Quote of the Day

We Lutherans have gathered like eagles round the carcase of cheap grace, and there we have drunk of the poison which has killed the life of following Christ.  It is true, of course, that we have paid the doctrine of pure grace divine honors unparalleled in Christendom, in fact we have exalted that doctrine to the position of God himself.   Everywhere Luther's formula has been repeated, but its truth perverted into self-deception.  So long as our Church holds the correct doctrine of justification, there is no doubt whatever that she is a justified Church!  So they said, thinking that we must vindicate our Lutheran heritage by making this grace available on the cheapest and easiest terms.  To be 'Lutheran' must mean that we leave the following of Christ to legalists, Calvinists, and enthusiasts - and all this for the sake of grace.  We justified the world, and condemned as heretics those who tried to follow Christ.  The result was that a nation became Christian and Lutheran, but at the cost of true discipleship.  The price it was called upon to pay was all too cheap.   Cheap grace had won the day.

But do we also realize that this cheap grace has turned back upon us like a boomerang?  The price we are having to pay to-day in the shape of the collapse of the organized Church is only the inevitable consequence of our policy of making grace available to all at too low a cost.  We gave away the word and sacraments wholesale, we baptized, confirmed, and absolved a whole nation unasked and without condition.  Our humanitarian sentiment made us give that which was holy to the scornful and unbelieving.  We poured forth unending streams of grace.  But the call to follow Jesus in the narrow way was hardly ever heard.  Where were those truths which impelled the early Church to institute the catechumenate, which enabled a strict watch to be kept over the frontier between the Church and the world, and afforded adequate protection for costly grace?  What had happened to all those warnings of Luther's against preaching the gospel in such a manner as to make men rest secure in their ungodly living?  Was there ever a more terrible or disastrous instance of the Christianizing the world than this?  What are those three thousand Saxons put to death by Charlemagne compared with the millions of spiritual corpses in the country to-day?  

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote of the Day

 If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next.  It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.

- C. S. Lewis

Quote of the Day

 One of the great evils of the time is that of deliberating about a plain command of

Christ, and asking, “What will be the result of it?” What have you to do with results?

“But if I follow Christ in all things, I may lose my position.” What have you to do with

that? When a soldier is bidden to go up to the cannon’s mouth, he is very likely to lose

his “position,” and something else; but he is bound to do it. “Oh, but I might lose my

opportunities of usefulness!” What do you mean? That you are going to do evil that

good may come? That is what it comes to.

 Charles Spurgeon

Quote of the Day

…there is a fact that we must never forget; namely that the Reformers are not our masters:  "One is our Master, even Christ."  Luther held opinions which would shock the feelings of Episcopalians, of Baptists, or Presbyterians, or of all together…  The writings of Luther do not make part of the Bible; and he declares himself that he does not wish men to believe in him, but only in Christ.  We must understand the vast difference between the most eminent doctors - Augustine, Wickliffe, Luther, Calvin, Crammer - and the word of God.

 

Jean Henri Merle D'aubigne

Quote of the Day

The nature of Christ’s salvation is woefully misrepresented by the present-day evangelist.  He announces a Savior from hell rather than a Savior from sin.  And that is why so many are fatally deceived, for there are multitudes who wish to escape the Lake of fire who have no desire to be delivered from their carnality and worldliness.

- A. W. Pink

Quote of the Day

Many times in my life God has asked me to wait when I wanted to move forward.  He has kept me in the dark when I asked for light.  I like to see progress.  I look for evidence that God is at least doing something. If the Shepherd leads us beside still waters when we were hoping for whitewater excitement, it is hard to believe that anything vital is taking place.  God is silent.   The house is silent.  The phone doesn't ring.  The mailbox is empty.  The stillness is hard to bear - and God knows that.  He knows our frame and remembers that we are made of dust….Of course for most of us this test of waiting does not take place in a silent and empty house, but in the course of regular work and appointments and taxpaying and grocery buying and trying to have the car fixed and get the storm windows up; daily decisions have to go on being made, responsibilities fulfilled families provided for, employers satisfied.  Can we accept patience-taxing ordinary things alongside the four-alarm fires of our lives?................

The longer I live, the more fully I am convinced that the Lord is in charge of everything on this complicated Earth and that nothing happens without His permission.  It's one of the great advantages of old age to be so completely sure of that.  God almighty is sovereign.  He is the One who is paramount, autonomous, unlimited, supreme…the absolute ruler of everything.

It seems to me that our modern church life, with its emphasis on cozy friendship with God, has deprived us somewhat of an awe-filled appreciation for His sovereignty.  It's not that we take issue with it, exactly.  We recognize His hand at work at startling or spectacular moments.  We extol His power to save when He has just protected us from a car accident, we marvel at His glory when we visit the Grand Canon, and we remember the mystery of His ways when somebody dies.  However, as we plod through the ordinary middle ground of our lives, the long distances between the punctuation marks of exultation and desolation, we fail to appreciate God's sovereignty.  We find it particularly hard to comprehend, much less believe, that a good God could still be in charge when our ordinary life is a relentless string of difficulties or when disasters strike.

He is "Most High over the earth" (Psalm 83:18), He is most high over our ordinary muddles and He is most high over what may seem to be catastrophes.  He is most high over international affairs…and all the human squabbles that have ever cropped up.  He is in charge of destruction and He is in charge off salvation.

 

Elisabeth Elliot

Quote of the Day

Yea, "new every morning," though we may awake,

Our hearts with old sorrow beginning to ache;

With old work unfinished when night stayed our hand,

With new duties waiting, unknown and unplanned;

With old care still pressing, to fret and to vex,

With new problems rising, ours minds to perplex;

In ways long familiar, in paths yet untrod,

Oh, new every morning the mercies of God!

His faithfulness fails not; it meets each new day

With guidance for every new step of the way;

New grace for new trials, new trust for old fears,

New patience for bearing the wrongs of the years,

New strength for new burdens, new courage for old,

New faith for whatever the day may unfold;

As fresh for each need as the dew on the sod;

Oh, new every morning the mercies of God!

Annie Johnson Flint

Quote of the Day

Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important. 

C. S. Lewis

Quote of the Day

O my God, what must I do?

Thou alone the way canst show;

Thou canst save me in this hour;

I have neither will nor power:

God, if over all thou art,

Greater than my sinful heart,

All thy power on me be shown,

Take away the heart of stone.

Take away my darling sin,

Make me willing to be clean;

Make me willing to receive

All thy goodness waits to give.

Force me, Lord, with all to part;

Tear these idols from my heart;

Now thy love almighty show,

Make even me a creature new.

Jesus, mighty to renew,

Work in me to will and do;

Turn my nature's rapid tide,

Stem the torrent of my pride;

Stop the whirlwind of my will;

Speak, and bid the sun stand still;

Now thy love almighty show,

Make even me a creature new.

Arm of God, thy strength put on;

Bow the heavens, and come down;

All my unbelief o'erthrow;

Lay th' aspiring mountain low:

Conquer thy worst foe in me,

Get thyself the victory;

Save the vilest of the race;

Force me to be saved by grace.

- Amazingly, this is from a book collection of hymns by JOHN WESLEY

Quote of the Day

Of them(the Jews) God thus spake hundreds of years before the destruction of Jerusalem: "I will scatter you among the heathen:" "Thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword, among the all nations, whither the Lord shall lead thee:" "Among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest." 

Jerusalem has been "trodden under foot," literally and terribly, till now, by the iron heels of western Christians, who deluged it with blood, by the hoofs of Arab and Moslem horsemen, and by the bare feet of Greek, and Roman, and Armenian monks.  Each sect spared its rival in order to crush the Jew.  To plunder and maltreat the Jew was regarded as the expression of a piety singularly acceptable to God.  No experience of man can explain this.  The Jew is a living mystery, which prophecy alone clears up.

Many other predictions, intimate the destinies of this mysterious race till Christ come.  All nations have homes in Jerusalem, - the Jew has none.  They have been sifted through all nations, and have taken root in none.  They  are the subjects of every dynasty - the victims of every tyranny - the scoff of the infidel - the scorn of the great.  From the Thames to the Tiber, and from the Tiber to the Ganges, and from the Ganges to the Missouri - from "Greenland's icy mountains to India's coral strand" - they are found insulated from the sympathies of all men, indicating affinities with something above and before, but with nothing around.  That once great nation has been poured down upon the earth like quicksilver - it has split into innumerable scattered and disintegrated globules, which the Great Proprietor will yet collect, and form into a mighty mass that shall glow with imperishable splendor and reflect his glory.  Many thousand years ago, God in prophecy pronounced the future dispersion and doom of the Jews, and God in history has kept them like the bush on Horeb - burning and not consumed - till that day come when the glory shall return from between the cherubim, and the dry bones rush together from a thousand lands, and the groans of creation, and the oppression of the Jew, and the travail of the Christian, cease together.  Do we not hear every morning a deep-toned voice in our streets? It is the echo of the voice of God in prophecy - evidence to a skeptic world that God's word is truth.  No man can read the history of the Jews, and the prophecy of which that history is the shadow projected into many years and lands, and not conclude that the prescience of God pronounced the prediction, and that the presence of God in history superintends its fulfillment.

John Cumming

Quote of the Day

Psalm 16:5 is one of my life verses now. 'Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup and have made my lot secure.' My 'lot' is what happens to me - my share of that which comes by the will of the Power that rules my destiny. My lot includes the circumstances of my birth, my upbringing, my job, my hardships, the people I work with, my marital status, hindrances, obstacles, accidents and opportunities. Everything constitutes my lot. Nothing excepted......

One morning my computer simply would not obey me. What a nuisance. I had my work laid out, my timing figured, my mind all set. My work was delayed, my timing thrown off, my thinking interrupted. Then I remembered. It was not for nothing. This was part of the Plan (not mine, His). 'Lord, You have assigned me my portion and my cup.' Now if the interruption had been a human being instead of an infuriating mechanism, it would not have been so hard to see it as the most important part of the work of the day. But all is under my Father's control: yes, recalcitrant computers, faulty transmissions, drawbridges that happen to be up when I am in a hurry. My portion. My cup. My lot is secure. My heart can be at peace. My Father is in charge. How simple!......God came down and lived in this world as a man. He showed us how to live in this world, subject to its vicissitudes and necessities, that we might be changed, not into angels or storybook princesses, not wafted into another world, but changed into saints in this world. The secret is Christ in me, not a different set of circumstances.

 

Elisabeth Elliot

Quote of the Day

If, as we read our Bibles, we heard Jesus speaking to us in this way to-day we should probably try to argue ourselves out of it like this:  'It is true that the demand of Jesus is definite enough, but I have to remember that he never expects us to take his commands legalistically.  What he really wants me to have is faith. …..If Jesus said to someone:  'Leave all else behind and follow me; resign your profession, quit your family, your people, and the home of your fathers,' then he knew that to this call there was only one answer - the answer of single-minded obedience, and it was only to this obedience that the promise of fellowship with Jesus is given.  But we should probably argue thus:  ' Of course we are meant to take the call of Jesus with 'absolute seriousness,' but after all the true way of obedience would be to continue all the more in our present occupations, to stay with our families, and serve him there in a spirit of true inward detachment.'  If Jesus challenged us with the command:  'Get our of it,' we should take him to mean:  'Stay where you are but cultivate that inward detachment.'  Again, if he were to say to us:  'Be not anxious,' we should take him to mean:  'Of course it is not wrong for us to be anxious:  we must work and provide for ourselves and our dependents.  If we did not we should be shirking our responsibilities.  But all the time we ought to be inwardly free form all anxiety.'  Perhaps Jesus would say to us:  'Whoever smiteth thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.'  We should then suppose him to mean:  'The way really to love your enemy is to fight him hard and hit him back.' Jesus might say: 'Seek ye first the kingdom of God,' and we should interpret it thus:  'Of course we should have to seek all sorts of other things firs; how could we otherwise exist?  What he really means is the final preparedness to stake all on the kingdom of God.'  All along the line we are trying to evade the obligation of single-minded, literal obedience. 

How is such absurdity possible?  What has happened that the word of Jesus can be thus degraded by this trifling, and thus left open to the mockery of the world?  When orders are issued in other spheres of life there is no doubt whatever of their meaning.  If a father sends his child to bed, the boy knows at once what he has to do.  But suppose he has picked up a smattering of pseudo-theology.  IN that case he would argue more or less like this:  'Father tells me to go to bed, but he really means that I am tired, and he does not want me to be tired.  I can overcome my tiredness just as well if I go out and play.  Therefore though father tells me to go to bed, he really means: 'Go out and play.' If a child tried such arguments on his father or a citizen on his government, they would both meet with a kind of language they could not fail to understand - in short they would be punished.  Are we to treat the commandment of Jesus differently from other orders and exchange single-minded obedience for downright disobedience?  How could that be possible!

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote of the Day

…in prayer the goal of the work of Son and Spirit is to introduce us to the Father and to establish us in fellowship with him.  So it follows from the nature of the gospel and life of the God it reveals that Christian prayer is properly and characteristically addressed to the Father.  What it says could not be said from the Son and the Spirit, but what both Son and Spirit have taught it to say is 'Our Father.  IF we do not find that right and natural, we need to ask ourselves why.  There is a type of protestant prayer that concentrates in an unhealthy way on Jesus, and that can easily become familiar and sentimental, because it has forgotten who Jesus is - the only Son of and the only way to the Father.  There is a Jesuology that can lavish an all too human love on an all too human Jesus and banish God to such remote transcendence, that we are back with the idea that we have to cling to a loving Jesus to keep us  right with a remote and probably angry God.  There is equally a prayer that concentrates on the Holy Spirit and the gifts and blessings he can bestow in a way that forgets that these things matter only when we use them to witness to the Son and to serve the Father in amore effective obedience.  To pray to Jesus rather than through him, to the Spirit rather than in him, as the established habit of our prayer, is to betray a doubt about our relationship to the Father.

Prayer is through Christ….in John 16..."I do not say I will ask the Father on your behalf."  He will not go instead of us, we are to come ourselves because the way is open.  Yet it is immediately clear that our ability to do so is entirely dependent on Christ and our relationship to him.  We do not come by ourselves, but it is we ourselves who come through him.  The same idea of mediation is implied in Hebrews 4:16.  Because he has gone into the holiest of all as High Priest we can "approach the throne of grace with confidence"…….It was into all this that Christ initiated his disciples when he said, "When you pray, say Abba,"…

 Thomas Smail

From his book, "The Forgotten Father"

Quote of the Day

Those who, rejecting Scripture, imagine that they have some peculiar way of penetrating to God, are to be deemed not so much under the influence of error as madness.  For certain giddy men have lately appeared, who, while they make a great display of the superiority of the Spirit, reject all reading of the Scriptures themselves….the true and full felicity of the…church will consist in their being ruled not less by the Word than by the Spirit of God….we must give diligent heed both to the reading and hearing of Scripture, if we would obtain any benefit from the Spirit of God, and, on the contrary, that any spirit which passes by the wisdom of God's Word, and suggests any other doctrine is deservedly suspected of vanity and falsehood.  Since Satan transforms himself into an angel of light, what authority can the Spirit have with us if he be not ascertained by an infallible mark?  And assuredly he is pointed out to us by the Lord with sufficient clearness; but these miserable men err as if bent on their own destruction, while they seek the Spirit from themselves rather than from Him.  But they say that it is insulting to subject the Spirit, to whom all things are to be subject, to the Scripture…True, if he were subjected to a human, an angelical, or to any foreign standard, it might be though that he was subordinate, or, if you will, brought into bondage; but so long as he is compared with himself, and considered in himself, how can it be said that he is thereby injured?  I admit that he is brought to a test, but the very test by which it has pleased him that his majesty should be confirmed.  It ought to be enough for us when once we hear his voice; but lest Satan should insinuate himself under his name, he wishes us to recognize him by the image which he has stamped on the Scriptures.

John Calvin

Quote of the Day

The brilliance of the gospel light is dimmed by error. The clearness of the testimony is spoiled when doubtful voices are scattered among the people, and those who ought to preach the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, are telling out for doctrines the imaginations of men, and the inventions of the age.

Instead of revelation, we have philosophy, falsely so-called; instead of divine infallibility, we have surmises and larger hopes. The gospel of Jesus Christ, which is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, is taught as the production of progress, a growth, a thing to be amended and corrected year by year. It is an ill day, both for the church and the world, when the trumpet does not give a certain sound; for who shall prepare himself for the battle?

 

Charles Spurgeon

Quote of the Day

Men hold truths nowadays with the bowels taken out of then, and the very life and meaning torn away. There are members and ministers of evangelical denominations who do not believe evangelical doctrine, or if they do believe it they attach but little importance to it; their sermons are essays on philosophy, tinged with the gospel. They put a quarter of a grain of gospel into an Atlantic of talk, and poor souls are drenched with words to no profit. God save us from ever leaving the old gospel, or losing its spirit, and the solid comfort which it brings...

Charles Spurgeon

Quote of the Day

Part of one of Martin Luther's letters to Philip Melanchthon from June 27, 1530(Melanchthon was at the Diet of Augsburg):

Grace and peace in Christ — in Christ, I say, not in the world. Amen. I shall write again, dear Philip, about the apology you make for your silence. This courier has come unexpectedly and suddenly from Wittenberg and is going to leave at once for Nuremberg, so I must wait to write more fully for another post.

Those great cares by which you say you are consumed I vehemently hate ; they rule your heart not on account of the greatness of the cause but by reason of the greatness of your unbelief. John Huss and

many others have waged harder battles than we do. If our cause is great, its author and champion is great also, for it is not ours. Why are you therefore always tormenting yourself ? If our cause is false, let us recant ; if it is true, why should we make him a liar who commands us to be of untroubled heart ? Cast your burden on the Lord, he says. The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon him with a broken heart. Does he speak in vain or to beasts ? I, too, am quite often smitten, but not all the time. It is not your theology which makes you anxious, but your philosophy, the same which has been gnawing at your friend Camerarius. What good can you do by your vain anxiety ? What can the devil do more than slay us ? What after that ? I beg you, so pugnacious in all else, fight against yourself, your own worst enemy, who furnish Satan with arms against yourself. Christ died once for sinners, and will not die again for truth and justice, but will live and reign. If he be true, what fear is there for the truth ? .... I pray for you earnestly and am deeply pained that you keep sucking up cares like a leech and thus rendering my prayers vain. Christ knows whether it is stupidity or bravery, but I am not much disturbed, rather of better courage than I had hoped. God who is able to raise the dead is also able to uphold a falling cause, or to raise a fallen one and make it strong. If we are not worthy instruments to accomplish his purpose, he will find others. If we are not strengthened by his promises, to whom else in all the world can they pertain ? But saying more would be pouring water into the sea.

I forwarded your letters to Wittenberg, both that written before and that written after the arrival of the Emperor. For at home they are also troubled at your silence, as you will learn from Bugenhagen's letter, though the fault of their not hearing from you is not, as Jonas says, the messenger's, but yours, and yours alone. May Christ comfort, strengthen, and teach you by his spirit. Amen. If I hear that things are going badly or that the cause is in danger, I shall hardly be able to restrain myself from flying to Augsburg, to see what the Bible calls the terrible teeth of Satan roundabout. I shall write again soon ; in the mean time give my greetings to all my friends.

His Robes For Mine

This is an excellent song! You can listen to it here:  http://www.sacredaudio.com/previews/player.php?id=1005_18  

His robes for mine: O wonderful exchange!
Clothed in my sin, Christ suffered ‘neath God’s rage.
Draped in His righteousness, I’m justified.
In Christ I live, for in my place He died.

Chorus:

I cling to Christ, and marvel at the cost:
Jesus forsaken, God estranged from God.
Bought by such love, my life is not my own.
My praise-my all-shall be for Christ alone.

His robes for mine: what cause have I for dread?
God’s daunting Law Christ mastered in my stead.
Faultless I stand with righteous works not mine,
Saved by my Lord’s vicarious death and life.

His robes for mine: God’s justice is appeased.
Jesus is crushed, and thus the Father’s pleased.
Christ drank God’s wrath on sin, then cried “‘Tis done!”
Sin’s wage is paid; propitiation won.

His robes for mine: such anguish none can know.
Christ, God’s beloved, condemned as though His foe.
He, as though I, accursed and left alone;
I, as though He, embraced and welcomed home!

- Written by Christ Anderson.  The sheet music can be purchased here:  http://www.bjupress.com/product/279752?path=169192&spot=1

Quote of the Day

A God who let us prove his existence would be an idol. The Lord whom we trust binds us so firmly to himself that we are freed from superstition and a desire for miracles. The person to whom God has given faith has faith in him, whatever happens.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote of the Day

Not only are Christians to be collective representatives of Christ on earth but also individual representatives as each one strives to be like Him.  That's the key to unity in the church.  If all of us were more like Christ, we' have no problem getting along with each other.  But unfortunately, we are not always in tune with one another because we are not all fully following Christ.    A.W. Tozer (1897-1963) once said that if a hundred pianos were merely tuned to each other, their pitch would not be very accurate.  But if they were all tuned to one tuning fork, they would automatically be tuned to each other.  Similarly, unity in the church isn't the result of running around and adjusting to everyone else.  Rather, the key to unity is becoming like Jesus Christ.

- John Macarthur

Quote of the Day

One of the emphases so far in this book has been that staying married is not mainly about staying in love, but about keeping covenant.  We did eventually come around to saying that precisely by this unwavering covenant-keeping the possibility of being profoundly in love in forty years is much greater than if you think the task of marriage is first staying in love.  Keeping first things first makes second things better.  Staying in love isn't the first task of marriage.  It is a happy overflow of covenant-keeping for Christ's sake.

- John Piper

Quote of the Day

…Now we can see why up to now Jesus has said nothing about himself in the Sermon on the Mount.  Between the disciples and the better righteousness demanded of them stands the Person of Christ, who came to fulfill the law of the old covenant.  This is the fundamental presupposition of the whole Sermon on the Mount.  Jesus manifests his perfect union with the will of God as revealed in the Old Testament law and prophets.  He has in fact nothing to add to the commandments of God, except this, that he keeps them.  He fulfills the law, and he tells us so himself, therefore it must be true.  He fulfills the law down to the last iota…he alone understand the true nature of the law as God's law: the law is not itself God, nor is God the law.  It was the error of Israel to put the law in God's place, to make the law their God and their God a law.  The disciples were confronted with the opposite danger of denying the law its divinity altogether and divorcing God from his law.  Both errors lead to the same result.  By confounding God and the law, the Jews were trying to use the law to exploit the Law-Giver: He was swallowed up in the law and therefore no longer its Lord.  By imagining that God and the law could be divorced from one another, the disciples were trying to exploit God by their possession of salvation.  In both cases, the gift was confounded with the Giver:  God was denied equally, whether it was with the help of the law, or with the promise of salvation.

Confronted with these twin errors, Jesus vindicates the divine authority of the law.  God is its giver and its Lord, and only in personal communion with God is the law fulfilled.  There is no fulfillment of the law apart from communion with God, and no communion with God apart from fulfillment of the law…Jesus, the Son of God, who alone lives in perfect communion with Him, vindicates the law of the old covenant by coming to fulfill it.  He was the only Man who ever fulfilled the law, and therefore he alone can teach the law and its fulfillment….It is Jesus Himself who comes between the disciples and the law, not the law which comes between Jesus and the disciples.  They find their way to the law through the cross of Christ……Because between the disciples and the law stands One who has perfectly fulfilled it, One with whom they live in communion.  They are faced not with a law which has never yet been fulfilled, but with one whose demands have already been satisfied.  The righteousness it demands is already there, the righteousness of Jesus, which submits to the cross because that is what the law demands.  This righteousness is therefore not a duty owed, but a perfect and truly personal communion with God, and Jesus not only possesses this righteousness', but is himself the personal embodiment of it. He is the righteousness of the disciples.

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote of the Day

Some may say “because I am elect, it doesn’t really matter how I live or what I do. Well the one thing I can say for sure about you is that you might be elect, but you are not yet converted.”

- Joseph Pipa

Quote of the Day

In the new Testament, as understood in the mainstream of Christian tradition, we meet the same God three times.  First of all we meet him in the Father, whom Jesus prayed to and obeyed, at whose bidding he came, lived, suffered and died, by whose hand he was raised from the dead.  But in Jesus Christ himself, we encounter the same divine love and power appearing personally among us as our fellowman.  God is now not only exalted in heaven but made man on earth.  The acts of Jesus are the acts of God, the words of Jesus are the words of God, the suffering of Jesus is the self-sacrifice of God, the person of Jesus is the person of God, so that the confession of the Church echoes the confession of Thomas (John 20:28) and addresses not the Father in heaven but the risen human Jesus, "My Lord and my God".  But with Jesus ascended there comes according to his promise allos Parakletos, "Another of the same kind of Advocate Counselor."  The Holy Spirit who keeps on relating Christians to Christ and the Father, and then to one another, is himself God, God at work in and among men.  He does not hand us over to another, but in this other he keeps on coming to us himself.

- Thomas Smail

Quote of the Day

The writings of all the holy fathers should be read only for a time, in order that through them we may be led to the Holy Scriptures.  As it is, however, we read them only to be absorbed in them and never come to the Scriptures. We are like men who study the signposts and never travel the road. The dear fathers wished by their writing, to lead us to the Scriptures, but we so use them as to be led away from the Scriptures, though the Scriptures alone are our vineyard in which we ought to work and toil.

Martin Luther

Quote of the Day

"In life with Jesus Christ, death as a general fate approaching us from without is confronted by death from within, one's own death, the free death of daily dying with Jesus Christ.  Those who live with Christ die daily to their own will.  Christ in us gives us over to death so that he can live within us.  Thus our inner dying grows to meet that death from without.  Christians receive their own death in this way, and in this way our physical death very truly becomes not the end but rather the fulfillment of our life with Jesus Christ.  Here we enter into community with the One who at his own death was able to say, 'It is finished.'"

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote of the Day

Where there is no “moral gravity” – that is, no force that draws us to the center – there is spiritual weightlessness. We float on feelings that will carry us where we never meant to go; we bubble with emotional experiences that we often take for spiritual ones; and we are puffed up with pride. Instead of seriousness, there is foolishness. Instead of gravity, flippancy. Sentimentality takes the place of theology. Our reference point will never serve to keep our feet on solid rock, for our reference point, until we answer God’s call, is merely ourselves. We cannot possibly tell which end is up. Paul calls them fools who “…measure themselves by themselves, to find in themselves their own standard of comparison!”

Elisabeth Elliot