Quote of the Day

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions." This saying, which is found in a broad variety of lands, does not arise from the brash worldly wisdom of an incorrigible. It instead reveals deep Christian insight. At the beginning of a new year, many people have nothing better to do than to make a list of bad deeds and resolve from now on - how many such 'from-now-ons' have there already been! - to begin with better intentions, but they are still stuck in the middle of their paganism. They believe that a good intention already means a new beginning; they believe that on their own they can make a new start whenever they want. But that is an evil illusion: only God can make a new beginning with people whenever God pleases, but not people with God. Therefore, people cannot make a new beginning at all; they can only pray for one. Where people are on their own and live by their own devices, there is only the old, the past. Only where God is can there be a new beginning. We cannot command God to grant it: we can only pray to God for it. And we can pray only when we realize that we cannot do anything, that we have reached our limit, that someone else must make that new beginning……People who want to live solely by their good intentions have no idea where those intentions actually come from. It's worth a closer look. Our so-called good intentions are nothing but anxious byproducts of a weak heart that fears all kinds of evils and sins and now arms itself with very human weapons in order to go against those powers. But whoever is afraid of sin is already in the middle of it. Fear is the net that evil throws over us, so that we become entangled and soon fall. Those who are afraid have already fallen. If we are on a difficult mountain climb and are suddenly consumed with fear, we will surely stumble. Hence, such anxious good intentions do us no good. We can certainly never make a new beginning with them. How can we make a fresh start? 'No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back…' (Luke 9:62). One who guides a plow does not look back - or into the immense distance - but to the next step that must be taken. Backward glances are not a Christian thing to do. Leave fear, anxiety, and guilt behind. And look to the One who gives you a new beginning.

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote of the Day

If Jesus Christ is a Teacher only, then all He can do is to tantalize me by erecting a standard I can not attain. What is the use of presenting me with an ideal I cannot possibly come near? I am happier without knowing it. What is the good of telling me to be what I never can be--to be pure in heart, to do more than my duty, to be perfectly devoted to God?

I must know Jesus Christ as Savior before His teaching has any meaning for me other than that of an ideal which leads to despair. But when I am born again of the Spirit of God, I know that Jesus Christ did not come to teach only: He came to make me what He teaches I should be.

Oswald Chambers

Quote of the Day

The canon revelation is closed; there is no more to be added; God does not give a fresh revelation, but he rivets the old one.  When it has been forgotten, and laid in the dusty chamber of our memory, he brings it forth and cleans the picture, but does not paint a new one.  It is not by any new revelation that the Spirit comforts.  He does so by telling us old things over again he brings a fresh lamp to manifest the treasure hidden in Scripture; he unlocks the strong chests in which the truth has long lain, and he points to secret chambers filled with untold riches; but he coins no more, for enough is done.

 

Charles Spurgeon

Quote of the Day

I am quite sure that the best way to promote union is to promote truth.  It will not do for us to be all united together by yielding to one another's mistakes.  

 

Charles Spurgeon

Quote of the Day

God the Father "has been regularly and ritually confessed, but his being and work as Father has been out of the centre of concern.  It is of course true that in recent years there has been a great deal of concentration of God.  It has, however, been a mainly apologetic concern, about the basis, possiblitity and meaning of speaking about God at all, rather than a properly dogmatic discussion with in the Christian family on the basis of shared faith about he nature and character of the God who in Christ has revealed himself to his people as Father, as well as Son and spirit.  The question about God that people have been asking has been whether he exists rather than who he is.  

Thomas Smail

Quote of the Day

…we have had in recent years a Jesus movement and a charismatic movement.  The one has almost disappeared and the other is threatening to run out of steam, perhaps because each is in a different way inadequate to the gospel, which his basically a Father movement.   It is not first a Jesuology (a doctrine about Jesus) or a pneumatology (a doctrine about the Spirit) but it is a theology or even a patrology - a doctrine about God the Father.  It starts not with the cross of Jesus or with the gift of the Spirit, but with the Father who so loved the World that he gave his Son in his Spirit.

Thomas Smail

Quote of the Day

How could a child be born who is the mighty God? There's the paradox. How could a child be born in time who is the Father of eternity? The paradox is clear. There is a child. He is human. He is God. A woman will bring forth a son who made the woman who brought forth the son.....

If we could condense all the truths of Christmas into only three words, these would be the words: "God with us." We tend to focus our attention at Christmas on the infancy of Christ. The greater truth of the holiday is His deity. More astonishing than a baby in the manger is the truth that this promised baby is the omnipotent Creator of the heavens and the earth! 

- John Macarthur

Quote of the Day

Is it easy to convince someone that the Bible is the Word of God on the basis of its unity, its scientific, historical accuracy, its miracles, its archaeological evidence? I haven't found that to be the case. In a special series spread over a three-week period I presented such data at a private college in California. I felt the proof was overwhelming and not one person became a believer. Why doesn't it convince all unbelievers when it's so convincing to us? Paul said it when he wrote, "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Cor. 2:14).  Only when the Holy Spirit does His regenerating work, only as He opens the mind, tears off the scales of blindness, gives life where there is death and plants the marvelous understanding of the revelation of God, only then do people come to believe and trust in the Bible. The reason I know the Bible is true is that the Spirit of God has convinced me of it.

John MacArthur

Quote of the Day

This evening the clouds lay low on the mountains, so that sometimes we could hardly see them, and sometimes the stars were nearly all covered.  But always, just when it seemed as though the mountains were going to be quite lost in the mist, the higher peaks pushed out, and whereas the dimmer stars were veiled, the brighter ones shone through.  Even supposing the clouds had wholly covered the face of the mountains, and not a star had shone through the piled-up masses, the mountains would still have stood steadfast, and the stars would not have ceased to shine.

       

I thought of this and found it very comforting, simple as it is.  Our feelings do not affect God’s facts.  They may blow up like clouds and cover the eternal things that we do most truly believe.  We may not see the shining of the promises, but still they shine; and the strength of the hills, that is His also, is not for one moment less because of our human weakness.

       

 Heaven is no dream.  Feelings come and go like clouds, but the hills and the stars abide.

 

Amy Carmichael

Quote of the Day

I know not, but God knows;

Oh, blessed rest from fear!

All my unfolding days

To Him are plain and clear.

Each anxious, puzzled "Why?"

From doubt or dread that grows,

Finds answer in this thought;

I know not, but He knows.

I cannot, but God can;

Oh, balm for all my care!

The burden that I drop

His hand will lift and bear,

Though eagle pinions tire --

I walk where once I ran --

This is my strength, to know

I cannot, but God can.

I see not, but God sees;

Oh, all-sufficient light!

My dark and hidden way

To Him is always bright.

My strained and peering eyes

May close in restful ease,

And I in peace may sleep;

I see not, but He sees. 

  

Annie Johnson Flint

Quote of the Day

If we do not die to ourselves while our earthly life lasts, we will probably not be willing to pay the final price should our faith require it.

Erwin Lutzer

Quote of the Day

Have we - I speak to those of us who are committed Christians - have we forgotten that God's power is more clearly seen in the message of the Cross than in any political or social plan we might devise?  Might not our search for some antidote to our grevious ills be symptomatic of our lost confidence in the power of the gospel to change people from the inside out?  Do we cling to the cross with the deep conviction that it is not simply a part of our message to the world, but rightly understood it is the whole of it?.....In an effort to be "relevant" we now face the temptation of being diverted from our mission and becoming involved doing what is good while bypassing what is best….

Our Two Dangers

In our desperate moment in history we face two dangers.  The first is to say that we must retreat from our cultural and political battles to be true to the supremacy of the cross.  This view point is right in emphasizing that our primary mission is to preach the gospel, but it fails because we end up preaching to ourselves…Those older fundamentalists were right in holding to the centrality of the Christian message but wrong in teaching that he Christian faith could be lived in isolation from the culture and its institutions.  Thus the cross, though exalted among the faithful, was hidden from the world.

The second danger is that we become so overburdened with social/political agendas that our message is lost amid these cultural skirmishes.  The church has always faced the temptation to modify the gospel or make it secondary to a given political, philosophical, or cultural agenda.  When this happens, Christians have exposure to the culture, but the cross does not.  Again hidden.

Jacques Ellul, in The Subversion of Christianity, wrote, "Each generation thinks it has finally discovered the truth…Christianity becomes an empty bottle that successive cultures fill with all kinds of things."  Regrettably, the Christian bottle has been filled with many different agendas.  Early in the history of the church, the Cross was obscured by sacramentalism, the idea that salvation was a grace given through the rituals of the church.  Salvation was not longer a personal relationship with God, but was reduced to partnership with the ecclesiastical structure.  The bottle w was emptied and filled with liturgy that could never bring a soul to God.  The Cross became an ornament hung around the neck, not an instrument that changed the heart.

Rationalism and humanism arose in the eighteenth century, the fruits of the Enlightenment.  Religion, it insisted, must conform to our understanding.  Whatever seemed contrary to our sensibilities was eliminated.  Miracles, for example, were discounted as being out of sync with the enlightened cultural mind - set.  The Unitarians argued that God was too good to send man to hell, and the Universalists believed man was too good to be sent there.  The Cross became a symbol of sentimental love, not the means by which Christ shed His blood to reconcile men to God.

Today the bottle of Christianity is often filled with physiology.  Since Freud, the need for a religious conversion has been eliminated.  Secular psychology denies that man fell from some previous state of holiness.  Since he has not fallen, he has no need to be picked up, at least not by God.  Salvation is simply a matter of having a healthy self-image.  The cross of Christ is a symbol of man's alienation from himself; a reminder that man must be reconciled to who he already is.

The New Age movement, in combining Christianity with any number of Eastern/occultic ideas ignores the Cross altogether.  At best it is a symbol of self-awareness, a reminder of our need to get in touch with the world beyond us.  According to this movement the Cross does not humiliate us; it exalts us.

Some political activists have filled the Christian bottle with a strategy for political reform.  Salvation, it appears, is electing conservatives to national and local office.  Important though this might be, we must always remember that God is neither Republican nor Democrat.  When the Cross is wrapped in the flag of a political party, it is always distorted or diminished.  Even for some who have experienced its power, the Cross has become an addendum to what is thought to be more pressing agendas.

……Ultimately the ballot box cannot save us; only God can.  And the Cross is the centerpiece of His agenda.  Only when the Cross stands alone, unencumbered with other religions, philosophies, or political ideologies, does it retain its power.

Erwin Lutzer

Quote of the Day

Be brave for my sake, dearest Maria, even if this letter is your only token of my love this Christmas-tide.  We shall both experience a few dark hours - why should we disguise that from each other?  We shall ponder the incomprehensibility of our lot and be assailed by the question of why, over and above the darkness already enshrouding humanity, we should be subjected to the bitter anguish of a separation whose purpose  we fail to understand….And then, just when everything is bearing down on us to such an extent that we can scarcely withstand it, the Christmas message comes to tell us that all our ideas are wrong, and that what we take to be evil and dark is really good and light because it comes from God.  Our eyes are at fault, that is all.  God is in the manger, wealth in poverty, light in darkness, succor in abandonment.  No evil can befall us; whatever men may do to us, they cannot but serve the God who….rules the world and our lives.

From Dietrich Bonhoeffer's letter to his fiancee Maria von Wedemeyer from prison, December 13, 1943

Quote of the Day

No one has yet believed in God and the kingdom of God, no one has yet heard about the realm of the resurrected, and not been homesick from that hour, waiting and looking forward joyfully to being released from bodily existence.

Whether we are young or old makes no difference.  What are twenty or thirty or fifty years in the site of God?  And which of us knows how near he or she may already be to that goal?  That life only really begins when it ends here on earth, that all that is here is only the prologue before the curtain goes up - that is for young and old alike to think about.  Why are we so afraid when we think about death?.... Death is  only dreadful for those who live in d read and fear of it.  Death is not wild and terrible, if only we can be still and hold fast to God's Word.  Death is not bitter, if we have not become bitter ourselves.  Death is grace, the greatest gift of grace that God gives to people who believe in him.  Death is mild, death is sweet and gentle, it beckons to us with heavenly power, if only we realize that it is the gateway to our homeland, the tabernacle of joy, the everlasting kingdom of peace.  How do we know that dying is so dreadful?  Who knows whether, in our human fear and anguish we are only shivering and shuddering at the most glorious, heavenly, blessed event in the world?  Death is hell and night and cold, if it is not transformed by our faith.  But that is just what is so marvelous, that we can transform death.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote of the Day

My song shall bless the Lord of all.
My praise shall climb to his abode ;
Thee, Saviour, by that name I call,
The great Supreme, the mighty God.

 Without beginning or decline,
Object of faith, and not of sense ;
Eternal ages saw him shine,
He shines eternal ages hence.

 As much, when in the manger laid,
Almighty ruler of the sky,
As when the six days' work he  made
Fill'd all the morning stars with joy.

 A cheerful confidence I feel,
My well-placed hopes with joy I see ;
My bosom glows with heavenly zeal,
To worship Him who died for me.

 As Man, he pities my complaint,
His power and truth are all divine ;
He will not fail, he cannot faint ;
Salvation's sure, and must be mine.

William Cowper

Quote of the Day

Sadly and ironically, in its attempt to achieve cultural relevance, mainstream evangelicalism has become essentially irrelevant.  As Os Guinness points out, the seductive promise of 'relevance' is, in reality, the road to irrelevance.  When the church markets itself like the world, it loses the distinctiveness of its message and irretrievably compromises the gospel.  The entertainment value may be high, attracting throngs each week; but the eternal value is conspicuously absent, as those same people go home unchallenged and unchanged.

-John Macarthur- 

Quote of the Day

Any amount of nonsense has been talked about the need of novelty, and in that sense there is nothing particularly meritorious about being modern. A man who seriously describes his creed as Modernism might just as well invent a creed called Mondayism, meaning that he puts special faith in the fancies that occurred to him on Monday; or a creed called Morningism, meaning that he believed in the thoughts that occurred to him in the morning but not in the afternoon.

Modernity is only the moment of time in which we happen to find ourselves, and nobody who thinks will suppose that it is bound to be superior, either to the time that comes after it or to the time that went before. But in a relative and rational sense we may congratulate ourselves on knowing the news of the moment, and having realized recent facts or discoveries that some people still ignore.

- G. K. Chesterton

Quote of the Day

Holiness deals with the thoughts and intents, the purposes, the aims, the objects, the motives of men. Morality does but skim the surface, holiness goes into the very caverns of the great deep; holiness requires that the heart shall be set on God, and that it shall beat with love to him. The moral man may be complete in his morality without that.

Methinks I might draw such a parallel as this. Morality is a sweet, fair corpse, well washed and robed, and even embalmed with spices; but holiness is the living man, as fair and as lovely as the other, but having life. Morality lies there, of the earth, earthy, soon to be food for corruption and worms; holiness waits and pants with heavenly aspirations, prepared to mount and dwell in immortality beyond the stars. These twain are of opposite nature: the one belongs to this world, the other belongs to that world beyond the skies.

It is not said in heaven, "Moral, moral, moral art thou, O God!" but "Holy, holy. holy art thou. O Lord!" You note the difference between the two words at once. The one, how icy cold; the other, oh, how animated! Such is mere morality, and such is holiness! Moralist! — I know I speak to many such — remember that your best morality will not save you; you must have more than this, for without holiness — and that not of yourself, it must be given you of the Spirit of God — without holiness, no man shall see the Lord.

Charles Spurgeon

Quote of the Day

Unbelief looks at the difficulty. Faith regards the promise. Unbelief therefore makes our work a service of bondage. Faith realizes it as a “labour of love.” Unbelief drags on in sullen despondency. Faith makes the patience, with which it content to wait for success, “the patience of hope.” As every difficulty (as we have hinted,) is the fruit of unbelief; so will they all ultimately be overcome by the perseverance of faith. To gain therefore an active and powerful spring of renewed exertion, we must strike our roots deeper into the soil of faith. For the work will ever prosper or decline, as we depend upon an Almighty arm, or an arm of flesh. Few, probably, even of the most devoted servants of God, had duly counted the cost before they put their hand to the plough; and from the want of these preparatory exercises of faith, arises that oppressive faintness which gives the enemy such an advantage in distressing our peace, and enfeebling our exertions. But after all, the grand secret is habitually to have eye upon Christ. Peter–looking at the waves instead of the Saviour–”began to sink.” We too–if we look at the difficulties of our work, and forget the upholding arm of our ever-present Head–shall sink in despondency. Believe–wait–work–are the watchwords of the Ministry. Believing the promise, gives the power to wait. Waiting supplies strength for work, and such working “is not in vain in the Lord.

Charles Bridges

Quote of the Day

When Christ divorces we may....…if Christ ever abandons and discards his church, then a man may divorce his wife.  And if the blood-bought church, under the new covenant, ever ceases to be the bride of Christ, then a wife may legitimately divorce her husband.  But as long as Christ keeps his covenant with the church, and as long as the church, by the omnipotent grace of God, remains the chosen people of Christ, then the very meaning of marriage will include: What God has joined, only God can separate.

 

John Piper

Quote of the Day

Be brave for my sake, dearest Maria, even if this letter is your only token of my love this Christmas-tide.  We shall both experience a few dark hours - why should we disguise that from each other?  We shall ponder the incomprehensibility of our lot and be assailed by the question of why, over and above the darkness already enshrouding humanity, we should be subjected to the bitter anguish of a separation whose purpose  we fail to understand….And then, just when everything is bearing down on us to such an extent that we can scarcely withstand it, the Christmas message comes to tell us that all our ideas are wrong, and that what we take to be evil and dark is really good and light because it comes from God.  Our eyes are at fault, that is all.  God is in the manger, wealth in poverty, light in darkness, succor in abandonment.  No evil can befall us; whatever men may do to us, they cannot but serve the God who….rules the world and our lives.

From Dietrich Bonhoeffer's letter to his fiancee Maria von Wedemeyer from prison, December 13, 1943

Quote of the Day

Notice God's unutterable waste of saints, according to the judgment of the world. God plants His saints in the most useless places. We say - God intends me to be here because I am so useful. Jesus never estimated His life along the line of the greatest use. God puts His saints where they will glorify Him, and we are no judges at all of where that is. 

 

Oswald Chambers

Quote of the Day

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. 

C. S. Lewis

Quote of the Day

You are required to believe, to preach, and to teach what the Bible says is true, not what you want the Bible to say is true.

R. C. Sproul

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It is not… by an earthly leader, by a worldly hierarchy, by an uniformity of worship, of liturgy, by crosses, miters, censers, it is not by all these things that the unity of the Church is manifested; she leaves to the world these miserable elements. The true Church of Christ has no other bond than the unity of her faith and confession, in love and holiness of life. With her, all externals, which men regard of so high importance, are altogether secondary. All is free for her, saving her Jesus. When Rome points to her false and dead unity, the Church of Christ is to present a true and living unity; a UNITY and not an UNIFORMITY. 

 

Jean Henri Merle D'aubigne

Quote of the Day

1. Father, long before creation

Thou hadst chosen us in love,

And that love so deep, so moving,

Draws us close to Christ above.

Still it keeps us, still it keeps us

Firmly fixed in Christ alone.

2. Though the world may change its fashion,

Yet our God is e'er the same;

His compassion and His covenant

Through all ages will remain.

God's own children,

God's own children

Must forever praise His name.

3. God's compassion is my story,

Is my boasting all the day;

Mercy free and never failing

Moves my will, directs my way.

God so loved us,

God so loved us

That His only Son He gave.

4. Loving Father now before Thee

We will ever praise Thy love,

And our songs will sound unceasing

'Til we reach our home above,

Giving glory,

giving glory

To our God and to the Lamb.

Chinese Hymn written in c. 1952 during the Cultural Revolution, a time of brutal persecution for Chinese Christians.

Quote of the Day

We must never hide our colours. There are times when we must dash to the front and court the encounter, when we see that our Captain's honour demands it. Let us neither be ashamed nor a afraid. Our Lord Jesus deserves that we should yield ourselves as willing sacrifices in defense of his faith. Ease, reputation, life itself, must go for the name and faith of Jesus. If in the heat of the battle our good name or our life must be risked to win the victory, then let us say, "In this battle some of us must fall; why should not I? I will take part and lot with my Master and bear reproach for His sake." Only brave soldiers are worthy of our our Lord. Those who sneak into the rear, that they may be comfortable, are not worthy of the kingdom....

Everybody admires Luther! Yes, yes; but you do not want any one else to do the same to-day. When you go to the Zoological Gardens you all admire the bear; but how would you like a bear at home, or a bear wandering loose about the street? You tell me it would be unbearable, and no doubt you are right.

So, we admire a man who was firm in the faith, say four hundred years ago; and the past ages are sort of a bear-pit or iron cage for him; but such a man today is a nuisance, and must be put down. Call him a narrow-minded bigot, or give him a worse name if you can think of one. Yet imagine that in those ages past, Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and their compeers had said, "the world is out of order; but if we try to set it right we shall only make a great row, and get ourselves into disgrace. Let us go to our chambers, put on our night-caps, and sleep over the bad times, and perhaps when we wake up things will have grown better."

It is to-day as it was in the Reformers' days. Decision is needed... We who have had the gospel passed to us by martyr hands dare not trifle with it, nor sit by and hear it denied by traitors, who pretend to love it, but inwardly abhor every line of it. The faith I hold bears on it the marks of my ancestors. Shall I deny their faith, for which they left their native land to sojourn here? Shall we cast away the treasure which was handed to us through prisons, or came to us charred with the flames of Smithfield?

...Stand fast my beloved, in the name of God! I, your brother in Christ, entreat you to abide in the truth. Quit yourselves like men, be strong. The Lord sustain you for Jesus' sake. Amen. 

 

Charles Spurgeon

Quote of the Day

I compare the troubles which we have to undergo in the course of the year to a great bundle of wood, far too large for us to lift. But God does not require us to carry the whole at once. He mercifully unties the bundle, and gives us first one stick, which we are to carry today, and then another, which we are to carry tomorrow, and so on. This we might easily manage, if we would only take the burden appointed for each day; but we choose to increase our troubles by carrying yesterday's stick over again today, and adding tomorrow's burden to the load, before we are required to bear it. 

 

John Newton

Quote of the Day

O Almighty and Everlasting God! How terrible is this world! Behold, it openeth its mouth to swallow me up, and I have so little trust in Thee!.....How weak is the flesh, and Satan how strong! If it is only in the strength of this world that I must put my trust, all is over!......My last hour is come, my condemnation has been pronounced!......O God! O God!......O God! do thou help me against the wisdom of the world! Do this; thou shouldest do this.....thou alone.....for this is not my work, but Thine. I have nothing to do here, nothing to contend for with these great ones of the world! I should desire to see my days flow on peaceful and happy. But the cause is Thine.....and it is a righteous and eternal cause. O Lord! help me! Faithful and unchangeable God! In no man do I place my trust. It would be vain! All that is of man is uncertain; all that cometh of man fails....O God! my God, hearest Thou me not?.....My God, art Thou dead?.....No! Thou canst not die! Thou hidest thyself only! Thou hast chosen me for this work. I know it well!.....Act, then, O God!......stand at my side, for the sake of thy well-beloved Jesus Christ, who is my defense, my shield, and my strong tower...................Lord! where stayest Thou?......O my God! where art Thou?,,,,,,Come! come! I am ready!.....I am ready to lay down my life for Thy truth.....patient as a lamb. For it is the cause of justice - it is Thine!.....I will never separate myself from Thee, neither now nor through eternity!.....And though the world should be filled with devils, - though my body, which is still the work of Thy hands, should be slain, be stretched upon the pavement, be cut in pieces.....reduced to ashes.....my soul is Thine!....Yes! Thy Word is my assurance of it. My soul belongs to Thee! It shall abide for ever with Thee.....Amen!....O God! help me!.....Amen!

Martin Luther

The second morning of Luther's appearance at the Diet of Worms.

Quote of the Day

Duties are ours, events are the Lord's. When our faith goeth to meddle with events, and to hold a court (if I may so speak) upon God's providence, and beginneth to say, "How wilt Thou do this or that?" we lose ground. We have nothing to do there. It is our part to let the Almighty exercise His own office, and steer His own helm. There is nothing left to us but to see how we may be approved of Him, and how we may roll the weight of our weak souls in well-doing upon Him who is God Omnipotent.

Samuel Rutherford

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 Did Jesus satisfy God’s justice on the cross? Or do we satisfy God’s justice when we believe?

Michael Horton

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 Love is the Queen of the Christian graces. It is a holy disposition given to us when we are born again by God. True spiritual love is characterized by meekness and gentleness, yet it is vastly superior to the courtesies and kindnesses of the flesh.

We must be careful not to confuse human sentimentality, carnal pleasantries, and human amiability with true spiritual love. The love God commands, first to Himself and then to others, is not human love. If we indulgently allow our children to grow up with little or, no Scriptural discipline, Proverbs plainly says we do not love them, regardless of the human sentimentality and affection we may feel for them. Love is not a sentimental pampering of one another with a loose indifference as to our walk and obedience before the Lord. Glossing over one another’s faults to ingratiate ourselves in their esteem is not spiritual love.

The true nature of Christian love is a righteous principle which seeks the highest good of others. The exercise of love is to be in strict conformity to the revealed will of God. We must love in the truth. Love among the brethren is far more than an agreeable society where views are the same. It is loving them for what we see of Christ in them, loving them for Christ’s sake.

The Lord Jesus Himself is our example. He was not only thoughtful, gentle, self-sacrificing and patient, but He also corrected His mother, used a whip in the Temple, severely scolded His doubting disciples, and denounced hypocrites. True spiritual love is above all faithful to God and uncompromising towards all that is evil. We cannot declare, ‘Peace and Safety’ when in reality there is spiritual decay and ruin!

True spiritual love is very difficult to exercise because it is not our natural love. By nature we would rather love sentimentally and engender good feelings. Also many times true spiritual love is not received in love, but is hated as the Pharisees hated it. We must pray that God will fill us with His love and enable us to exercise it without dissimulation toward all.

 

Arthur Pink

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Those who think too much of themselves don’t think enough.

  

Amy Carmichael

Quote of the Day

Where is it said (in the Bible) that Christ doth intercede for men that they may have faith if they do such and such things? Nay, what condition can rationally be assigned this desire?  Some often intimate that it is," if they suffer the Spirit to have his work upon their hearts, and obey the grace of God." Now, what is it to obey the grace of God? Is it not to believe? Therefore it seems that Christ intercedeth for them that they may believe, upon condition that they do believe.(!)

John Owen

Quote of the Day

Is life to be defined by what I pursue, or must my pursuit be defined by what life was meant to be?

Ravi Zacharias

Quote of the Day

All ignorance is invincible for us. No ignorance is invincible for the grace of God. The more we endeavor of ourselves to obtain wisdom, the nearer we approach to folly...not that this invincible ignorance excuses the sinner, otherwise there would be no sin in the world.

 

Martin Luther

Quote of the Day

While it is nice to have our problems solved and difficulties removed by others, it is not always best for us. Instead of continuing to answer your questions, I might be of more service if I put you in the way of answering them for yourself. That man is the greatest help to me who casts me back upon God and stimulates me to the study of his Word. 'Study', I say, for while there are many who read it daily, and use the concordance, scarcely any study it. The first requirment is, of course, a spirit of dependence upon the Lord(distrusting our own competency), yet prayer is not meant to encourage slothfulness, and is no substitute for the diligent use of whatever talents God has bestowed upon us...

 

A. W. Pink

Quote of the Day

Lord, I am hunted with such a temptation, dogged with such a lust, either thou must pardon it, or I am damned; mortify it, or I shall be a slave to it; take me into the bosom of thy love, for Christ's sake; castle me in the arms of thy everlasting strength, it is in thy power to save from, or give me up into, the hands of my enemy. I have no confidence in myself or any other: into thy hands I commit my cause my life, and rely on thee.

William Gurnall

Quote of the Day

Why is discipline important? Discipline teaches us to operate by principle rather than desire. Saying no to our impulses (even the ones that are not inherently sinful) puts us in control of our appetites rather than vice versa. It deposes our lust and permits truth, virtue, and integrity to rule our minds instead.

John Macarthur

Quote of the Day

Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.

Charles Spurgeon

Quote of the Day

It is not the level of our spirituality that we can depend on. It is God and nothing less than God, for the work is God's and the call is God's and everything is summoned by Him and to His purposes, the whole scene, the whole mess, the whole package - our bravery and our cowardice, our love and our selfishness, our strengths and our weaknesses. The God who could take a murderer like Moses and an adulterer like David and a traitor like Peter and make of them strong servants of His is a God who can also redeem savage Indians, using as instruments of His peace a conglomeration of sinners who sometimes look like heroes and sometimes like villains, for "we are no better than pots of earthenware to contain this treasure [the revelation of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ], and this proves that such transcendent power does not come from us, but is God's alone"(2 Cor. 4:7, NEB).

We are not always sure where the horizon is. We would not know which end is up were it not for the shimmering pathway of light falling on the white sea. The One who laid the earth's foundations and settled its dimensions knows where the lines are drawn. He gives all the light we need for trust and for obedience.

 

Elisabeth Elliot

Quote of the Day

Postulating the nonexistence of God, atheism immediately commits the blunder of an absolute negation, which is self-contradictory. For, to sustain the belief that there is no God, it has to demonstrate infinite knowledge, which is tantamount to saying, "I have infinite knowledge that there is no being in existence with infinite knowledge."

Ravi Zacharias

Quote of the Day

When the leaders of the army wished to know what they ought to do, they examined into what they had done when they felt happiest and nearest to God: such are not the means prescribed by Heaven. They should have asked themselves, "What does God command us in His word?" It is not by our feelings that He will guide us, but by His commandments. Our feelings may lead us astray. There is a way which seemeth right to a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. The Word of God never misleads us. A Christian's walk is in the Divine commandments: to act according to one's own sensations, one's interior illumination, is the walk of the mystic.

 

J. H. Merle D'aubigne

Quote of the Day

The plain fact is, dear reader, that to the present generation the Most High of Holy Writ is 'the unknown God."  It is just because people today are so ignorant of the Divine character and so lacking in godly fear, that they are quite in the dark as to the nature and glory of divine justice, presuming to arraign it.  This is an age of blatant irreverence, wherein lumps of animate clay dare to prescribe what the Almighty ought and ought not to do.  Our forefathers sowed the wind, and today their children are reaping the whirlwind.  The "divine rights of kings"  was scoffed at and tabooed by the sires, and now their offspring repudiate the "divine rights of the King of kings."  Unless the supposed "rights" of the creature are "respected," then our moderns have no respect for the Creator, and if His high sovereignty and absolute dominion over all be insisted upon, they hesitate not to vomit forth their condemnation of Him.  And, "evil communications corrupt good manners" (I Cor.  15:33)!  God's own people are in danger of being infected by the poisonous gas which now fills the air of the religious world. 

Arthur Pink

Quote of the Day

My Dad on Romans 7:

To the believer, it(the law) still serves to keep our 'fleshy self'(carnal)identified....

Beware of the viewing of self as 'this body'.  We are not what we see and feel in the flesh - the body is the interface for the real me to interact with the physical world….'sin' would have us believe it is our true master, stifling progressive work by instilling a habitual defensive posture.  So, do believers sin and if so, why?  Yes they do sin, but there is now a difference - the 'lusting after the Spirit (Gal.5:16-17) walking and being led by the Spirit, not the flesh.  The law still serves to make clear the sins still dwelling in our fleshly members but when looked to for righteousness it still seems defeating!...So, the goal of the believer is not the perfection of action(law) but perfection of cooperation with the work of God's spirit in us - a completely trusting submitter…(so what do) we expect while we live in our bodies…There is a 'law'(principle, truth) that when I seek(will) to do good, evil will also be at my side seeking to counter it….Many deem themselves failure even when they obey, not knowing what to make of that part of them that did not want to…this is that principle at work in us - accept it as fact so as to be aware of resistance to my submission to God. ..The war is ever present….Never, never accept a defeatists attitude - as clarified earlier in Romans 6, the war is won, but as clarified here, the enemy has not yielded. …When inconsistencies can be accepted as normal and  'lived with' there is cause for concern - this is not normal…These inconsistencies stir in us a 'groaning' as with creation for the redemption of our body' )Rom8:21-23…The reality of the conflict reminds us to be humble - realizing our steady, unending dependence upon our Savior…What are we actively pursuing now?  IS it more the removal of something or the engrafting of what is better?  It is easy to develop a life of 'do nots' …We are more to be defined by what we do than what we don't do…We take comfort in the work of the Spirit 'pricking our hearts not having to fret over the 'probability' of our abandoning the faith.

 

Don Lambert

Quote of the Day

Our great honor lies in being just what Jesus was and is. To be accepted by those who accept Him, rejected by all who reject Him, loved by those who love Him and hated by everyone that hates Him. What greater glory could come to any man?"

A. W. Tozer

Quote of the Day

To be poor is  not always pleasant, but worse things than that happen at sea.  Small shoes are apt to pinch, but not if you have a small foot; if we have little means it will be well to have little desires. Poverty is no shame, but being discontented with it is.

 John Ploughman (Charles Spurgeon)

Quote of the Day

By all the castings down of His servants God is glorified, for they are led to magnify Him when He sets them on their feet, and even while prostrate in the dust their faith yields Him praise.  They speak all the more sweetly of His faithfulness, and are the more firmly established in HIs love.  Such mature men as some elderly preachers are, could scarcely have been produced if they had not been emptied from vessel to vessel, and made to see their own emptiness and the vanity of all things round about them.  Glory be to God for the furnace, the hammer, and the file.  Heaven shall be all the fuller of bliss because we have been filled with anguish here below, and earth shall be better tilled because of our training in adversity.

The lesson of wisdom is, be not dismayed by soul-trouble.  Count it no strange thing, but a part of ordinary ministerial experience.  Should the power of depression be more than ordinary, think not that all is over with your usefulness. Cast not away your confidence, for it hath great recompense of reward.  Even if the enemy's foot be on your neck, expect to rise and overthrow him.  Cast the burden of the present, along with the sin of the past and the fear of the future, upon the Lord, who forsaketh not HIs saints.  Live by the day - ay, by the hour. Put no trust in frames or feelings. Care more for a grain of faith than a ton of excitement.  Trust in God alone, and lean not on the needs of human help.  Be not surprised when friends fail you: it is a failing world.  Never count upon immutability in man: inconstancy you may reckon upon without fear of disappointment. The disciples of Jesus forsook Him; be not amazed if your adherents wander away to other teachers: as they were not your all when with you, all is not gone from you with their departure.  Serve God with all your might while the candle is burning, and then when it goes out for a season, you will have less to regret.  Be content to be nothing, for that is what you are.  When your own emptiness is painfully forced upon your consciousness, chide yourself that you ever dreamed  of being full, except with the Lord.  Set small store by present rewards, be grateful for earnests by the way, but look for the recompensing joy hereafter.  Continue with double earnestness to serve your Lord when no visible result is before you.  Any simpleton can follow the narrow path in the light: faith's rare wisdom enables us to march on in the dark with infallible accuracy, since she places her hand in that of her Great Guide.  Between this and heaven there may be rougher weather yet, but it is all provided for by our covenant Head.  In nothing let us be turned aside from the path which the divine call has urged us to pursue.  Come fair or come foul, the pulpit is our watch-tower, and the ministry our warfare; be it ours, when we cannot see the face of our God, to trust under the shadow of His wings.

Charles Spurgeon

Quote of the Day

Faith is reason at rest in God.

Charles Spurgeon

Quote of the Day

Our Savior did not use any means which might enlist man's lower nature on his side. When I have heard of large congregations gathered together by the music of a fine choir, I have remembered that the same thing is done at the opera house and the music-hall, and I have felt no joy. When we have heard of crowds enchanted by the sublime music of the pealing organ, I have seen in the fact rather a glorification of St. Cecilia than of Jesus Christ. Our Lord trusted in no measure or degree to the charms of music for the establishing his throne. He has not given to his disciples the slightest intimation that they are to employ the attractions of the concert room to promote the kingdom of heaven.

I find no rubric in Scripture commanding Paul to clothe himself in robes of blue, scarlet, or violet; neither do I find Peter commanded to wear a surplice, an alb, or a chasuble. The Holy Spirit has not cared even to hint at a surpliced choir, or at banners, processions, and processional hymns. Now, if our Lord had arranged a religion of fine shows, and pompous ceremonies, and gorgeous architecture, and enchanting, music, and bewitching incense, and the like, we could have comprehended its growth; but he is "a root out of a dry ground", for he owes nothing to any of these.

Christianity has been infinitely hindered by the musical, the aesthetic, and the ceremonial devices of men, but it has never been advantaged by them, no, not a jot. The sensuous delights of sound and sight have always been enlisted on the side of error, but Christ has employed nobler and more spiritual agencies. Things which fascinate the senses are left to be the chosen instruments of Antichrist, but the gospel, disdaining Saul's armor, goes forth in the natural simplicity of its own might, like David, with sling and stone. Our holy religion owes nothing whatever to any carnal means; so far as they are concerned, it is "a root out of a dry ground".

Charles Spurgeon

Quote of the Day

Slavish fear makes the naughty heart imprison truth in his conscience, because, if that had its liberty and authority in the soul,it would imprison, yea, execute every lust that rules the roost; and he that imprisons truth in his own bosom, will hardly lie in prison himself as a witness for truth.

William Gurnall

Quote of the Day

But although we maintain the sacred Word of God against gainsayers, it does not follow that we shall forthwith implant the certainty which faith requires in their hearts. Profane men think religion rests only on opinion, and therefore, that they may not believe foolishly, or on slight grounds, desire and insist to have it proved by reason that Moses and the prophets were divinely inspired. But I answer that the testimony of the Spirit is superior to reason. For as God alone can properly bear witness to his own words, so these words will not obtain full credit in the hearts of men, until they are sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit. The same Spirit, therefore, who spoke by the mouth of prophets, must penetrate our hearts, in order to convince us that they faithfully delivered the message with which they were divinely intrusted.

John Calvin

Quote of the Day

It is a bad indication when, in any period, men will so exalt their confessions that they force the Scriptures to a secondary importance, illustrated in one era, when as Tulloch remarks: 'Scripture as a witness, disappeared behind the Augsburg Confession" ...No decrees of councils; no ordinances of synods; no "standard" of doctrines; no creed or confession, is to be urged as authority in forming the opinions of men. They may be valuable for some purposes, but not for this; they may be referred to as interesting parts of history, but not to form the faith of Christians; they may be used in the church to express its belief, not to form it.

L. S. Chafer