Great Quotes from The Invisible Hand
I recently had the opportunity to read through almost all of the books of R.C. Sproul. Along the way I built a collection of some of the best quotes from each one of them. Here are several of the best from The Invisible Hand.
If we understand the providence of God and love the God of providence, we are able to worship Him with the sacrifice of praise He inherently deserves when things occur that bring pain, sorrow, and affliction into our lives. This understanding of providence is vital to all who would worship God. It is a worship of faith that is rooted in trust.
To be self-centered is a sin for any creature. We mortals are called to be God-centered in our thinking. For creatures, God-centeredness is a virtue, and self-centeredness a vice. But for God, self-centeredness is pure virtue because it is also God-centeredness. For us to be God-centered is to fix our attention upon the most perfect Being. So it is for God Himself.
While the popular adage declares that “the devil is in the details,” it is more accurate to avow that God is in the details. The doctrine of providence declares that God’s providential rule extends to all things great and small, from the huge to the minute, the infinite to the infinitesimal.
To say that God is sovereign and that man is free is not a contradiction in terms. To say that God is sovereign and that man is autonomous would be a contradiction.
Modern historians who have declared this to be the post-Christian era in which God is dead and the church is His mausoleum have been premature in their obituaries. The church is not dead because it cannot die. Individual parishes may disappear, and whole denominations may become apostate, but the invisible church is impregnable and will always have some visible manifestation on earth.
I do not know the solution to the problem of evil. Nor do I know of anyone else who does. I have never been fully satisfied by any of the theodicies I’ve ever seen. This does not mean the problem is insoluble or that the question is unanswerable. Perhaps tomorrow the problem will be solved. But so far I haven’t been able to find a solution. My ability to identify the problem is no solution to the problem. Diagnosis or analysis is not a cure.
Christianity is a faith that is based upon and rooted in miracles. Take away miracles, and you take away Christianity.
I think adoration is the most fulfilling dimension in prayer. Just as love letters between young lovers focus on the points of delight they find in their partners, so are lovers of God immersed in the praise of His perfections and excellency.