A Taste of Spiritual Beauty - Ch. 15

• Being Satisfied with God means we embrace and delight in the beauty of God diffused in all his works and words.
• Jonathan Edwards [1746] was deeply concerned that people understand saving faith, lest they be deceived by their own experiences and have "presumptuous peace"
• Fruit does not come alongside a tree and make it good, but is produced by the healthy tree.
• A mere claim to faith [James] is to assent to the truth without delighting in it.
• Faith arises from a spiritual apprehension of the truth, or from the testimony of the Spirit with and by the truth in our hearts.
• We must have both understanding and embracing through the illumination of the Holy Spirit - and thus taste Christ as compellingly attractive.
• Apprehension includes spiritual delight.
• We must perceive, embrace, and approve, from the heart, the spiritual fitness of God's threatening... leading to a revulsion of sin and a withdrawal from the danger of sinning - pressing toward God and holiness.
• A strong call for decisions for Christ may bring people to crisis without contemplation - beware the parable of the soils and the words "I never knew you"
• In saving faith, we both affirm factual truth, but also embrace spiritual beauty.