"Hast Thou not bid me seek Thy faceAnd shall I seek in vain?And can the ear of sovereign graceBe deaf when I complain?No still the ear of sovereign graceAttends the mourner's prayerOh may I ever find accessTo breathe my sorrows there."—Anne Steele (1717-1778)
“God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him. God’s design to pursue his own glory turns out to be love. And our duty to pursue God’s glory turns out to be a quest for joy.” —John Piper
"‘How rich a treasure we possess in Jesus Christ, our Lord. His blood, our ransom and defense; His glory, our reward. The sum of all created things are worthless in compare, For our inheritance is Him whose praise angels declare." — Matt Boswell and Matt Papa
"I want you to indulge yourselves in this most rare… delight of sorrow at the feet of Jesus,-not sorrow for unpardoned sin, but sorrow for pardoned sin, sorrow for that which is done with, sorrow for that which is forgiven, sorrow for that which will never condemn you, for it was laid on Christ long ago, and is put away for ever. It is this sweet sorrow that I want you to indulge. Up with the sluices, then, brethren and sisters, and let these sacred streams of sorrow flow forth." — Charles Haddo...
"If every evil be let loose from Pandora's box, yet is there hope at the bottom. This is the grace that swims, though the waves roar and be troubled. God is unchangeable, and therefore his grace is the ground for unshaken hope. If everything be dark, yet the day will come, and meanwhile hope carries stars in her eyes; her lamps are not dependent on oil from without, her light is fed by secret visitations of God." —Charles Haddon Spurgeon
"Come what may, if famine should devastate the land, or calamity destroy the city, 'I shall not want.' Old age with its feebleness shall not bring me any lack, and even death with its gloom shall not find me destitute. I have all things and abound; not because I have a good store of money in the bank, not because I have skill and wit with which to win my bread, but because 'The Lord is my shepherd.' The wicked always want, but the righteous never; a sinner’s heart is far from satisfaction, but a...
“The degree of our peace of mind is tied to our prayer life (Phil. 4:6-7). This not because prayer is psychologically soothing, but because we address a prayer-answering God, a personal God, a responding God, a sovereign God whom we can trust with the outcomes of life's confusions. And we learn, with time, that if God in this or that instance does not choose to take away the suffering, or utterly remove the evil, he does send grace and power. The result is praise; and that, of course, is itself ...
“‘Is he—quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.’ ‘That you will, dearie, and no mistake,’ said Mrs Beaver. ‘If there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.’ ‘Then he isn’t safe?’ said Lucy. ‘Safe?’ said Mr Beaver; ‘don’t you hear what Mrs Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King , I tell you.’” — C. S. Lewis...
“As Christians, our first response to Ps 1 is to bless the Lord Jesus, to see how he did what we fail to do, and through that to begin to imitate him in his delight in the Scriptures, meditating upon them, and thereby enjoying God’s presence.” —Jim Hamilton
“This is noble encouragement to all the saints; die they must, but rise they shall, and though in their case they shall see corruption, yet they shall rise to everlasting life. Christ's resurrection is the cause, the earnest, the guarantee, and the emblem of the rising of all his people. Let them, therefore, go to their graves as to their beds, resting their flesh among the clods as they now do upon their couches. ‘Since Jesus is mine, I'll not fear undressing, But gladly put off these garments ...
“When I read the Psalms of David, those faithful songs, the language of devotion which banishes the spirit of pride…. How I addressed Thee in those Psalms! How my love for Thee was kindled by them!” —Augustine
“I am saved solely and wholly because of Christ’s work, not mine. He has reserved a place in heaven for me, given freely to me by Him. I ‘never boast’—I take no credit for my standing with God—‘except in the cross’; what Christ has done is now something I ‘boast’ in. To boast is to joyously exult , and to have high confidence, in something. To know you are saved by Christ’s work alone bring a joyous ‘boasting’ confidence; not a self-confidence, but Christ-confidence.” —Tim Keller...
“When the Holy Spirit is at work in you, He’s at work in all of you, crafting you into the godly person He wants you to be. No weakness goes unaddressed. No sin pattern is off the table.” “These nine words [fruit of the Spirit] are a highway leading you in the direction of greater degrees of fruitfulness, not a cul-de-sac leading you to park the car of your sanctification. Godliness is the goal. Being above reproach is the aim. As the Holy Spirit put it, both the Old and New Testaments, ‘You sha...
“The gospel therefore neither leads us to live a guilty life (since God has lovingly accepted us), nor an unholy life (Since the God who has accepted us is perfectly holy). To forget the first is to fall into the mistake Paul deals with in [Gal 5:1], and lose our freedom; to forget the second is to make the [Gal 5:13] error, and abuse our freedom. Both mean we lose grasp of the gospel.” — Tim Keller
One generation of Mennonites believed the gospel and held as well that there were certain social, economic, and political entailments.The next generation assumed the gospel, but identified with the entailments.The following generation denied the gospel: the “entailments” became everything. —DA Carson
“Putting your faith in Christ means that you utterly renounce any other hope of being counted righteous before God. Do you find yourself trusting in your own good works? Faith means admitting that they are woefully insufficient, and trusting Christ alone. Do you find yourself trusting what you understand to be your good heart? Faith means acknowledging that your heart is not good at all, and trusting Christ alone. To put it another way, it means jumping off the edge of the pool and saying, ‘Jesu...
“But if the gospel is true, it does not matter who you are or who you were. You may be a spiritual and moral outcast, as marginal as the single, barren woman was in those ancient days. It does not matter. You will bear fruit, the kind that lasts. The gospel says: Grace is not just for fertile Hagars, but for barren Sarahs. If Sarah can havea future, anyone can! In fact it goes deeper even that this, because Paul is saying that the gospel of grace is especially for hte barren. The able and the ‘f...
"I asked the Lord that I might grow in faith and love and every grace,Might more of his salvation know, and seek more earnestly his face,I hoped that in some favored hour at once He’d answer my requestAnd, by his love’s constraining pow’r, subdue my sins and give me rest.Instead of this, He made me feel the hidden evils of my heartAnd let the angry pow’rs of hell assault my soul in every part.‘Lord, why is this,’ I trembling cried; “Wilt Thou pursue Thy worm to death?’’Tis in this way,’ the Lord...
“A Church thus constituted ought forthwith to choose them a Pastor, Elder or Elders, and Deacons, (we reading of no other Officers, or Offices abiding in the Church) and what kind of Men they ought to be, and how qualified, is laid down by Paul to Timothy and to Titus . Moreover, they are to take special care, that both Bishops, Overseers, or Elders, as well as the Deacons, have in some competent manner all those Qualifications; and after in a Day of solemn Prayer and Fasting, that they have ele...
Membership hardly feels meaningful when dozens or even hundreds of ‘members’ never show up. Now of course, some have good reasons for not attending church. The elderly, the sick, and those serving with the military or as missionaries are not the people I have in mind. Instead, i’m thinking of those on your membership rolls who long ago lost connection with your church. THese people should no longer be members of your church, for your sake and theirs. My own church went through this process of cl...
“Granted that most of us know some individuals who are remarkable prayer warriors, is it not nevertheless true that by and large we are better at organizing than agonizing? Better at administering than interceding? Better at fellowship than fasting? Better at entertainment than worship? Better at theological articulation than spiritual adoration? Better—God help us!—at preaching than at praying?” —D. A. Carson
“But now, God has spoken ‘in Son’—we might paraphrase, ‘in the Son revelation.’ It is not that Jesus simply mediates the revelation; he is the revelation. It is not that Jesus simply brings the word; he is himself, so to speak, the Word of God, the climactic Word. . . . [T]the author of Hebrews sees that teh climax of all the Old Testament revelation, mediated through prophets and stored in books, is not, strictly speaking, more books—but Christ Jesus himself. The New Testament books conregate a...
“Now the Pope, with all his bishops, his schools and whole synagogue, taught that his laws are necessary to salvation: therefore he was a teacher of weak and beggarly elements … he burdened and miserably tormented the Church with his wicked laws, defacing Christ and burying his Gospel. Therefore if thou wilt observe the laws of the Pope without offence of conscience, see to it thou keep them without the opinion of righteousness; for righteousness is given through Christ alone.” —Martin Luther...
“The law had its uses, blessed uses. The law should be used for its own purposes, and then it is admirable, it is divine. Take it out of its own proper use, make it a master instead of being a servant, and it is something like fire, which in your grate will comfort you, but if it masters you, it burns your house and destroys you.” —Charles Haddon Spurgeon
"As Christians we need to relearn the gospel every day. We are prone to wander, as the old hymn says, and hence we may act as if a spell has been cast over us. The Christian life is a battle to rely on the gospel, and even as Christians we are inclined to look to ourselves and trust in our own achievements rather than relying solely on the cross of Christ. In our counseling and our preaching and teaching we must summon people over and over to the cross of Christ and call them to look away from t...
“Indeed, the gospel shocks us because it undercuts human pride. God sees nothing in us that impresses him. We must forsake all our illusions about our so-called ‘goodness’ and ‘accomplishments.’ We must put our trust in Christ crucified rather than leaning on ourselves. We see our utter poverty and find our riches in Christ. If we could be righteous before God based on our works, then Christ died for nothing.” —Thomas Schreiner
"Paul saw the issue plainly. It was not just a question of circumcision and uncircumcision, of Gentile and Jewish customs. It was a matter of fundamental importance regarding the truth of the gospel, namely, of Christian freedom versus bondage. The Christian has been set free from the law in the sense that his acceptance before God depends entirely upon God’s grace in the death of Jesus Christ received by faith. To introduce the works of the law and make our acceptance depend on our obedience to...
"Did God call me on account of my holy life? Or on account of my pharisaical religion? Or on account of my prayers, fasting, and works? Never. Well, then, it is certain God did not call me on account of my blasphemies, persecutions, oppressions. What prompted Him to call me? His grace alone." —Martin Luther
“In our church in Washington, I always ask our prospective members to tell me the gospel in one minute or less. . . . Here’s what I understand the good news to be: the good news is that [God] one and only God , who is holy, made us in his image to know him. But [man] we sinned and cut ourselves off from him. In his great love, [Christ] God became a man in Jesus, lived a perfect life, and died on the cross, thus fulfilling the law himself and taking on himself the punishment for the sins of all t...
“If Jesus was resurrected, then he is the long-awaited Messiah, Christ, King, Son of God, and Prophet par excellence. And if that’s true, then we’d better pay attention to him, including his endorsement of the entire Old Testament as the Word of God. Not only that, but we have every reason to trust that he did precisely what he promised he would do—send the Holy Spirit to guide his apostles into all the truth he wanted to reveal to them for the good of the church—and then to trust the Spirit’s w...
