님께서 40년동안 그에게 듣고자 했던 기도였다. 하나님은 야곱이 자신의 절박함을 인정하고 자신을 하나님께 의탁하기를 원하셨다. 나도 그렇다. 하나님이 아니면 아무 소망도 없다. 하나님의 천사가 떠난 후 야곱은 고통을 안고 부러진 다리를 이끌며 움직인다. 하나님의 얼굴을 보았노라고 고백한다. 

Moses: Shining Faces

Our God remains a God of holy judgement… He is the God who demands nothing less than holiness of his people… (40)

(we) make God more suitable to our preference in gods…. We are worshipers of a golden calf… You must see our God as a consuming fire. (40)

You can never experience the urgency of intercession until you see sin from God’s perspective…. Moses makes clear to God how seriously he takes God’s dealings with his servants in the past… For the God with whom we are called to plead is the God of Moses, the God of David, the God of Elijah, Elisha and Paul. (41)

God’s very presence… He responded to it because he had himself taught Moses to pray as he did. God answered the prayer he had longed to hear. (44)

 

David: Fellowship Restored

Power had corrupted him. (49)

We may be scarcely conscious of some sin. But God lays his finger on other sins. (51)

His yearning is for fellowship with God. This above all else he pleads for. Other relationships may be damaged or destroyed, but his relationship to Jehovah must remain intact. (53)

Extenuating circumstances do not constitute a basis for mercy. Your only hope for mercy is the character of God… not because you deserve another chance. (54)

To murder Uriah was to commit a blasphemous crime against Uriah’s God… Social sin is sin directed against his very person…. God is your brother keeper. You wrong your neighbor, but you sin against God. (55-56)

We are made for fellowship and without it our lives will be incomplete… The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise… (60-61)

 

 

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